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. 

Life Lessons With Lydia (and a Nov/Dec update)

The past few weeks have been exhausting, exhilarating, and educational:exhausting because you run on minimal sleep, exhilarating because life always throws a curveball or three and educational because well, you never stop learning. I have not written in a few weeks but in the meantime, I have been thinking and reflection about what I want to write. There is so much I have experienced and wrestled with the past few months but along the way I have discovered life lessons to abide by and things that naturally, I also struggle with. Ignore my cheesy title, I promise you will find these life lessons very applicable.

Quote of the Day 10/11/11

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
[C.S. Lewis]