Let me start this off explaining that I am not some anti-marriage psychotic person who wants to break your heart and convince you that God’s plan for you is to stay single forever and be totally content in that.
First off, God is not cruel and just because you desire to be married and aren’t does not in any way mean that God will not give you that and instead he will say “HA! Silly daughter (or son), you thought you were going to get married but I want you to suffer forever and ever longing for what I can only give you but you don’t know how to find in me.” That is not how our Lord works. Our Lord is a sweet, good father who desires to please his children so long that it does not harm them or endanger their precious souls. Second, I am not writing from a place of perfection where I just magically woke up one day to realize that the emphasis we put on a proposal and perfect engagement ring that accentuates our left ring finger so wonderfully that it is as if we could never live without it again is actually a lie that Satan has planted in the hearts of every pitiful Pinterest loving girl. That is not at all true.
When I say that the engagement ring and proposal mean little, it is a comparative statement that I have slowly been learning for months now. They mean little compared to what true commitment means. They mean little compared to preparing your heart for a marriage instead of a one day event. They mean little compared to learning to value God’s promise to you as more than any promise your prince charming will ever make. They mean little in the grand thing that God has created and called companionship in the form of marriage where you make vows to your best friend to be their lifelong ministry partner and biggest encourager to walk in who God created and redeemed them to be.
By this point in the article, you’re probably wondering how in the world I came to learn this because you haven’t read the book in the bible that discusses proposals and engagement rocks...I mean rings. There is something about a relationship that honors the Lord or at least places him in the forefront that really shows you just how ugly your heart is and how much you need Christ’s grace and provision every day. For me, one of those moments that I looked in the mirror and saw just how wretched my heart was is as tears were streaming down my face because I just wanted to be engaged. I had been planning a wedding since June with the man that I plan to marry this upcoming December and yet for financial reasons among so many others, we still weren’t engaged. Due to the date being in December, we had decided to start planning and I had even bought my dress, picked out bridesmaid dresses and reserved the church for the wedding. Heck, the premarital counseling sessions were already on the calendar, but there still wasn’t a ring. And you would think I would be happy, after all I was planning the wedding that would make me the man I love’s wife, and his lifelong partner and bla, bla, bla. But I wasn’t. I wanted him to propose. I wanted to see the ring on my finger. I wanted to tell people we were planning a wedding so that my friends would stop getting so upset that they didn’t know I was getting married in a few months. I wanted him to commit to loving me every day, no matter how ugly I was in sin, every day for the rest of my life… and BAM. I wanted a mortal man to commit with a ring what my Heavenly Lord committed to me the day that Christ hung on a cross and rose again. No wonder I was so empty. My Savior committed to me. He loves me daily. His love is written on every cell of my being and every moment of my life and it is always beautifully flawless. The sweet man I am marrying? He too loves me daily, to the best of his abilities and where he fails, he is forgiven. He has begun planning a wedding with me so that we can stand before God in one of the most impeccable covenants ever created so that our very lives might reflect the way that Christ loves the church. But silly me, I wanted a ring. However here and now, I want to live in the love I have already been given so that when that little ring does come, it will be exciting and awesome but it will still be small compared to what the Lord taught me in waiting for that day.
