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In an attempt to name this post appropriately, I found myself on Google quest, searching through dictionaries, posts and blogs. When the dictionaries failed me, I turned to good old trusted Wikipedia. 

Originally this post was titled “content” but then Wikipedia defined bliss as: “Bliss is an emotional state that is characterized by perfect happiness (feelings of enjoyment, pleasure, and satisfaction,” I couldn’t help overlook the words “perfect happiness.” This led me to attempting to figure out what exactly “perfect happiness” means.

This led me on another Google search, to find out what the 1037345836430480 Google users around the world believe perfect happiness is. 

Let’s just say I found answers from one extreme side of the spectrum to the other. Infamous Yahoo! Questions had a user who posted the question “How to acquire perfect happiness?” and which the best answer chosen by the voters was “drugs or brain damage…. Happiness is a mish-mash of emotions, and it is loosely defined by its symptoms.” 

Google provided me with 41 million (to be exact) pages of results and skimming some of the pages, words such as nature, family, good book, house stood out, there were also debates of “god exists” and “no he doesn’t.” 

Even the Wall Street Journal had an opinion on the matter and  put a monetary value in the mix and reported that “the perfect salary for happiness is $75,000.”

Now I don’t know how happiness can be found through money or books or trees but I do know that no matter who you are, where you live and what you do, all you want at the end of the happy is to be happy and you want to be the real kind of happy. 

Perfectly Happy. 

Always Happy. 

Am I right....? 

All my singles ladies (and gentlemen)

My adorable grandparents, Joseph & Maria 
(photo courtesy of Vitaly M Photography)

“Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won't matter. You will be able to move   out into the world in strength.”

                                                              -Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage
  There are two things in life that scare me: liberals and never getting married. The latter is worse, of course. I am NOT the type of girl with binders of wedding ideas and florists on speed dial. But, I do have a wedding Pinterest board, sue me, so does every girl capable of accessing the world wide web. In my life I have been blessed to be surrounded by living examples of what exactly a marriage is supposed to look like. My grandparents, parents, aunts and uncle have marriages that people should be documenting. They are imperfectly perfect. I know that they are not perfect because every individual is inherently flawed, but other then that, they rarely fall short of perfection. These people have demonstrated what grace, forgiveness, compromise and ultimately love look like. After years of observations, only one explanation stands: these were matches made in heaven. Literally.
     I am not naive to believe that there is absolutely only one perfect person out there for you. Rather, I have learned that the most critical component of marriage is for the union to be perfect in God's eyes. The man and woman preparing for holy matrimony must indefinitely know most and foremost their relationship with God. They must feel complete and whole through only Christ. Marriage is not about finding someone who completes you. This is arguably the biggest intangible threat to the institution of marriage today. People search for someone who completes them because they themselves feel incomplete. They enter marriage thinking that this person can fill all the voids and gaps they themselves have not been able to complete. When the other person fails to do so, marriages dissolve, precisely what we are seeing happen in society today. Your husband or wife will help you change, evolve and grow as a person, as they absolutely should, but you cannot expect them to complete you wholly. Some of those voids are too big for any human being, only God is big enough to fill those.