How To Make the Decision To Say Yes

I know that some people won’t understand the decision we made + the work that we put into making sure that we have a happy marriage. But I will say without hesitation that it was beyond worth it. Before I could even say yes, my husband had to decide to ask me the question.

He had to be convinced to marry me. 

On a strange contradiction, I always tell my single gal pals that you should never chase a man. It even says in Scripture that “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.” {ESV} I’ve never seen in the Bible that women were to chase a man…and I’m certainly not gonna look for it because I’m lazy…

But in this case, I did have to pursue the man I wanted to marry. And not in the “feed him home cooked meals + wear him out in bed” sort of way.

I had to pursue his whole heart.

He had an idea on how to proceed once we started talking about marriage. He proposed that we come up with some questions about what we thought marriage should look like, to evaluate the different issues we thought we might encounter and ask for advice. He told me that if we couldn’t see eye-to-eye on what might be the most important things in our marriage, then he didn’t want to continue the relationship. That was the decision he’d made and he was sticking to it…

And this is about the point where shit got real…

ME: I was pissed. I was hurt. I was angry. I couldn’t believe that after 2 years of being together, giving him everything {like I was already his wife} that he would still need me to prove how much I loved him. There wasn’t anything else that I could do. I was in disbelief that he still didn’t trust me and that I still had to prove myself. I’d never asked him to prove himself. I didn’t complain about a lot of stuff. I didn’t say a lot about him keeping female friends whom I knew wanted to step in and take my place in his life. What the hell else did he want from me?? I cried. I yelled. I was in shock that he was so willing to walk away from what I’d worked so hard to build with + for him…

HIM: It wasn’t a simple matter of just asking some questions. I was confused and thrown off by her reaction. I thought she would want to investigate marriage further. Why would she want to walk into it blind? If I was being honest with myself…I was not at a point where I was ready to be married. And I wasn’t sure she was either. Even though I wasn’t ready, I thought it would be good to at least be as prepared as we could be. People do all types of research and preparation for any other major life decision…picking a college, buying a home, buying a car, where to eat after church…and put the minimum effort into picking a spouse. I wasn’t about to let any and everyone else tell me who to marry. I wasn’t going to let pop culture, the media, tradition or local laws dictate what I should do concerning this area of my life. Because if it goes south, it’s on me. I was in deep, strong, unequivocal, WithoutADoubt love with this woman! And now that we had fallen in love, it was time for us to stand up and walk in love…and I was going to do everything I could to make sure that happened.

We both believe so strongly in marriage that we were willing to do whatever it took to make it work. Once I calmed down and got my ego in check, my intended and I set out to make sure that this was going to be a good decision for both of us. All I knew about being married was that I was going to have a husband because I would be someone’s wife! Knowing that there was so little that I actually knew, we actually came up with a plan to try and figure out what to expect if we got married.

*Confession after the fact: I had an ex who once yelled at me, in the heat of yet another argument, that I had never been married because I didn’t know what marriage was about. I yelled back that I had never been married because I DID know what marriage was about. So you can probably guess how much I felt like a jackhole for being upset with my boo thang for wanting to make sure this what the right thing to do.

My bad.

SO after it was all said and done, we set out to select our Marriage Advocates and get on with this thing. It was an intentional decision to do what we knew needed to be done. We conducted a full-scale interview process and really took the time to look further into what we may be agreeing to if we made it down the aisle.

Our marriage isn’t perfect…we’re two imperfect people who just happen to be perfect for each other…but I can say, without a doubt, that because we took the time to try and prepare for our forever, we have an amazing marriage. We found a few things that we didn’t agree upon and the craziest part of it all? It gave us the opportunity to work things out! And because we learned to work things out through this process, we honed our conflict resolution skills and brought them into our marriage!

We found ourselves in the middle of a ministry to help others who are considering marriage.

We have, ourselves, become Marriage Advocates.

I hope that your time here, in this space on the interwebs with us, will help you to navigate your relationship before you walk down the aisle into your forever.

<3 Katherine