Yes, Virginia, I Do Believe I Will Get Married

a. Clay Aiken? First Sir Robin, and now a father? He is getting entirely too much power.

(Also... this is ER's final season? Who told me? Oh, no wait! Nobody!)

b. Once upon a time, I was kind of monastic and moody and also fifteen and I decided that I wanted to get married so much (one day, not at fifteen) that God would deny it from me on the basis of marriage being an idol.

I have recently decided that that thought is stupid. I'm going to get married (yes, I know this) and my relationship with God is more important than that. So that was a stupid thought on my part. I did have craptastica theology on some accounts when I was monastic and moody and also fifteen. I don't recommend being fifteen, as a general rule, unless you are fifteen.

My friend Crystal is getting married. Actually, several of my friends are getting married. But with this friend, it is different. It is different, number one, because she is younger than I am. This makes me feel old.

It is also different because I am a bridesmaid. I love being a bridesmaid. I licked fifty-eleven envelopes for this woman's invitations. I felt so useful.

(My dress, by the way, is vaguely Lord of the Rings. More Arwen than Galadriel. When I wear it, my hair feels too short but my paleness feels just right!)

But anyway, it stuns me how happy she is--and how happy I am for her. I am unreservedly thrilled because of how wonderful her story is and how blessed and loved she feels. Some people seem to have the attitude, she has told me (because she is real, just one of the most genuine people you will ever know) that her story is good for her, but "we can't all have what you and your fiancee have." Well, I think that if God wants you to get married, He wants you to have that.

God wants to give me that.

I think my future husband is out there, somewhere, thinking, "Dang, son, I will never get married because my life will be so nomadic and exciting and cerebral and blessed that no beautiful woman will want to share it with me."

I have news for you, dude--it doesn't matter if, right now, you're rebelling or building shacks in Thailand. One of these days, you're going to be nomadic and exciting and cerebral and blessed, and I'll marry you anyway. I am not ready for G.K. Chesterton's "perpetual crisis" of marriage, but give me a little while, and we'll see.

(I don't think he actually thinks the words "Dang, son," because that is an expression pretty unique to me. )