Keith and I celebrated 10 years of marriage on Friday!! It was a great day and we had a wonderful day as a family and then a much needed date night thanks to some wonderful friends who kept the kids! It got me to thinking about marriage and what it means to us as a society.
I love everything about Meadowview, but one of my favorite things we do is between 1st service and class we have a Sunday school opening where we come together as a congregation in the auditorium and sing a song, do the pledge of allegiance and then we celebrate the birthdays and anniversaries of members for the next week! This morning we had 2 couples go up and between them they had 94 years of marriage!!! Wow! I love talking to older couples and hearing how many years they have been married. Why do so many in my generation not make it past the dreaded "7 year itch"? What are we not teaching my generation, my daughter's generation and the generations after that causes us not to be able to make it?
I think the design of marriage is such an incredible design. God knew what He was doing. Genesis 2:18 The Lord God said, "it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." God knew we wouldn't be perfect. He knew we would have wants and desires that we couldn't fulfill on our own. He loves us so much He provided a way to do that. After looking at all the creatures God had created He steps back and realizes that none were the right fit for Adam. So God put Adam to sleep and took one of his ribs. From his rib it says God brought her to Adam and goes on to say Genesis 2:24 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh." He specifically designed women for men. I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty cool that I was designed specifically for my husband!
So what can I teach my daughter and the girls in my youth group to hopefully prepare them for their journey when they so choose to find the man God has picked out for her?

1. The first thing I can think of is to be a God fearing woman and look for a God fearing spiritual leader. My husband is definitely the spiritual leader in my house and that doesn't offend me in the slightest. Does that mean I let him walk all over me and treat me like I am less than him? No. It means that we discuss (and sometimes argue:) things and he knows my opinion, but in the end God made Keith the head of our household and he is the final say. Is that always easy? Absolutely not. If you were to ask him he would say I think I am right most of the time, but when I take that role of trying to be the head I am going against God and how He designed us. Ephesians 5:22 "Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." There's that word that our generation has taken out of the dictionary and thrown in the garbage. Submit. I don't understand why that word scares so many people. It's almost that if you submit you are making yourself lower than that you are submitting to. And as women in this generation we are told not to let anyone be above us. Submitting is a sign of love and respect. It is not a bad thing. We are called to submit to God. To allow him to be the head of our life and our souls and just like we are called to love and respect God, we are called to love and respect our husband.

2. The second thing I would tell her is to marry a God loving man. When you marry a God loving man you are marrying a wife loving man. Does this mean he will continue to send you roses once a week or remember every birthday or anniversary or never say anything mean to you? No. Sorry girls, but most men are after the chase. They put their best foot forward when they are dating you to catch you and after you get married they've got you! Its in most men's nature! Keith was never a big romantic,but Keith has always been loving. Even when we are fighting and mad at each other. He loves me. I know this because over the last 10 years we have gone through things that most people would throw up their hands and walk away. I know because when I make a mistake he forgives me. I know because when he looks at me I see it in his eyes. My husband loves the Lord and in return the Lord puts the love he needs in his heart for me. A God loving man will not hit you continuously and tell you it's your fault. A God loving man will not seek other women over and over to fulfill the needs he should be getting fulfilled at home. A God loving man will not continuously neglect his family and put his needs before their own leaving them to fend for themselves. A God loving man will not rape his wife or make her do things she doesn't want to do for his own pleasure. A God loving man will respect his wife and do what's best for her and in return make her want to do the same for him. Does that mean that God loving men won't make mistakes? No. Notice I used the word "continuously or over and over." A God loving man may make a mistake, but he will make it better by changing to do God's will.

3. The third thing I will tell her is to make sure her relationship with God is what it should be before she has a relationship with a man. When I got to Magnolia Bible College I had no intentions of finding a husband. I had been in a long relationship with a guy until a couple months after I got there and we broke up.  My second semester there I started dating someone at the Bible College and he was a great guy (our joke was he was a much better friend than boyfriend). He was and still is a great friend to Keith and I (he was even a groomsman in our wedding!), and after we dated for several months and broke up I found myself craving a close relationship with God partly because that guy inspired me in his relationship with God. I had always been so focused on my relationships with boys that I never stopped to examine my most important relationship. I decided that I was going to focus on school and on my relationship with God and really work towards becoming a fulltime missionary. I came to a very hard reality that God may never want me to get married. That he may be sending me out into the mission field and he would be my partner. After several months of praying about that I finally became happy with that thought. I would be fulfilled if God's plan for me was to be single. 3 weeks later Keith asked me out for the first time. He's still pretty bitter about this story, but when he asked me out I told him no. In my mind I couldn't get distracted from the path I felt God was leading me and if I started dating him I felt like I would be. From the time he asked me out, through the summer that I spent in Lithuania I found myself thinking about Keith. I prayed for God to take him out of my mind and let me focus. And the funny thing was I was still focused. That was one of the best and most productive summers I had had in Lithuania, but I found the thought of Keith grew stronger and more often. It wasn't till I got home I realized that maybe God was allowing me to think about Keith because maybe God was giving me Keith. It wasn't until I had the kind of relationship with God that I needed that God gave me something that I had always wanted. My love.

Any marriage that doesn't have God at the foundation will never be the kind of marriage that God designed. God wants to be a part of the process of finding a husband and then he wants to be a part of the process of your life with your husband. These days marriage mentality is whoever you happen to like at the time can become your husband, but when times get tough you throw your hands in the air and say forget it. When we teach our daughters and young women the kind of men to look for (and they are out there) we are setting them up for success. When we allow the world to teach our children about marriage we are setting them up for failure. Take time to make sure you are teaching the young girls and maybe even some older girls the kind of qualities and standards they should have in a husband!