Marriage Is A Ministry: Not A Fashion Trend

Marriage is a Ministry. Not a Fashion trend. 

I have friends, male and female who got married too early in life and not much long after ended up divorced in their middle twenties or  by their early thirties. Why did this happen? Well, there are multiple reasons but mainly I hear:

"We grew a part..."

"We didn't know one another very well..."

"She got pregnant..."


The bottom line is that people don't put enough value in their time and efforts. Your time is valuable. There are million things you could be doing, other than wasting energy being tied to someone who A. has not intentions of marrying you and B. Causes you a headache every time you look at them. C. Has no want to be better for themselves.

Women, we are so hungry for a man to marry us, that we forget to continue to learn about ourselves while we are waiting for God to send our husbands. We think that we can turn a "nice guy" into our flawless perfect prince. We forget that he was born into sin just like us and so we start to hold them to higher expectations. Let me say this: HOW HE IS WHEN YOU MEET HIM, IS HOW HE WILL BE AFTER THE "HONEYMOON" PHASE ends and reality starts to set in. HE WILL CHANGE, when he feels the time is right (Essentially when God is ready for him to change).

I suppose, that was one of my biggest issues in the past. I fell in love with their potential instead of being realistic. He makes me laugh, but is his life in order? He takes me my my photoshoots, but does he really care about my passions, dreams and goals? I have learned to do more investigating before I just give my heart away.

You can meet a man that has all the qualities of the perfect man, but none of that will matter if he

A. Isn't confident in who God created him to be
B. Doesn't have his life in order
C. Still holds on to the memory of past relationships

There is nothing worse than to be in a relationship with a man who constantly compares and talks about and wishes that things were different between he and his ex wife. That must be my calling in life (hahahah). I keeping telling myself that dating a man who is divorced is not my cup of tea, for the simple of fact that I have never experienced being married so I want to have that first experience with a man who is on the same NEVER BEEN MARRIED page.

But, God has a funny way of showing us what and where our weakness are...

Yes, I would like to be married one day but I only want to get married once.
I also want to be in love with everything about my husband, from his compassionate heart to the wisdom in his silver hairs. I want my marriage to be an adventure, where I"m constantly learning, growing, discovering new things about myself and my husband. I want us to travel all over the world. I want us to be a powerhouse couple. I want there to be open communication, where if an issue comes up we talk about it right then (get it out of the way) and then move forward being wiser for having talked about it.

Reflection:

See, last year I was naive. I fell in love with the potential of a guy and embarked on a journey that was unexpected, cruel and unusual. But, I only had myself to blame... why? Because I thought since he consider himself "Christian" that he would share the same values as I did. But, that was far from the truth. 

The more I loved him, the more cruel he became and it all boiled down to him still being in love with his ex wife, as well as his "bestfriend (which was a girl)." I was in a pretty uncomfortable "love triangle." He had feelings for his ex wife still, and his best girl-friend and then there I was thrown in the mix. The "clean up woman." It was blatantly that he was using me as a "band-aid" for his soul. He couldn't be with his ex wife and his best girl-friend was unavailable (at the time) so he was bored and wanted someone to distract him from his pain and lo and behold there I was... The Remedy. The cure. To all his problems............................................................................................................ right? 

What he needed was beyond anything that I could do him... He needed God and I hope that by now he has found the healing power of God. 

But, if you pray and ask God to show you someone's TRUE COLORS, please be prepared for the worst because I was not prepared for the cruelty. 

Not long after I said the prayer, his true colors started to show and what really set it all in stone was when his ex wife called him one night, while we we were eating dinner (subway). This wasn't the first time she was calling and when I told him that her calling made me feel uncomfortable, he looked me square in the eyes and said: "If you don't like it, get over it." Then after that he continued to treat me worse and worse. At first he would talk on the phone with me around, then he started to take her calls in a private room. He was blatantly cheating on me, and yet I was powerless to do anything about it because I was "stuck." 

But, if I would have been who I am now. I sweat on my life that the outcome would have been much different. Much! Much! Much! different. But, I was trying to "fit in." I was trying to live up to impossible expectations. I thought if I played the wife roll that it would automatically land me the career. 

I'm glad that God separated me from that young man. 

I'm also glad that I did not marry him. 

I can't marry a man that has no backbone. That changes his opinions with the swirl of the wind. 

A man who can't think for himself. A man who is too afraid to confront his demons head on, so he sweeps them on a rug. A man who limits himself by the thoughts he keeps and the friends he tries to hold onto. A man who takes life as a joke. A man who abandons his duty in the middle of the battle because he broke a nail. It wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to be gay. So much for traditional Christian values right?