"I Do": Saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

recently i've come across a lot of writing about the issue of marriage and love. and it seems to all boil down to commitment and truthfulness. i still can't wrap my head around the idea of living life without finding real love or why someone would choose to trade it for something else. (and when i say love, generally, i mean God's love.) because i believe that one can never fully experience what (romantic) love is until they experience God's. afterall, not only does it start with Him, but He is love. the thought of falling in and out of love for the rest of life and learning from each heartache just doesn't sit right with me. what's wrong with spending the rest of your life with someone who loves you and whom you love? God teaches through anything and everything. why, for the sake of learning through these experiences, do people bound themselves from experience true love? just because you can be single and you can choose doesn't mean you have to keep choosing. if you have the best already, why be greedy and look for something better which doesn't exist?

i have learnt that until you can have an intimate relationship with God, you are not fully capable of having one with anyone else. by no means am i saying that i have it all figured out. i'm still far from it and it's highly unlikely that i will get there. but it's about realizing who God really is and why He's worth living for. Ephesians 2:4-5 tells us that because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. so if we're not "living with Christ", then we're really not "living" at all. so if we can't even live with someone who loves us that much, how do we expect to love anyone else? where else are you going to find someone who is more loving, patient, kind, and accepting?

it makes me sad that people see marriage only as an issue of legality. people are not just afraid of commitment, but they are also lost. they yearn for love and blindly search for it without even knowing what it really is. and so, they spend there whole life falling in and out of "love" thinking that's the only way to do it properly. don't get me wrong. i don't hate those who think like this nor do i think i'm any better. we all need love. i have no doubt about it. i just wish everyone could experience God's love, real love. no wonder God wants everyone to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3-4). because His love is part of that truth. but anyhow, i know i'm generalizing a bit here. and it doesn't do justice to all the people who possess so much beauty and uniqueness. but i bet if you look deep enough into each of their hearts, you'll find that we're all a lot more similar than we'd like to believe.

i highly recommend this blog. not only because i loved the movie Closer (which i've blogged about long time ago) but it really digs down to something so deep that no one is willing to admit to - fear. how many times have we hid something from someone because we think it'll "hurt" them? ... or ourselves? let me quote this amazing fellow blogger in which i think she really hit home with this thought:

"It occurs to me, that there are two kinds of people out there. There are those who believe that love happens to you—like you’ve walked onto train tracks, so you should expect to get hit. Then there are those who believe that love is a choice. That you decide whether or not to love. In the film, Closer, Alice says something like, “Oh, as if you had no choice? There's a moment, there's always a moment, ‘I can do this, I can give into this, or I can resist it,’ and I don't know when your moment was, but I bet you there was one.” And all at once, I think that line is brilliant—and total crap toast. You don’t choose who you fall for, or who you don’t fall for. Love’s not a light switch. Now , what you do control is what you do about your love."

at the very beginning of our pre-marrital sessions, we were asked if we think that there is anyone else that we could be happily married to? in other words, it's like the typical, "do you think God only has one person picked out for us, whom we are meant to be with?" i thought for a moment and then uttered a very confident "no, i can't see myself being happily married to anyone else". but now my answer would be, "yes, i think there are other people out there whom i could possibly have a happy marriage with. but i have decided that God wants me to be with Cyrus, and i have made the decision to commit myself to spending the rest of my life with him." i see now that this whole process have helped me to look at marriage in a realistic view. it's not going to be the "happily ever" that we all dream of. having that mindset will only make it harder to deal with the conflicts that do come up.

a friend of mine once said that he believes "every fight, every confrontation can be avoided or solved through good communication and patience". while i think that it's true, i also think that most of us are too human to be good patient communicators all the time. thus we'll all have conflicts. even those "happy/healthy couples". i think the most important part is to remember why we made that commitment to marriage and that it is our responsiblity to both ourselves and to God that we try even when we're failing. our counsellor also mentioned that there are godly Christian couples that end up in divorce too and it could happen to anyone. but i believe that if both people are willing to work it through, no matter how ugly things get, that with the grace of God, we can prevail and save the marriage. as harsh as it may sound, divorce is really just an easy way out.. another way of saying "i don't care and i'm too tired to try".

with that said, as afraid as i am of being a hypocrite someday, i pray that God will continuly be the center of our marriage. and if we're lucky, that word may never even cross our minds for the rest of our life together. may we truly be united as one, so that separation is not even possible. it wouldn't even make sense. i think i've finally found the happy medium betweenthe optimist and the realist.

i've learnt that it's okay to be scared in life.
another reminder of why we need God.
another way to experience His love and greatness :)