MARRIAGE (PART 8): HOW TO PREPARE YOURSELF BEFORE MARRIAGE

If you’re not engaged, or even close to it, please don’t move on to your next bookmark or feed!  So much to say almost all of the sisterly advice we are brimming with can be of use well before your intended ever shows his face, if only in the realm of your ideals. If you aspire as a girl towards a God-centered, fulfilling, dynamic marriage, your values will grow in that direction, as a plant towards the light of the sun. True love and beautiful marriages really do Xist. And the dreams God allows us to dare to dream in our girlhood are where such marriages are born. That’s not to say the course ahead will run smooth by any means…the Bard had some wise words on that account.  But it’s worth it. It’s worth it to have faith in something so beautiful that only God could have thought it up in the first place. It’s worth it to learn to wait on Him and hope in Him and to find, after all, that He is the Lover of your soul. It is worth it... all the longing and disappointed hopes and even heartache that may lay before you - to be able to one day stand before the person you love best in the whole wide world, wearing a white dress and veil, and to look up at him and say, ‘I have waited for God and I have waited for you.’ So that’s the first piece of advice for a good marriage: Believe that it Xists in the grace of God. Believe that God intends for you to be married unless you have a very specific calling otherwise. Believe that it can be a ‘dream come true’ of oneness and closeness and fellowship and downright fun! And remember that it is worse than pointless to try and figure out how God is going to unfold your story.