My Background: Throwing Away my Childhood

I haven't written a great deal about my history with Luke, but I have been inspired very recently to do so. Yesterday I read an article by a man who married young, the way I did, and it left me with a sense of boldness I don't typically feel regarding my highschool-relationship-turned-marriage...


Ordinarily, the topic makes me very self-conscious. Maybe it's because I started dating Luke during my insecure stage of life, and I've never really let it go....? Maybe I surrendered my confidence to the Devil a long time ago and didn't realize it. But regardless of why, I often feel as though my marriage is being scrutinized by the world. 

Even after almost eight years together, I feel the need to prove to others my level of commitment to my husband. I've always believed, secretly, that everybody was waiting for us to fail. It's a form of egotism--assuming people think negatively of me when they probably don't think of me at all! But this underlying hang-up makes it uncomfortable when somebody asks, "Why did you marry so young?" 

Instantly, I tense and my mind spins with defenses, to help the asker understand marriage wasn't just an impulsive decision made by a desperate girl, smitten with the first guy who said "I love you." I feel the need to assure the stranger Luke and I dated for over four years, and then I want to prove we're still doing fine in all categories. (Not drowning in debt. Luke doesn't beat me.) But then, sometimes, the asker follows up with questions which make me even more self-conscious:  "Didn't you feel like you grew up too fast? Why didn't you take your time and enjoy being young?" 

I never knew how to handle that situation....until.  

The above article reminded me that finding a spouse is a blessing from God, and being mature enough to do so early was a good thing. I don't mean to say people should get married as soon as they can, or that being young is the "right way" to have a wedding. But I think people should be ready for marriage as soon as possible, in terms of striving for adulthood. Young people should desire to leave selfish, childish ways behind them and accept responsibility, which is the mark of a "grown up." And, in turn, being a selfless grown up makes a person marriable, whether they end up getting married or not. 

I should be proud that I left youth behind and became marriable at a young age. I should be thankful God presented a marriable husband during the same time, so I didn't have to wait for that blessing. In our case, our biggest struggle was finding a few good mentors to give us the benefit of the doubt and show us how to make it work. 
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In April of 2004, Luke asked me to "be his girlfriend." This was via Yahoo Instant Messenger. We were 16.  

A few days later, we exchanged class rings, and that's when our relationship became a public spectacle...at least, that's how it felt. We went to a small, Christian high school, so, literally, everyone knew about "us" within hours. Predictably, everyone had opinions about it. 


Generally, I loved being held to a higher standard by intimate friendships at Kokomo Christian. As a teenager who genuinely wanted to please God, I appreciated the accountability. You'd never hear me tell someone to mind their own business, while I ran off and rebelled. I mean, it's never easy to hear when you're wrong, but at the end of the day, I cherished the correction. And some of my best growing experiences happened while I was at KCS, sharing life with fellow Jesus-lovers.

Unfortunately, there were people at KCS who didn't love my relationship with Luke. 


At first, our biggest obstacle was...I suppose....skepticism? Understandably, most people simply didn't think a high school relationship had lasting power. So, we saw a lot of eye-rolling, and we heard comments about "one day, when we REALLY knew what love was." Even at the time, I knew why critics brushed us off. I would have done the same thing. But, simultaneously, I hated that there was nothing I could do to prove our seriousness except wait for time to tell.  

I distinctly remember school picture day our junior year, when one of my teachers asked if I'd worn Luke's ring for my portrait. When I said I had, she teased, "Twenty years from now, you'll wonder, 'whose ring was this?'"  She wasn't trying to hit my sensitive button, but I wondered why she couldn't imagine us together two decades later--or why she thought I wouldn't even remember the boy I'd been dating over two years by then. Most irritatingly, though, I couldn't figure out an intelligent way to rebut. (Somehow it seemed counter-productive to yell, "Nu-uh! We'll be together forever! Our love is real!!!") So, I said nothing and tried to accept that our school family didn't take us seriously.


As time wore on, the commentary changed just a little. Instead of apathy, there were two times we heard absolute objection about our relationship. 

A girlfriend of mine wrote a letter saying she felt Luke and I were "too close." I asked what she meant, since school rules prohibited public displays of affection, or ANY physical contact between guys and girls. And I insisted we weren't crossing physical boundaries away from school either. (Read: no sex.)  But she remained adamant that our connection was "dangerous," because we were creating emotional bonds which would hurt when we broke up.


A few days later, I asked a guy friend for his opinion (one I respected for his knowledge of Scripture, and who knew me, Luke, and the girl who wrote the letter). He responded with a letter of his own, in which he agreed with the girl saying it just wasn't right for high-schoolers to get too close. He explained the odds of Luke being "The One" God wanted for me weren't very good...so, why allow ourselves to get serious? He recommended using our highschool years to invest in lots of friendships, rather than getting tangled in a boyfriend-girlfriend one.
 
We were only 17. No jobs. No diplomas. And more than one person believed our interest in marriage was unwise--due to our immaturity.


The only trouble was, few people took the time to share how to become mature. I asked those two friends, point blank, "How would two God-honoring, maturity-pursuing individuals prepare for that magical "future" when seriousness wasn't bad?"  But it seemed this was the wrong thought-process; it was, perhaps, just evidence I was a desperate girl, trying to hang on to the possibility of a long-term relationship, when what I needed to do was let it go until I got older.

Meanwhile, I understood that being poor and diploma-less were problems, but we were moving toward fixing those things--with plans for college and interviewing other young-marriers about how they did it. We also received warning that life as newlywed students would be hard, but we also knew that waiting caused different kinds of difficulty and that "Marriage would be hard" no matter when we jumped in.  So, as far as I was concerned, people weren't giving us a definite reason to separate, except that most high schoolers don't understand love. Then, when we asked for enlightenment, most teachers, youth leaders, and other mentors only wanted to talk in abstract ways regarding "when we're older." 


Now that I'm an adult, I see why counseling a teenage couple about marriage could come across as enabling--or even pushing them into a commitment--instead of merely "educating." I understand the safest thing to do, as a minister or mentor, is recommend all young students "just wait" and spend plenty of time "growing up" before making big decisions. Most kids let advice go in one ear and out the other, so it's best to allow many years for maturity to stick!  

But I'm afraid youth pastors become so used to speaking about what kids "should do" then watching them do the opposite, that they have a hard time getting their hopes up when a spirit-filled teen makes responsible choices. Maybe it's almost too good to be true? But some kids really respond to messages like, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young...set an example...you are just as capable as any adult to glorify God....you can pray, study the Word, and prepare for your future spouse NOW..." buuuuut, they feel frustrated when they try to practice it and hear, "You're awfully young for a relationship."


Youth ministers, I don't mean to complain. You have a tough, tough job, and you do it well! But I encourage you to remember that--even despite the rebellious, hard-headed, unteachable kids in your group--some of them will listen. Some will receive God's word like seeds on fertile soil.  Please don't trample the fruit, when it's easier to dismiss a young person's ambitions as crazy than wonder if God is behind it. Don't look down on them, if they are ready to set a good example...


Anyway, to our delight, there were individuals in our lives ready to say, "If marriage is God's plan for you, then here is what you need to know." Through talks with my dad, Luke's grandpa, and groups of various friends/family---we learned that sometimes young relationships last.  What's more, it turns out a healthy marriage had nothing to do with luck and was entirely in our control. Love is an action instead of a feeling. If we wanted to stay in love forever, we needed to act lovingly toward one another, the way Jesus does. This actually was MUCH simpler than the mystical "future you will figure it out" vibes we had been given by nervous critics. And once I felt reassured we weren't WRONG to pursue commitment, we set to the task with teenage enthusiasm and energy. Thank God we weren't stuck in our ways or jaded by life to the point we threw in the towel before we'd begun. We were excited to start practicing sacrificial, selfless love, whether or not most teenagers chose the same.


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Luke asked me to marry him in May of 2007, and we threw away our childhood the following year. I don't wish I was still young in the sense I miss getting away with foolishness. I don't wonder what I missed, "settling" for Luke. I'm proud of myself for never buying the crap about compatibility and trying to figure out what I "wanted" in a man (beyond godliness), and I'm proud that I was young when I began trading selfishness for true, sacrificial love. Praise be to God that He saw fit to bless me with a teachable, tenderhearted, Christlike man with whom I could grow up.