I can't believe that it is already time to go home! I'm happy to be done with school, but a bit sad to leave--esp the people that I was just starting to really get to know. =( I know I will be back before I know it, but still, it will be a little sad to leave. I am excited to be going home though! I am still waiting on info about jobs. I wonder where I will work? I am also going to be taking a biology class. I don't even get a week off! It starts my first week home!!! But it will be over after only a month =) I am looking forward to this summer.
So. I wanted to give an explanation about some things for those that wish to know. Specifically why Nick and I are waiting to get married until after we graduate. Both sides of my family pretty strongly value education. I always knew that it was important and I also feel strongly about it. I had planned to wait until I graduated to get married even before I met Nick, and I knew that my family especially my great grandmother wanted me to, but I never really knew the reason. I thought it was just because it would be harder to go to school when I was married, what if I accidentally had a kid....I might drop out of school and not go back because I didn't feel like I could. Some logical reason like that. Well, that is all true, but my mom recently explained why it is so important specifically to my great grandma that I wait. When she (my great grandma) was in high school she got married. Now before you are like, "OMeGee! That is so young!" Please remember that this would have been in the late 1920s-early30s. It wasn't so weird then. So, she got married. She had planned to go back and finish high school but her husband didn't want her to. Although she loved school and was very sad, she didn't go back because she was trying to be a good and obedient wife. Today if you ask her about it, she will tell you that she wishes she had fought back and said "I am going back to school." Let me emphasize how much she loved school. My mom and her siblings lived with and were raised mostly by my great grandma. She would often stay up late helping them with their studies; when the kids would go to bed, she would stay up and read their textbooks. When they came out with the "new math," she learned right along with my mom and her siblings. She is a very smart and sharp lady. She is almost 100 years old and still lives at home by herself. She is a goldmine of information and I don't know what I will do when she is gone. She helped run a business with her husband (I think during the depression) and could have gotten multiple PhDs at this point if she so desired, but she didn't because she didn't finish high school She is very smart (and witty too). she has put her daughter (my grandma) through college, my mom and her siblings, and now is helping me and my cousins to get through school.
If I was to go get married now, although I know she would be happy for me, she and much of my family would think I was making a not so smart decision. And I agree. Although some people get married right out of high school and do just fine, I don't think I could. I like to think that I have always been mature for my age, but I have watched myself mature more and more over the last two years of college. I am 20 years old, but I still have a long way to go before I am mature enough to be married and start a family. I want to be able to concentrate on my education while I am in school and do well and then concentrate on being married and my family when I get married. I don't want to be paying for school and a million other expenses and then have to pay for a house and a kid if one comes around (Nick and I don't want to have kids until after we have been married for at least 2 years, but then, things happen and it might not go that way). Too much stress for my little head (head, not brain!), bank account, and relationship with Nick.
I am perfectly aware that there are some people that don't think Nick and I will be able to make it physically and go get married so we can have sex. Seriously? Do you think we are that shallow? Yeah, it is hard, but I will have you all know that the more that people think I can't something the more stubborn I become. I know people sometimes pull out where Paul talks about marriage in 1 Cor 7 and how if you are "not practicing self-control" and get married "for it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion." Well first, if you read it in context, and other passages along with it, you will note that he is referring to those going into ministry (in some cases, some passages just refer to men and women as far as I can tell). It is a holy alternative if you are able to fully commit yourself to God in that way, but if you can't, get married. Please remember that marriages at that time were most often arranged, but that was in their time and their culture, not ours. DON'T MIX THEM!!! Next, sex is not a legitimate reason to get married. Period. In the past you got married so you could have kids, not just because you loved someone. Their world was very different than ours is. If you are getting married purely so you can "legally' have sex, you are setting yourself up for disaster. Marriage is meant as a life long commitment and if you decide you don't like the person for whatever reason (like you didn't bother to actually get to each other inside and out before getting married) and go to get a divorce, then you are going against what Paul just told us. Let's go back to I Cor 7:10 "Now, for those who are married I have a command, not just a suggestion. And it is not a command from me, for this is what the Lord himself has said: A wife must not leave her husband. But if she is separated from him, let her remain single or else go back to him. And the husband must not divorce his wife." So you are stuck with them or without them and ether way have screwed up your emotions and relationship and everything else.
If you get married because you are just dying to have sex, do you really think that is good for your relationship? If you have that much trouble, then chances are you are too physically in the first place and need to back off from each other a bit. Not go and rush into a lifelong (maybe) commitment. That is where I stand. If you have questions or comments feel free to ask, but I stand on my decision out of respect for my family and what I believe that scripture teaches. I just wanted to clear things up. Please don't take Nick or myself as hormone-crazed teenagers that have no self control. It is kind of offensive. Thank you! =)
