It's Okay to Believe in the Dream

I've been thinking, recently, about how universal the desire for love and marriage is. It's a desire that is woven into the mind and heart and soul of every person, it seems. It's a desire that can be traced through history, from age to age and country to country, bridging all the millenia and every culture and language on the face of the earth. It's a desire that has brought life and death and joy and sorrow - that has changed the life of every person ever born for good or bad and that has caused kingdoms to rise and fall. It is a desire that has amazing and awesome potential!

And ... like the rest of humanity, we single young ladies from conservative Christian homeschool/courtship families/communities desire love and marriage. We long to believe in what one writer calls "the dream of marriage." We long to believe in the possibility of meeting a good and godly young man - of falling in love - of getting married - of creating a loving and stable home with our husband - of bearing and raising children - of living 'happily ever after.' Many of us single young ladies have grown up longing and preparing to be 'Proverbs 31 Wives and Mothers.' Some of us have played and talked and dreamed about it. And yet ...

A lot of us are over one-and-twenty now. Our grandmothers and mothers were wives and mothers by the time they were twenty one ... or twenty three ... or twenty five. But we aren't. We wonder whether we ever will be wives and mothers ... we wince slightly at the idea of meeting a good and godly young man and wonder whether God has 'forgotten' us and our dreams ... we wonder whether we can - or should - believe in "the dream of marriage." We long to do so, but ... as friend after friend meets her 'Prince Charming' and gets married and has children ... as we experience the larger-than-life ache of loneliness or agony of broken dreams and broken hearts ... as we watched the numbers of abuse and divorce cases - in Christian and non-Christian marriages - rise around the world ...

Is there any reason to believe in "the dream of marriage"?

I'm not married, but I say ... yes! I'll be honest and admit that I sometimes wonder if God will ever write a fairy tale romance for me ... if He has my 'Prince Charming' out there 'somewhere' ... if I will be a good wife and mother 'someday'. But ... I believe that I can - and should - believe "in the dream of marriage." It's okay to do so ... and God? He created and blessed love and marriage in Genesis - in 'the very beginning', at the creation of humanity and the dawn of history. Love and marriage are good! The desire for love and marriage is a desire God acknowledges and understands - why else (when Adam was living in a perfect world!) did God create Eve and give her to Adam - thus fulfilling the desire for love and creating marriage?

I'm not alone in believing this; in an article I'm planing to post a link to later this week, Lanier Ivester, of YLCF, says:

"True love and beautiful marriages really do exist. And the dreams God allows us to dare to dream in our girlhood are, I believe, where such marriages are born.

That’s not to say the course ahead will run smooth by any means …

But it’s worth it. It’s worth it to have faith in something so beautiful that only God could have thought it up in the first place. It’s worth it to learn to wait on Him and hope in Him and to find, after all, that He is the Lover of your soul. It is worth it—all the longing and disappointed hopes and even heartache that may lay before you—to be able to one day stand before the person you love best in the whole wide world, wearing a white dress and veil, and to look up at him and say, ‘I have waited for God and I have waited for you.’"

Don't fantasize about love and obsess over marriage, but do believe that love and marriage were created and blessed by God. Do believe in "the dream of marrige." It's okay - even this week, when the world is full of red hearts and cute cards for your friends and not you - to believe in the dream. And it's okay to pray and hope that in His perfect timing, God will make the dream come true ... for you too!