I’m getting married in three weeks. Twenty-one days. It’s at the point now where my mom and I talk daily and I scratch something off my list just to add something else. We had our final pre-marital session last Saturday and I realized today that I only have two more paychecks coming. (Gah.)
Everyone said the engagement would go fast; they always say this, to every bride, and I realize now that they’re always right.
I’m not sure if I’m in denial or if I’m too wrapped up in wedding details to notice, but it doesn’t feel like I only have mere days left living in Atlanta. I love this city so much. It’s more than the job I’m good at or the church where I feel at home. It’s more than the friends. It’s the city herself. I love the way the Midtown skyline looms over Piedmont Park and the past two weeks when I’ve been in the park at 6 a.m. for boot camp, the glowing buildings sometimes take my breath away. I love the blooming trees and the soul food and how there’s an awesome Mexican restaurant on every corner and a nail salon in every strip mall. I love that I can fly direct to anywhere in the world and drive to the ocean in less than five hours. I love the accents and the fact that I know how to get anywhere from anywhere, usually taking back roads.
God led me here so that I would find Him again.
But I feel no regret leaving. I am not torn about it and I don’t wish to stay. I knew the day he told me that he was moving that I would be moving too. I knew. I chose and I choose gladly.
“But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” Ruth 1:16-17

Sometimes I am so excited to marry him that I can barely contain it. Every day it seems my love for him grows – as I learn more about him; as I learn more about myself. Sometimes I wonder who I was outside the scope of him. Surely I was already complete – of course I was – complete in the fullness as a child of God, yet still, unfinished somehow. One day I looked up and literally, there he was. Everything just fell into place and it all feels so seamless. I feel lucky, but I know that it is not luck. There is no luck. There are choices. There is will. And there is blessing. Indescribable, unearned blessing.
But at the same time I can’t stop framing it as how lucky I am. What if I’d given up? What if I had given in? What if I had settled? The ring on my finger regularly catches my eye and though I am getting used to – getting used to navigating around it and spinning it inside my palm when I pump gas or when I’m navigating an unknown city – I still can’t believe that I am now one of Them. Allison always used to tell me that life wasn’t that different on the other side, except that you happen to be married. Not to say that things don’t change or that there aren’t new challenges – I think her point always was the same as that old cliché – wherever you go, there you are.
Shortly after Melissa’s wedding she read me a quote from a book she was reading that said something like, if you’re looking to do the work of Jesus in the world, stay single. If you want to learn to be more like Jesus? Get married.
Marriage is a constant battle between submitting to the Word and to this imperfect husband and your own self-centered, prideful, stubborn self. Both Colleen and Melissa have told me since their respective weddings that they feel closer to God now that they‘re someone‘s wife than they ever did in their previous lives. What is it about marriage that shows us more of who God is? That teaches us more of who Jesus is? Is it the constant daily dying to yourself? Killing your worldliness and pride – the pride that may have kept us single for so long?
In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, he writes that marriage is a “profound mystery” because it tells us something about the mystery of God and the relationship between Christ and the church. (I’ve heard many brilliant pastors preach awesome sermons on Ephesians 5. Dr. John Piper has several on desiring god.org and you can download Voddie Bacchum and Louie Giglio’s messages on marriage at 722.org and northpoint.org.)
In a 7:22 series from several years ago – Boy Meets Girl – Louie Giglio defines commitment as a “desire to love that goes beyond circumstances.” Commitment and love aren’t things that just “happen” to us. There is no cupid. There is no arrow. There is the moment when you make a choice – this is the person, this is the relationship, this is the life that I am going to choose – till death do us part.
Louie goes on to say that commitment is two people submitting to God and to each other with no intention – zero intention – of turning back; it’s believing that no matter what the world throws our way (and there will be trouble – even Jesus said that we will have trouble in this world) that God is enough and we will press forward.
God created marriage and he loves marriage. Scripture says that whatever God has joined together, let no man separate. As far as He is concerned, divorce is a myth. You can separate your homes, but you can never undo what God has unified into one. It’s a mystery! Why does God bind us as one flesh on Earth? I don’t know, but it is a balm to know that God cares about my marriage; He cares about all marriage. But of course He cares about it – He designed it! In the perfect, sinless Garden, when everything was as He created, He saw that it was “not good” for Adam to be alone, so He created Eve to be Adam’s helpmate and declared that it then was “good.”
From the very beginning of our relationship – and it seems like now that we began discussing marriage on our first date, but surely we didn’t – but from the beginning we both said that divorce is not an option. It is off the table. I chose. He chose. I’m in. He’s in. But it is a battle we will have to fight daily – divorce is like an undertow in our culture, waiting to drown us. Just this week I have learned of three new marriages in the process of falling apart – one of them nasty, infiltrated with lawyers and custody battles; another quietly disintegrated, two spouses who’ve retreated to separate rooms, unsure of how to fix things now that they are no longer children in their home to hold them together.
But when I think of our marriage as a picture of Christ‘s love for the world, I can‘t imagine ever being separated. After all, who can separate what God has joined? Christ will never divorce me; He will never leave me; He will never forsake me. So until death parts us, I am in.
And luckily for us, God is most definitely in – without Him, we’d be doomed. I am marrying someone who is inadequate and imperfect – and so is he! But God is sufficient and He has promised to provide and be with us. Because of what He has done, I can say “I do!”

As you may have gathered from my last entry, I am engaged. We are engaged. And so begins the much written about, much discussed, much hyped process of planning a wedding.
It all still feels surreal. The engagement. This very shiny, sparkley thing on my finger that I’ve had to learn to navigate around. (Note: Do not put anything in left jeans pocket.) Having to catch myself and remember that they are talking to me when people ask how the plans are coming. I am sure that this is something that all brides encounter – the very weirdness of being a bride – but it is strange when you’re the one encountering it, nonetheless.
Because A. and I both tend to border more on the Type A side of the Type A/Type B personality line, plans have been falling into place quickly and without the drama or hair pulling sitcoms would have you believe goes into weddings. We knew it probably wouldn’t be in Atlanta and since we both love the ocean, choosing Florida was easy. And since I have been vacationing on the Gulf Coast for almost a decade, deciding where in Florida was without much discussion too. And when I saw the venue, I didn’t even want to waste my time looking anywhere else. I knew I’d found it.
The most difficult thing in this entire process so far has been learning to let go of my single identity. And I don’t mean in a I’ll-miss-dating (I won’t) or I’ll-miss-the-freedom kind of way. It’s more that I have had to remember and realize that there are many roads and facets of my former life that are now closed to me. When my friends and small group were discussing heading down to the church’s Singles Labor Day Retreat, I thought, “Oh – I guess I won’t ever go to that again.” And when the bulletin at church promotes a singles’ gathering, I realize that my friends will send e-mails that won’t include me.
One of my most fervent prayers is to be a Godly wife and to have a Godly marriage. But let no one be mistaken: it is hard. Being a submissive wife isn’t something that you see modeled in secular culture – not on television or in any movies or even in commercials. Most people I know have secular marriages, so it’s not even something I see played out in my daily life. And the majority of my Christian friends are single, so that places me, and us, in totally unknown territory. Luckily for us (and for everyone) the only model we’ll really need is the one that Jesus displayed when he submitted himself to the will of His father and died on the cross. I would never be aghast at the idea of submitting to Christ, so why would I hesitate to submit to my spouse? (Ephesians 5:21 – “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”)
Engagement is a journey in and of itself and thus far it hasn’t been without its pot holes and road blocks. It’s funny – there are hundreds of books and shows on Oxygen and the Style network (and E! and VH1 and TLC and…) that prominently feature wedding planning (ice bars! monogrammed aisle runners! candy buffets!) But when it comes to planning for marriage the well is pretty dry.
So I try to not get too wrapped up in what kind of musicians we’ll have for the ceremony (guitarists? flautists? violinists? all three?!), and instead I try to get wrapped up in him. And in Him.