The Engaged Girl's Guide to Getting Married

Let's start this here; after over a year of wedding planning, I still know nothing about getting married.

Sure, I know when you're supposed to send invitations out and the difference between a normal and a French bustle and why fondant icing is more expensive than buttercream but, this actual thing that I'm about to enter into, I still feel woefully unprepared, but I am also full of questions, like, how do you know that yours will last? And how do you focus more on the marriage than the wedding? Yes, we've gone through premarital counseling and read books about marriage and Christian relationships and I've sat down with Ty about one day becoming a first lady (a blog post for another day)...but confronting what marriage actually is and why God called us into it looks nothing like the articles I read on, Wedding Wire.

My fiancé and I have been dating for five years and it has been a journey! For a year and a half, I traveled consistently for a special position in my job. At the tail end of that position, he moved from Brooklyn to Florida. For anyone who's ever been in a long-distance relationship, you know that it requires WORK. It requires a sort of intentionality I was unaccustomed to bringing into relationships. Fights can't be solved by hugging, kissing it out or a super special date night — you need forgiveness and understanding of a special sort.

When we got engaged last year, I was so excited that it would mean the beginning of the end of this fairly rocky period in our relationship. We would finally be married and would live together! But that hasn't quite materialized. As I type this, we don't know when we'll be moving in together after we get married, what exactly his job will be, or what mine will look like. So aside from all the details of planning a long-distance wedding, there's this whole question of what our marriage will look like. That freaks me out sometimes. I get bogged down by the things I don't know. Will I ever get my brick house with the porch back home in Atlanta? Will my next job be exactly what I want it to be? What will happen with the kids when I travel? 

But that changed the day when my fiancé and I were looking at examples of marriage in the Bible. We all know of the stories of Abraham & Sarah, Moses & Zipporah, Priscilla & Aquila — but we became drawn to one particular man: Peter.

"After he left the synagogue, he entered Simon’s house. Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. So he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up immediately and began to serve them." Luke 4:38-40

It struck me that I had never thought about Peter being married; he to me was a disciple, an apostle, a builder of churches and grower of the faith. But he was married! I wondered what his relationship with his wife looked like and how she felt about Peter's line of work. I couldn't fathom being married to a man that was never home. What about date nights and Instagrammable vacations?!

The next morning a devotional of mine on millennial marriage urged us to look at the lies we believe about marriage. In a flash, I heard God so clearly. I realized that so many of the ideals about marriage I cherished were nowhere in the Bible. God didn't promise us a house with a picket fence or, for us both to live out our career dreams...what He instead called us into is love, respect, and yes, sacrifice.

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her." (Ephesians 5:25)

"Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church." (Ephesians 5:22-23)

In pointing this out, God reminded me that marriage, like all things for Christians, look different for us than the rest of the world. I was too focused on what I could not see and not focused enough on what God is trying to build. Our marriages are to bring light, to show people who may have never encountered Jesus what love looks like. Sometimes that love is messy. Sometimes it endures hurt. All the time, it is forgiving.

So now, a month out from my wedding, I still don't know all that much about planning. There are moments that I still freak out and change my mind about floral arrangements, but I realize this is an exercise in faith. Do I trust God as much as I say I do? Not with the banalities of my day, but do I trust him with my very life? Luke 12 tells us not to worry about what we'll eat, drink, or wear (A scripture that popped up in my mind as I went to my sixth website looking for a bridal shower dress). It tells us to seek first His kingdom, to evaluate how we are serving him, and to trust that God will handle it all. His handling may not fit into our world-inspired vision of what our life's dreams hold, but it will be God-inspired and so much better than anything we could dream of for ourselves.

It's a lesson I'll probably be learning for the rest of my life.