Marriage 💍

I remember being in high school, and this girl kept saying when she turned 18 she was going to get married. I kept telling her she was so young and she’ll regret it, but it seemed like it didn’t matter how much I protested she was so adamant that she was going to get married. I remember telling her “It could never be me.” I was 17 going on 18 in a few months. Fast forward 2 years later I got married.

By now if you read Sister 👯‍♀️ you know that I’m adopted. If you didn’t read it but just read that just to clarify I am adopted but I also went back into foster care and signed myself out of care in January 2017.  My life having been what it was I honestly didn’t envision myself getting married. So when I told that girl “It could never be me”, I genuinely meant that.

Biblically we know that we are the bride of Christ. No matter how intertwined in sin I was I always knew how much Jesus loves me, and understanding that marriage is a biblical principle I couldn’t see myself engaging in marriage for it to fail especially knowing how sinful I was living.

I grew up in a church filled with married couples, and I honestly can’t pinpoint a time in my life when I wasn’t exposed to marriage in some capacity. Although in most of these encounters, I didn’t have access to the intricacies of their marriages, I only saw the representatives of sentences. The united fronts that in some of those marriages eventually dissolved into divorce and in others turned into public displays of disrespect and disdain ultimately became my grounds for not wanting to be married both consciously and subconsciously. I never wanted to think I had a soulmate only to end up realizing I had a cellmate, because for many marriage becomes a life sentence of misery.

In the same year that I signed myself out of foster care, I got married, and it wasn’t until years later that I even realized both of these life-changing things happened to and for me in the same year. Looking back, I divorced a life of trauma (signing out of care) and married my freedom when I got married. My freedom didn’t necessarily come from my husband per se but because I take being the bride of Christ FIRST so seriously that we navigate our marriage with Christ as the center of it even to this day.

In one of my husband and I’s first conversations when we met, I told him I didn’t want to be some man’s baby mother. I wanted to be someone’s wife and the mother of their children. Although we were pregnant and expecting our oldest when we got married, that man heard my sincerity and made sure I was his wife before our oldest son was born. I don’t know if even he understands how much it meant to me for him to hear me, see me, and honor me enough to make me his wife before our son was born.

That level of intentionality, I had never known it, and as foreign and unfamiliar as it was to me, I NEEDED IT. I always say my husband’s love is the closest thing to God’s love that I could ever feel on earth. Especially in a climate where monogamy and marriage are so undermined, one thing I’m never doing is playing about my husband nor our marriage.

Marriage is so beautiful when done with Christ. Notice how I didn’t say perfect because it isn’t. There are bad days, good days, and even days that fall between both of those and everyday we choose each other. That was something I had never experienced until I met my husband.

I don’t give advice because you’ll never be able to say something didn’t go as anticipated because I advised you in a way. Instead, I offer encouragement. If you consider marriage or desire marriage I encourage you to take your relationship with the Lord seriously FIRST. You won’t end up in a relationship of convenience, or bound to torment with Christ leading you.

Be the bride of Christ INTENTIONALLY, and falling in love with potential won’t cause you to miss your purpose. Seven years later, and I’m proud of the decision and PERSON 20-year-old me trusted. And that is the goal, to be able to look back and have no regrets. and know you have honored THE LORD.

I love you. 🫶🏽🤍