marriage

Beer bottles and hands and tealight candles!
Marielle and Nathanael. (Marrying on December 16)
Tealight candles make up a heart... although a few of us thought it looked more like a pacman. :)

Lately I have been pondering the idea of marriage, quite possibly because my friend has just got engaged (photos from last night's engagement party above). Obviously marriage can be a fantastic thing and I am really happy for Marielle and her fiance, Nathanael. All the same, I wonder if perhaps we Christians take marriage a little too far, especially when we're NOT married.

So many Christian girls I've met are so desperate for a boyfriend that I find it quite sad. They also seem to have the attitude that you can't go out with boys unless you know they're The One. I have a feeling that because these days you hear so much of the ideal of waiting for marriage or marriage is so special and so on that we get the idea that to be a whole person, we must be married, that marriage is crucially important to the Christian faith.

I have a feeling we need to have some more self-worth as separate, worthwhile human beings. A significant amount of Christian marriages break up these days - so what's left over of us if this happens to us? I think we should view marriage as a partnership focused on God and what we can do for him together. At the very least many girls are going to be very disappointed when they discover marriage isn't some constant paradise.