Mom-Talk

Finishing up another crazy week of camp.

Sometimes the weeks are just busy. Sometimes they're insane. Crazy is a happy middle-point between the two. Means you're busy, and a lot of goofy stuff happens, and sometimes that goofy stuff makes things easier in ways you couldn't have predicted.

Sometimes, obviously, the opposite happens, but boy, it's funny later on.

Moms rock. In the staff housing, there are a lot of girls who are right around college age, and one mom. We stay up sometimes and talk about, y'know, girl-stuff. And most of it stays in the cabin. But she made a point the other night that more girls need to hear.

There isn't a guarantee.

Regrettably, there is no way to be sure that your marriage will last. You can give it a lot of strength, you can try to devote everything to God, you can pray about, for, and with your husband - but you can't predict what's going to happen.

One of the moms I know married rather young, and she was raised believing that if she just married a Christian husband, everything would work out fine. She met a smart guy who was earnestly interested in God, had recently graduated from college, and had just landed a job at a very prestigious company. She hadn't realized then that despite how much he cared about her, he didn't really understand relationships. They're still together, but there were some very, very rough storms in that relationship.

Camp-mom was one of the girls who followed the recipe, and her marriage ended a few years ago. There's this idea that we get sold on as Christian girls - protect your purity, and he'll desire you enough that he'll never leave. Pray for him, serve God, date only parent-approved men, both of you keep an accountability partner, and seek an older couple as mentors. And I do think that will significantly help, but the implied phrase is that if you do all of that, God will bless your marriage, so that no matter what other trials you go through in life, the two of you will be strong and love each other, and always have a safe haven in each other.

There's one guarantee. God never tells us that the man we love will never leave us, or that we will always feel the way we do now. He tells us HE will never leave us. I don't know if guys do this, but as girls, we tend to need someone to depend on. Your best friend, your dad, your boyfriend, your sister, there's gotta be someone there for you.

He calls us to honor our commitment, even if we don't feel like it. I had a dream once where I was talking to my betrothed about the wedding vows we were writing. Of course, it's dark and rainy and I can't really see him (don't ask me WHY we'd be writing our wedding vows outside in a thunderstorm - I seem to recall that the house was locked, so we couldn't go inside), but I looked at him very seriously at one point and asked him something along the lines of, "Do you realize that you're saying, even if you don't love me, you'll still stay with me?" And he responded something charming along the lines of, "I'll always love you, that's why I'm marrying you," but that wasn't what I was asking.

I do pray a lot about my future guy. It always seems to start off with, "God, I don't know who he is or where he is..." and it sometimes seems a little arrogant of me to assume that God's plans involve me getting married, but the phrase is, "Pray Boldly," so that's what I'm doing.
So, I don't know who you are or where you are, and this probably isn't what you want to hear, but I promise you now, even if years after we're married, I don't feel as "in love" with you as before, I will never leave you. Every mindsayer and blogger in the world can hold me to that. We'll find a way to work it out, or maybe we'll realize something different about each other, or maybe we'll just both change. But whatever happens, on our wedding day, I make a commitment before you and before God that I will be with you until death parts us. That commitment is not negotiable.