“…if ye find my beloved, … tell him, that I am sick of love.” -Song of Solomon 5:8

So we broke all the rules of modern day convention in marrying at the tender age of 20 and 21. We had no house, not a stick of furniture between us, not even a car, and Linda faced 6 more months of school while I was headed for an overseas deployment. Further compounding the madness, I went two years to graduate school immediately following the military. But we did it all together. And it was good. Very good. Marriage is a powerfully civilizing force especially for young men, and I was no exception. Young men all of a sudden stop hanging out with the guys all night at the local pizza palace and find jobs, fulfillment, and purpose. Grades go from B’s and C’s to all A’s. It is an amazing transformation, really. I was a case in point.

Marriage is a tremendously soothing balm to the tumultuous years of wondering and waiting for both young men and women. Single young maidens tend to live in endless anticipation of the appearance of their knight in shining armor astride his white horse. Young men waste a lot of time wondering if there is ever a woman out there who would ever find them the least bit attractive. The whole dating scene is rife with tortured anxieties, awkwardness, and disappointments. Who among us married folk would ever want to go back to those days again? While marriage brings its own set of challenges, it at least provides a firm foundation of certainty that gratefully displaces waiting for the phone to ring.

There are many forces loose in our society today that militate against early marriage. Fears of young people emerging from broken homes inhibit many. Economic uncertainties, the sexual revolution, an uncut parental umbilical cord, and post modernism all play their part. What is especially tragic from my perspective is to watch the active opposition of family and friends to early marriage for reasons that are either simply materialistic, unrealistically idealistic, or just sheer pragmatic. Pragmatism be hanged, I say. When God brings two people together in love and purity, I vote to get out of their way and support them. When it’s right, it’s right. Get married and get on with life.

To help counteract the fear factor amongst young people today, I am convinced that we who have lived and loved through secure and stable marriages need to hold the institution high. I encourage all my friends to use any and all milestones in a marriage as reasons to celebrate. Whether it be 2 years or 20, party hearty. Let the world know, and especially your children, that marriage is for real, that it works, and can be downright fun. No matter even if it is the second time around, any loving, married relationship is a powerful force for good. Celebrate it.

Whatever difficulties young married couples might face today, they are almost always better faced together than apart. Long engagements just create a moral minefield for young lovers. And weddings will take as long to plan as one allows. If given a year, it will take every bit of it to plan one. If given three weeks, it will only take that long. And no one should ever forgo marriage because it is somehow “unaffordable.” Simple ceremonies are sometimes the most memorable. And the church family is an immeasurable asset that Christians have in launching a marriage. Run an engagement up the church flagpole and watch the ladies of the church all line up to serve, sing, direct, and bake. Everybody loves a wedding.

Please know, I am not advocating your high schoolers run off and get married at the drop of a hat. That is hardly the problem we face today. Rather it is our troubled twenty-somethings taking ten years to figure out a direction for their future. It may be funny on TV, but it is quite another thing in real life.