I have always been content and happy being single. No matter that many of my friends are married with one or two kids by now. I don't feel left out...yet. I do think a lot about getting married though...someday...when Prince Charming rides in on his white steed and sweeps me off my feet. I don't know if God will allow me the opportunity to be married or not and I'm not going to wait until I get married for my life to really start. It's silly to waste these years if you ask me. I will enjoy every season as it comes. I've been thinking about marriage a lot lately though, as I see more friends getting engaged, middle aged couples struggling to stay together and stay happy, and elderly couples that appear more in love than ever. What makes a marriage work? What makes a marriage strong? What makes a marriage stay happy and committed to the end? I have lots of happy thoughts about the prospect of marriage and what it will be like. I also have lots of scary thoughts about how hard it will be and the struggles that can come about. I develop fears as I see marriages around me falling apart. What went wrong? What could they have done differently? Why are people giving up?
Today my mind has been buzzing with thoughts about what I can be doing even now to prepare to be a good wife (if God so chooses to allow me to become one). I don't want to just assume that once I get married I can start thinking about what it means to be a wife. I want to be living now in such a way that I am not just focusing on the future, but that prepares me for life and marriage.
So I started making a list of things a single woman can do to be preparing to be a good wife (things that will be beneficial even if I never end up getting married). Here is the beginning of my list:
-Learn to be a good cook and develop a cookbook of favorite recipes
-Design and keep a budget
-Be content in my relationship with Christ and let my heart be hidden in His
-Practice communicating well and confronting those I love
-Get into a healthy lifestyle so I am happy and accepting of my body
-List the values that are important to me personally and for my family
-Develop list of hard/important questions to discuss with a potential prince
-Read up on recommended books/blogs about being a Godly wife
-Learn to ask hard questions of myself and others
-Practice daily dying to self and putting others ahead of myself
I think that is a pretty good start to my list. So I am curious, to all of you young married women and those of you who are seasoned married women, what advice can you offer? What do you wish you had known before you got married? What do you wish you would have learned or done to prepare to be a good wife?
Do you want any words from married men as well? I think you're heading the right direction. Work on the virtues that improve your life now and your relationship with Christ, and it will be beneficial if you do get married, beneficial now, and benefit for eternity. There are very few things "unique" about a marriage relationship, and as important as some of that is, marriage is mostly trying to do all the normal things of a healthy relationship on a 24-hours a day level. It's easier to love and serve someone when you only see them on the weekends, or at Bible study, this is loving (remember, love is active) somebody all the time. So, I would venture to say that anything that improves your life as a single person, will improve any potential life as a spouse. The core of being a godly woman (or man) doesn't change that much as life changes around us. We have different ways that we should expressing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control: but they are no more or no less essential.
ReplyDeleteI think you are having a great outlook Angela. We think of you often here in Nebraska.
Read the book Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerich - I found it to be extremely helpful to understand what men need in the marital relationship.
ReplyDeleteI've thought a lot about many of these questions, because as you said, more and more, it is more common to be in a crappy marriage, or divorced, than a beautiful, growing marriage.
ReplyDeleteI don't know a lot of these answers, as I've struggled through them myself, but I find it strange that as I get older, I get more fearful of marriage, do you find that? The way I thought about it in High school or College was more of a rose-colored outlook.... now, it's... messy, hard, hurtful, painful... but somehow beautiful in the end. Strange.
We should talk soon.
http://www.girltalkhome.com/blog/gods-ideal-for-marriage
ReplyDeletea resource you can look at. I know that I am single but I learn from others. We are all learners.
I like this list, Angela! As a fellow single woman, I'm doing some of the same things, although I find that reading books/blogs about being a Godly wife/dating can be rather painful and actually make it harder for me to be content with being single.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have been reading this book called "Singled out: Why celibacy must be reinvented in today's church" and I have found it very refreshing. It's all about changing the emphasis from 'waiting' to using your singleness to honor God. Not entirely a new idea, obviously, but I'm finding it challenging. I also really like everything I've read by Lauren Winner (Real Sex, Girl meets God).