All of us were probably swept away at some time or the other. I remember meeting my husband. We worked together. Just seeing him show up made my heart beat faster. And for our 2 dating years, we stared into eyes and thought we were more romantic than any other couple. We were helplessly in love.

But we weren’t in love at all. Not even a bit. Love would have to grow. And be tested. And stretch and grow some more.

Now we are in love. In a true, steady, weathering kind of love.

We have walked beside each other through vomit, writhing childbirth, injuries, tears, dirty diapers, financial stress, bad breath, grief, losing all that’s familiar, rough, hard-working hands and a hundred other things that get in the way of staring deeply into eyes.

But when we do get the chance between nursing the baby and listening to the dreams of a newly become adult, our eyes mirror a history that is more romantic than any dinner date with wine. A history that bonds and glues hearts together.

And now we watch as our children find “true love”, our lessons not learned, and our notions that love is all sparks, and we forget that they can’t know love yet. [inlinetweet prefix=”null” tweeter=”null” suffix=”null”]They can find someone whom they respect, and enjoy and with whom they are compatible in different ways, but love? True love waits. In the most literal sense.[/inlinetweet]

Hollywood can have its shallow romance that tries to pretend sparks and candlelight are the stuff of love. Those are nice, but they’re only additives.

Give me the man who fills my car up with gas, who washes dishes just because, who braves the cold to work for us, who lets me sleep in when the baby keeps me up at night, who never complains about my faults, who selflessly loves and leads us, who listens and encourages and comforts me just by his presence.

Now that’s romance.

My True Valentine.

…..

Occasionally someone ventures outside the cultural marriage norms and makes the case for getting married young, but generally, it’s ingrained deep within us all that there’s an acceptable age to marry,  and to do so before that is unwise.

But is it?

We admit there’s an epidemic of adults who are over-sized children though the full weight of it hasn’t fully been realized.  But we’re slow to admit where blame lies. And even if we did, would we be willing to shift the paradigm?

I submit two major things are causing adults to delay marriage, negatively impacting their own adulthood and maturity, and ultimately, all of us.

• The adolescent culture
• The worship of education

Adolescent culture

Since around 1905, when G. Stanley Hall named the adolescent period, Americans have increasingly coddled their children, protecting their “right” to childhood, long after what has formerly been called childhood, has ended. Now we have a culture of parents who protect, shield and defend to a fault. They require little work and responsibility for fear it will hamper their fun and they elevate extra curricular opportunities over the practical preparation for life.

So we have “Generation Y”, the narcissistic generation who wants a ribbon for showing up. Their parents did something wrong.

Answer? We need to balance the natural freedoms and privileges of childhood with our responsibility to help them grow in maturity and wisdom. We need to expect things–important, life things that will help them transition into adulthood when the time comes. We need to let them experience things, while guiding them and pushing them to find truth, to view the world through the lens of God’s Word, where they will find answers for everything.

We need to change our idea of the “teen years.” We are raising children into adults. Those in between years are the most potent for developing skills, learning, training, preparing and practicing for adult life. These are not years to be frittered away. These are the years where we challenge them and they rise to the challenge of womanhood and manhood, the years of their best strength and courage, where vision is best cast. Youth is where character is grown and practiced,  responsibility takes root, and self-control must reign.

Worship of Education

The first one was easy; for this one, buckle up.

We could have the talk about the unnecessary hype of college but that would take too long. If we could understand that college may be necessary for highly specialized vocations, but generally, not necessary for a good education and training in most vocations, we would begin the process of demoting the college degree from some idolized status. It is now, especially in our highly technological age, only one of many ways to a higher education, not the least of which is laborious and expensive.

Too often marriage is pushed off  until after college. First, college has taken precedence over the importance of marriage. Second, it is assumed that both can’t be done simultaneously.

Sadly, too, in many cases college extends (or worsens) the adolescent stage. Parents pay for their adult children to live (and/or party) during the time they should be assuming those responsibilities.

We’ve given the pursuit of (let’s be honest) more money precedent over the pursuit of a godly spouse.

Why We Should Support Early Marriage

Marriage is good. Marriage is a gift. Marriage makes us grow up, gives us a companion to weather the stuff of life. Announce you’re getting married before the “acceptable” age, and you’ll mostly be met with pleads of “live some life first.” And while the single state has its unique opportunities, marriage certainly doesn’t detract from the joys of life, but rather doubles them.

Are You Ready?

Waiting until we’re “ready” can be a precarious thing. What is “ready”?

Financial readiness is the primary reason caution is offered to young couples. Somehow, just having an income isn’t enough in our American idealistic dream. Mark Regnerus, in “The Case for Early Marriage” said:

“Marrying young can spell poverty, at least temporarily. Yet the mentality that we need to shield young adults from the usual struggles of life by encouraging them to delay marriage until they are financially secure usually rests on an unrealistic standard of living. Good marriages grow through struggles, including economic ones. My wife and I are still fiscal conservatives because of our early days of austerity….

Nevertheless, the economic domain remains an area in which many parents are often able, but frequently unwilling, to assist their children….This cultural predilection toward punishing rather than blessing marriage must go, and congregations and churchgoers can help by dropping their own punitive positions toward family members, as well as by identifying deserving young couples who could use a little extra help once in a while. Christians are great about supporting their missionaries, but in this matter, we can be missionaries to the marriages in our midst.”

What about ready in other ways?  Everything I was when I got married has changed. Everything I thought about life has changed. I’ve grown. I’ve learned. I’ve morphed.

Our growing and changing and morphing is best done with our life partner alongside us. Every step toward “establishing ourselves” as adults without our spouse, is a step toward stubborn independence.

We need the companion, accountability and responsibility marriage brings, and we need it earlier rather than later.

Sure there are exceptions, good reasons to wait. But our prevailing attitude should be to think differently, to love and embrace marriage, not just for “one day”, but as something to be desired, sought after and celebrated in youth.

David Prince, in his article, “First Person: An Evangelical War on Marriage“, brings a much-needed discussion to light, challenging Christians to consider the message we are giving our young people about marriage, and consequently, about the Gospel.

“We evangelicals must acknowledge that our own failure to communicate the meaning and Gospel significance of marriage has hastened the cultural confusion and decline of the sacred institution. Evangelicals often tell children that their education, career and individual success should be firmly in place before they should even think about marriage. After all, if they marry too young, they won’t be able to accomplish their individual dreams and become successful people who lead lives of significance.

At the same time, we act befuddled that a generation we have taught to put themselves first does not understand the importance of self-sacrificial relationships beginning with marriage and family.“

A stealth, vicious enemy is creeping through our families and churches, destroying marriages, preventing marriages and working on every level to erode our morality. It’s not television, Hollywood, video games, the homosexual agenda, the abortion industry, or the government, though all of those things contribute their share.

The more dangerous enemy, because its subtle forces lurk in all of us, is narcissistic self-indulgent parenting.

As Prince writes,

“Too often we feed our children the junk food of narcissistic self-esteem along with a side of the American dream then wonder why they do not have a healthy Christian worldview. We pair culturally shaped dreams about what our children will become along with a romanticized view of love and marriage, which is rooted in notions of self-fulfillment rather than self-sacrifice. Christian marriage, however, is a Gospel-magnifying, self-sacrificial commitment that teaches us what love is over time as we practice long-term fidelity.”

Whereas for centuries, to marry young, to navigate through life with a partner, companion and helper was expected and celebrated, now young marriage is considered naive at best, and certainly a “hindrance” to all one could do on his own. No longer do we believe that “two is better than one.”

Many factors contribute, but I think we’ve all been deeply influenced by the engine that virtually drives society: the public school system.

We spend twelve to sixteen years being indoctrinated to think that all that matters is good grades so we can go to a good college so we can get a good job and make good money and buy good things.

God said, “He who finds a wife finds a GOOD THING and receives favor with the Lord.” Proverbs 18:22

But favor from the Lord is too often on the bottom of our priority list, if on the list at all.

No, we want favor from neighbors, grandparents, relatives and friends. And they confirm how to find favor: make sure your children are successful by the aforementioned formula. But marriage? Eh, if they stumble across someone that “makes them happy.” Later, of course, after they’ve really lived.

But this formula has disastrous effects on marriage and family, the institution that, no matter how little importance we place on it, is still the basic health factor of society.

As we push our children toward their fulfillment, feeding an indulgent appetite, we scratch our heads wondering why the divorce rate is so high and the family in such straits.

From the very beginning, God placed His creation in families. That’s the place where we learn how to give, share, sacrifice and love.

I don’t think He ever intended for us to create this wide period of self-indulgence, only to be expected to drop those ingrained habits once we marry and enter into a family again.

And as parents, we need to take a hard look at the way we’re preparing our children. Most of them will get married. Family is the main event for which we should be preparing them. In light of that, we must communicate the glorious thing marriage is, a gift from God, but an instrument He uses to make us more like Him, more like servants, and to tell the world about His love.

This is no little thing. Almost everything else hinges on our view of marriage.

We can’t value achievement, success, money, college or a good job over marriage and expect our children to enter it with some magical tenacity to remain faithful to their spouse for life, sacrificing daily for someone else, suddenly forgetting the years they spent learning that self-fulfillment is paramount.

I am challenged to stop “being conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind that we may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:1,2