When you hit your 20s, proposals, wedding pictures, and pregnancy announcements start popping up regularly on your social media feeds. Save the Dates begin to show up in the mail and the word “congratulations” becomes a much more regular part of your vocabulary.
I am 20, so this is only just beginning for me.
Last week, one of my favorite high school buddies proposed to his girlfriend. Him and I used to ride our bikes all over the island we lived on in Malaysia and explore the old abandoned malls and hike up to the lighthouse on the back of the island and just generally wreak havoc, and when I heard about it all I could think was finally! Him and his fiance have been dating for years and I can see how totally crazy about each other they are.
I have other friends who are younger but who have the same crazy, exciting, spontaneous relationship. Of course, that is not the deciding factor to whether getting married young is the right idea, but if your relationship as a dating couple isn’t crazy and spontaneous your marriage definitely won’t be either, and one of my favorite things about having married at 18 is how fun my relationship with my husband has always been. A few have talked to Richard and I in the past because we have experiences with being married young that most people nowadays don’t, and their questions have inspired this blog post because they are so valid to those contemplating marriage young. The culture of this world is completely counter-culture to marriage the way God designed it to be and it takes a lot of wisdom to figure it all out (which we certainly haven’t done.)
My husband and I have been “together” since we were 12 and officially dating since we were 16. At 16 we started crossing lines we shouldn’t have crossed and broke up for over a year before realizing how much we still wanted to get married, so when my husband (then boyfriend) asked my dad for my hand and we announced our engagement, I think our family breathed a collective sigh of relief that we were finally getting married. Everyone knew it was coming and surprisingly, I didn’t hear any opposition or questioning at all. I’m sure it happened, but as far as we heard our family was totally supportive. Of course not all families are like this, but thankfully our family supported us not “testing out the waters” first before we jumped into marriage.
We got married for a few reasons, some sweet and romantic and some simply practical.
1. We knew without a doubt that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, so why wait? We didn’t want to establish our lives separately and put away tens of thousands in savings and buy our own houses and go through school and have stable jobs first, we wanted to build our lives together.
2. As we became closer and closer, there were physical and emotional lines that we naturally also started getting closer to crossing. God commands us to be as pure as possible, not to go as close to the line as possible without actually crossing it. This isn’t a valid reason to get married on it’s own, but once you know you have found the person you want to marry it’s a valid reason for why you shouldn’t wait forever. People change their minds and marriage is definitely not something to rush into, but it’s not something to draw out for ages either.
3. We prayed about it and talked to godly people about it and they encouraged us to get married + we felt God giving us the go. Praying was probably the hardest part of all because our hearts are so deceptive and we can “hear” anything we want from God if we want it bad enough, hence why wisdom from godly people is invaluable.
4. Practically, it made no sense for us to pay two separate sets of bills and live two separate lives. When he proposed, we were living on different continents so moving me back to the US took enough resources by itself. Finance might not be an exciting part of marriage, but it’s a real one. My husband and I have learned that managing our finances has been one of the biggest challenges in our marriage and while obviously it doesn’t make or break the deal, it’s a legitimate consideration. Again, it’s not a valid reason to choose to marry a person, but it a valid consideration for choosing when to marry a person.
5. We didn’t just want to be together in the good parts of life, we wanted to be together in all parts of life.
The biggest gift that has come out of marrying young has been what God has taught me about myself through marriage. Your spouse is the clearest mirror you will ever have and through my husband, I have been made aware of countless character issues I didn’t even know I had. A spouse will know how to push your buttons for sure because you learn those things about people when you are one with them, but the things that person will bring out of you were already inside of you.
She won’t put those character faults there; she’ll simply expose them.
Marriage really is a mirror and as my flaws are exposed, God is also working on them. God has shown me good things through my husband too–passions and desires I didn’t know I had, dreams and goals that I developed as our life together grew–but really, most of what this “mirror” as shown me are parts of my character that I am not proud of, and I am thankful those problems are being exposed because my goal is to become more and more like Jesus everyday.
Another gift that came when we married young is that suddenly we ran in different circles. At first, it was a huge challenge because all of our friends were in a completely different stage of life, but we started spending time with older married couples and the seasoned husbands and wives in our church took us under their wings and spoke life into us. The friendships we had as single people might have been valuable and God-glorifying, but the older married couples who spoke into our lives taught us invaluable lessons.
Of course there are countless blessings that come from marrying young, but one of my favorites is how we can adventure together. We don’t have to get two rooms, we don’t need separate spaces, we can go out to Denny’s in the middle of the night to eat chocolate lava cake if we want because first, carpooling, and second we don’t have boundaries to worry about crossing. Adventuring is always exciting, but adventuring with my husband brings far more joy than adventuring with my boyfriend ever did.
I wanted to marry my husband because I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving him and serving him–that’s ultimately what it boiled down to. When you marry because you want to love and serve your wife they way God loves you and her, I don’t think it matters what age you are, that’s a marriage that will glorify God. It’s so different from what the world expects and when people see that difference they see Christ’s work in you.
Marriage at any age is hard, whether you’re 18 or 48. Selfish human + selfish human = marital challenges.
To my very young friends contemplating marriage:
Don’t just “go for it.” Go for that extra mile on your run, go for Chinese food when you don’t feel like cooking, go for the extra scoop of ice cream when you’re on that date, but don’t “go for” marriage. Marriage is not something you “go for,” it’s something you prayerfully consider and talk to older, wiser people about and then consider every possible angle because once you’re in, you’re in forever. There are literally no second chances.
Make sure she’s the one. Be 100% certain, with every fiber in your being, that he is the one you want to love and serve for the rest of your life. You don’t have to be sure it’s the right time amd you don’t have to be sure you’re ready–most people will never be sure of those things.
Be sure that they’re the one and God will lead you with the timing from there.
Then go for it.
Go for it with everything you have, every single day for the rest of your life. Go for it when you’re sick, exhausted, angry beyond belief, so in love you can’t think, struggling with apathy, or have never felt closer. Go for it on the days he’s telling you it’s over or she’s saying she never should have married you. Go for it when you can’t keep your eyes open because your baby kept you up all night screaming and go for it when it’s two in the afternoon and you have fifteen minutes before the kids get home from school. Go for it with every breath you have as long as you have breath. And never stop going for it until you go home to be with Jesus.