Married Young: We get to grow up & grow old together.

Married Young: We get to grow up & grow old together.

If you married young chances are you have been asked one of these questions:

What is your rush, you have your whole life to get married?

You do realize you are leaving the party early by getting married so young?

Do you guys already have kids?

I seriously cannot count how many times my husband and I have heard these questions. When Dion and I got engaged, I was 22 and he was 20. We had people ask us to wait, and told us that we needed to finish school, become more established and that marriage could wait. Here is my problem with that, if Dion and I seriously waited until we had all our “ducks in a row” and had this perfect life formed and created before marriage, we very well could have been 45 years old by then. You are never ready for life, and life is never going to stop. Dion and I get to experience life together, we get to know the struggles of me finishing undergrad, working when I can, and him sacrificing putting off school to work full time. We get to build our life together, every struggle and sacrifice along the way. And also every victory, every moment where we both look at each other and think- hey, WE did that and we should be proud.

What is your rush, you have your whole life to be married?

My thoughts on this: you can never rush your own life. I suppose everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but that does not mean you need to voice your own opinions every time you have one. Some people want to be married as soon as they can, and there is not anything wrong with that. When Dion and I were dating before we got engaged, we consciously thought about the decision we were making to be engaged, and we had already decided that was the next step in our relationship. We got married because that is what we wanted to do. Why stay dating for years and years when we both wanted marriage? There is NO rush into your own life. Others may see it as rushing, but what you realize is that you have made this decision and it’s your life.

We’re not leaving the party; we’re living our party together.

In some people’s eyes we have completely done everything that they would never do. Get married in our early twenties and become committed to one person. We left every ugly, messy thing in our pasts and started our own lives together. I would not say that we are missing out on life by “leaving the party early.” Getting married does not mean you don’t have friends, or you don’t have fun. Although, I will say some friends do fade away because obviously your lifestyle changes when you get married, but that is the choice and decision we made. We still have fun, and we still do things separately. We are still individuals but we are also a couple. I don’t believe I left that party early, I just believe I got a great dance partner for the rest of the parties.

Do you guys have kids already?

This one is my favorite. It is SO completely sad that our society believes that most young couples have fallen into marriage because of some unplanned baby. It is also sad that some people do get married just because they ended up pregnant together. I respect those who put off marriage for a few years after the un-expected baby or the couples who just continue to date. Getting pregnant before your married does not mean you have to get married. And to answer this question, no we don’t have any kids. But we sure do plan to in the future!

Who’s Doing IT?!

Recently I asked my Facebook friends to comment on my status the age they were married at. 89% of the people who responded said that they had gotten married before the age of 25. Young marriage is becoming more and more common & I love that! Our generation tends to believe that we are still not adults into our twenties. Other generations have made us believe that, by saying “you’re too young to be married” “do you even know what you’re doing?” You are not too young to be married; the only thing requirement of marriage is that you realize you are making a LIFELONG commitment to that person. And that is something even 40 year olds do not realize today.

Growing up together

Marrying young, you get to experience the unique thing of growing up together. You get to figure out life together. Growing up is hard, why not do it with your best friend? Here’s what I figure, people change. People change in a year; people can change month to month. What you have to realize about the commitment of marriage is that through that change and growth you will be there and you are not going to check out. I firmly believe that many people get divorced because they argue their spouse just wasn’t who they were when they got married. Well, DUH! People grow, people change, and you just have to remember you made that commitment to stand by. I guess the perk of marrying young, is you go in expecting that change. I know in ten years Dion and I will not be the same people we were when we got married. And there is nothing wrong with that, growth is good. In ten years, we will have grown as a couple and as individuals.

Marrying young is not perfect, marrying ever is never perfect. We deal with things that 30 something newlyweds probably do not. We deal with the strain of me being in school, working here and there. We deal with a lot of things normal early 20 year olds probably are not even thinking about. But we get to deal with this stuff together. There are downs and ups to marrying young, but I am here to tell you that there are more ups! The best thing about marrying young, is that I got to bring in Dion’s 21^st birthday as his wife, the years in between and his 90^th birthday. I am happy I started my life with him so soon, that way I have less to fill him in on, he just gets to live it with me! J

“Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.”

1 Timothy 4:12