.::mags and driscoll on marriage::.

One of the coolest things is listening to someone talk about something and then realizing it resonates so deeply within you because it is a truth you are already experiencing or witnessing.

So last fall, I started listening to most of Mark Driscoll’s sermon series on the Song of Solomon from a while back, "The Peasant Princess," and felt he was dead on with how he beautifully taught on relationships, sex, marriage, and a biblical model for engaging in those arenas.

Got through most of the series this fall, but haven't finished it yet, so I listen to a talk every now and then when I have time, and have started Talk 9 – "Do Not Awaken Love" a couple times but always get interrupted. Today at the Shelter I got to go through a good chunk of it and feel there were some things that were so critical to what he said. A lot of what I heard today falls in line with some really cool revelations I've had recently with the married couples' lives I'm blessed to be a part of.

First of all, I will stand by my previous statements, that this series has given me hope for relationships and marriage, whereas before this was still a desire but something I deeply feared. It has given me hope for the biblical marriage I desire but so often think doesn’t really exist, or if it does, it’s just for a few of the people I know who happened to get lucky. God is the giver, starter and initiator of relationships, if we are to experience one it is not something within our realm of control, yet God is not holding out on us or withholding anything from us. I'm finding that when I pray for God to bring "His best" into my life in terms of a husband, that I've already been given His best for me right now, in my current state. For His best for our lives is always His will, and His will for me right now is to live and experience the abundance of life as someone who happens to be single. Singleness is a stage of life for most people, as 90% of people will get married in their lifetimes, but singles can fall in the trap of feeling this is some state they are destined to forever. This a lie that has been deeply embedded in our culture rather stealthily, Christian and secular. That was a tangent, I will continue where I was going with the whole hope for marriage bit.

Now, I’m seeing more of the dynamics that differentiate the marriages in my friends’ lives that have a lot of the qualities I feel every marriage should have, and now I’m excited that those types of marriages are possible… with two people who are committed and willing to be humble servants.

More and more, I've been wrestling with, what is even the purpose of marriage. Especially given what I feel the Lord has called me to do with my life, it has brought me to a place where the only way I will be in a relationship or enter into marriage is if it will more fully help me fulfill the purposes God has for my life to glorify Him. Will he help me more fully fulfill the Great Commission or God's call for my life? If the answer is yes, then the purpose of marriage is there. If not, it's in vain. More and more as I'm around godly marriages, I find it's not really about you. The purposes for your marriage are so much greater than you just being happy or being together with someone you love. There are several blessings and benefits toe experiencing this type of soul connection and having a life partner that I won't go into on this post, but as Driscoll points out, many are disillusioned and many marriages don't make it because people fail to realize that the purpose of marriage isn't to be happy, it's to become more holy. With that perspective in view, being a servant takes on new meaning.

This quality: a servant, is one I see resurface again and again in the real-life marriages I see, and one Driscoll talks about the most. I realized the something different has been a decision made daily to die to self and serve one another. This sounds great in theory, but to witness it and see it play out in the lives of some of my closest friends, and to be on the girl end and get the inside scoop, the real life struggles, yet incredible joys that come with this, I see it is only possible with Jesus.

Jesus isn’t just a part of their marriage, everything is built on that. He is the only reason two fallen people can work through and restore conflict. He is the only reason one person would choose to put their will aside for the sake of another. It is a beautiful thing, when a marriage is a reflection of the Gospel, a picture for the world to see God’s love.

I’m most impressed by what I see in the lives of my girlfriends. There comes a tremendous freedom that becomes present in their lives that didn’t exist before. This is not to say in our singleness we cannot experience this sort of freedom because that is not the case, but there is a different freedom that comes in being and knowing you are fully loved and fully accepted by a person, a creature, made in the image of God, who is loving you reflective of Christ’s love in your life. I say you don’t have to be married to experience this because some of the same qualities are present as a single, as I’ve had several older women ask about the guy in my life attributing to why I’m so happy or at peace or free lately. The love is the same, the amazing love of Christ, when you are living loved, whether its directly from God or experiencing a unique reflection of that in marriage from another person, you are different.

There is a flourishing. A growth that happens. A woman becomes more and more beautiful. More and more free. more and more fully a beautiful picture of God.

I experienced this tonight hanging out with at The Worley household for the first time since they got married. Ryan and Melissa’s relationship and their marriage is just another example of this.

It’s a phenomenon to me, that it actually works and exists. Not just a Christian marriage, because even within Christians marriages this can’t exist… but a relationship that truly exhibits and distributes the love of Christ, a marriage that reflects such deep love and commune with God that you can’t help but know that God is real, that He is alive and He is beautiful.

I feel marriage is such a picture of redemption. Of God’s grace and just another way that God is glorified. He created us, male and female, to reflect His glory and to glorify Him. Marriage is such a beautiful thing because both parts are represented. Often times, in our society or church culture, one is placed above the other… in certain areas, that are dominated by females, the world sees only one half of the true image of God. In other arenas, that are largely dominated by males, women lack a presence, and thus only one half of the image of God is expressed. This is critical and the effect can be damaging. The truth is there are certain aspects of God’s character that were uniquely bestowed on men and there are certain aspects of God’s character that were uniquely placed on women. You need both. Men and women were created unique and different, yet together have the potential to reflect God’s glory in a way that provokes one to look upon the image of God and struggle to deny He is real.

One thing Mark also talked about today was the need for us to have intergenerational relationships and for single people not just to be friends with other single people… or for married people not just to have married friends because then we run the risk of becoming “silos.” I mean it’s so true. He says this not to bash having a junior high ministry or a high school youth group, or a college group, or a singles/young adult ministry, or a ministry for married couples… but that the high school kids need to interact with the junior high kids. The college kids need to interact with the high schoolers, the singles need to be around engaged couples or married couples… we always need to be with people maybe in a season we’ve been in previously and one that could be in our future, to learn wisdom from those in the future season, and to pass down to those in a season we’ve been in previously, what we’ve learned.

I find this refreshing as I’m realizing a huge blessing in having a lot of my peers get married. I am still a vital part of their lives and our relationship has become even more valuable. A lot of times we can think our married friends won’t need us or we won’t be able to speak into their lives anymore, I mean they have a husband after all, what can we do. but I’ve found and am learning where my role is still in their lives and that single or married – you need community. Men need other men in their lives. women need other women in their lives. period. This doesn’t change when you get married. Yes, these relationships will change, yes there are things you will only share with your spouse, but I’m finding that my friendship is just as needed and vice versa.

Aside from my peers, I’m now around a lot of older women who have families. This has been a huge blessing as well, both ways, as I’m always surprised at how much they love having someone younger in their 20s around. While I’m always grateful for their presence in my life cause obviously I look up to them and they teach me so much just by what I get to witness from how they live their lives and truly live out what they believe, but it’s always startling to me that they enjoy my company and friendship as well. Some of these moms have started calling me to vent when their 2-yr.-old won’t stop throwing a fit, just as I do when I’m having some drama. It’s really cool to see that I am needed and wanted in their lives just as much as they are in mine.

These marriages also help complete a picture in my mind of what this can actually look like, 10 years, 3 kids later, to see it in real life is amazing. It makes you want to wait. It also makes me cherish my singleness because it really is a gift. It’s a gift in that for most people, singleness is not a stage we will be in the rest of our lives, but something that is time-limited and for a specific purpose. Many times singles are tempted to pine away and long for what they do not have and thus miss the gift of what God has to offer in this time. Just the freedom I have and the time I have to develop my intimacy with God and spend time with Him, the time that I see these young moms not having, I know is something that will not be always be afforded to me. I’m able to do things that I know very realistically in 15 years will not be a possibility. I’m finding that I can be a blessing in their lives, just as they are in mine.

I’ve gotten to babysit for some of them recently and am floored at what these homes really are like. I’ve been blessed to have some amazing Christian families in my life the last few years, but am especially floored to know the wives and all the ins and outs they share with me about their relationships with their husbands and then to see it in action.

"Husbands love your wives, as Christ loves the Church…"

To see this in action. To see how a father loves and adores his children. To see how a husband absolutely cherishes and delights in and upholds his wife, is how it’s supposed to be.

If I just hung out with other girls my age, who were single, I would have missed what God wanted to teach me and to show me.

We all need examples to know that true, biblical, gospel-centered marriage is real and it is possible.

And lastly, of the 30 min. I heard today, the last few things Mark was saying was how singles settle.

They get desperate and settle.
The pressure here is astounding.

Just speaking from personal experience, I have recently been shocked at how other people have a problem with my singleness in a way that I will never understand… I ran into someone who was pretty blunt about how she felt about me "still" being single, as she said with clear disgust, like she'd lost respect for me as a human being.

I realized I wasn’t offended by the inappropriate comments made, but had more questions I wished I had asked her.

Basically she greeted me with, “so what’s up with like everyone from The Rock getting married this summer? Like all of your friends are. Again. I keep seeing all of this on facebook. I mean when are you going to be the bride, Mazvita and NOT the bridesmaid…”

I kid you not.

I was shocked by her bluntness and reacted really calmly because she was obviously feeling passionate about this, so I way underreacted, well, I’m actually done with all the weddings I’m in for the year, now I’m just going to friend’s weddings, so it’s really not a lot...

“I mean, when are you going to meet someone, Mazvita? And it’s a lot of people younger than you now that are getting married. I mean. I feel like you need to move somewhere to meet someone. Columbia is not going to have a guy for you. this place is too small. you just need to move somewhere else so it can happen.”

I kept protesting. Calmly. Trying to figure out the real “why” behind what she was saying.

And I realized that the person who had a problem with my singleness was her.

Everything she was saying, wasn’t bothering me because as I told her, that’s not what my life is about. If my life was about finding a guy, getting married, having 2.2 kids and living the American dream, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing or staying where I’m staying. Me going on staff, with a campus church, and being continually in environments where everyone is staying the same age but I am getting older, was simultaneously me making a decision to trust God with bringing a relationship into my life if and when it happens, but also being okay with me choosing to be on staff here means most realistically not meeting anyone until the next place I move. I made this decision knowing full well that is part of the cost and I accepted it. When it comes down to it, that’s not what my life is about. And I am certainly not going to see my "singleness as handicap for serving God," as I’ve heard quoted… I’m not going to sit on the shelf waiting for a guy to come along, no, there’s life to be lived, there’s a kingdom to be fought for and I’m not sitting on the sidelines, I’ve been called to fight on the frontlines, and God can choose to fulfill his will for my life single or married. Neither marital state is a lesser or greater state, they are just different.

I realized that the more she saw I was perfectly content and at peace and the most alive and free I’ve ever been, the more she was annoyed by me. She expected me to be devastated.

I sat there dumbfounded, realizing there was something much deeper going on here as she was frustrated and even more so by my lack of concern.

She finally said it.

"I just don’t understand why you’re so happy."

I’m praying for more conversations with her. As she’s a girl who walked away from Christ years ago and I’m realizing her problem was probably more her own current state of affairs and how she views marriage. The problem is we're all tempted to operate in the lie.

For most people, secular or Christian, marriage is like a ticket out of social suicide.

Driscoll even pointed it out, our culture puts so much pressure for someone to be married that many singles settle. No one wants to be the 40-yr-old virgin.

He asks the question, I mean, what kind of movie was this? Was it a documentary profiling and praising someone like you’d find an MLK documentary, was it romance film?

No, it was a comedy.

This concept is how our culture views singles at a certain age: as a joke.

There is a cutoff where being single no longer is socially acceptable and unfortunately this is what most of us deeply fear. Being the butt of the joke.

This is incredibly disheartening but so real. Even at 25, I feel it. And it is utterly ridiculous and unrealistic. From this girl, who I really didn’t own a lot of her feelings towards me because I can see how deeply they were rooted in lies she believes, but was obviously looking down on my situation and marital status as a lesser state.

Really?

I was shocked at how much I didn’t agree with her, yet how much I saw how our culture feeds this idea that to be socially acceptable you should be married by 30.

More on this later, but all this to say a lot of my friend’s marriages and a lot of the older women’s marriages who are in my life, give me hope for that if this is something in God’s will for my life that the right guy is worth the wait and more than worth it.

I’ve had enough experiences with the wrong guys to know that I’d rather be alone than be with the wrong guy.

Nobody is better than the wrong body, as my pastor always tells me. This is so true. And just seeing the intricacies of what is really involved in a covenant relationship, I’m like this isn’t something you can mess around with. This person has got to be God’s best for you and you have got to be completely sold out to the Lord and to this person in a way that you are willing to die for them. Daily.

As Driscoll says…

“Marriage is about being servants...

A terrible marriage is someone who is selfish, with someone who is selfish.

Here’s an abusive relationship: someone who is selfish, with someone who is a servant. This person (servant) always gives. This one (selfish) always takes. That’s abusive.

Here’s a beautiful Christian marriage:

A servant and a servant.

BOTH are always asking, what can I do for you? How can I help? What do you need from me?”

Forever is a long time. And it will be worth the wait. I’m so grateful that by the Lord’s grace He has redeemed and restored my view of men, and continues to do so, and given me hope for what He intended marriage to be and the purposes it serves for the larger scheme of things, for the advancement of His kingdom.

To you be all the praise and the glory forever.
Amen.

- photo courtesy of Joe Devine Photography of my dear friends Ryan and Melissa Worley, married May 9, 2009