Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Coming Together

Yesterday was our 13th anniversary. We had a nice lazy day after the travel and visiting with family. I read a book called Breathe that I really enjoyed. Then a dear family friend watched the kids so Brian and I could go out to eat and come home to watch Netflix. Very nice time.

We started--without any commitment beyond today--to read the Bible as a family and pray before bed. Last night we read Genesis 2. My girlhad great questions about how man was formed. I read the notes in the Life Application Bible about marriage corresponding to the end of the chapter. It spoke of the oneness, lack of shame and completion we can find in marriage. I liked also a note about making Eve from Adam, rather than dust, to further signify that we are truly one.

The timing was perfect--as God's timing is--with our anniversary and the book I'd just finished. I have been thinking about the formation of marriage quite a bit lately. In the book Breathe, the setting is 1883 Colorado and we get to read about a couple who come together in marriage. I was considering the short amount of time it took for them to marry, and yet the assurance both had that it was good and right.

I think it is interesting today how we have so many options in life--education, careers, and travel open the doors wide to our futures. With so many choices, and so much to explore, and the time it takes to do so, there is not a need to couple up so quickly. There is also an attitude about these things: if it doesn't work, change it. There are always other options. Leave, seek something better. There was a time that people stuck with a company for their entire careers. That is a far less common phenomenon nowadays.

Sadly, I think this attitude has been adopted for our view of coupling. People date extensively, move in together, do everything but exchange vows, but then move on when things get tough. That is not to say that once the vows are exchanged, a commitment exists. There is still a sense that if things don't work out, we can just move on.

I suppose the improvements made in the health industry and the resulting lengthening of our life also play a factor to our lives without commitment. There is no sense of urgency to get married and start a family these days. Ladies can reasonably put off having their first babies to an age double that of generations past. No hurry.

I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. But I think it is just a factor in the decline of healthy, loving, Biblical marriages. With so much distraction, so little call for commitment, it is hard to stick out the hard times or to see your marriage mate as a lifetime partner. I want to teach my children that the options and advantages available today doesn't preclude God's design for us to come together as He ordains for our entire lives.

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