Oh to be a child bride.
To have your entire life planned out for you. Whom you will marry, where you will live, even what you will cook, and quite possibly what your children's names will be. I marvel at the submission and trust that living in those confines would take. I wonder at the potential security that may come from knowing your life mate from your earliest memory. I also know myself well, and it's pretty safe to say that I would buck those confines at every turn.
No choice. No voice. Absolute obedience without any thought to what is in your heart, your personal desires, YOU.
I don't doubt that the people who engage in this practice believe that they are doing what is best, honoring a long standing tradition.
As I was pondering this a few weeks back I got to thinking about being a bride. Not just my personal experience, but the experiences I have observed over the years. Young brides, cheeks flushed with anticipation and the glow of fresh dreams. Widows remarrying, preparing to once again love and become vulnerable after pain and loss, learning to open their hearts and lives in a new way. Brides with a past more inky black than the leather of the old Bible that sits in my nightstand drawer, who never even dared dream that they would have someone who would accept them, love them, want them just as they are. Let alone a wedding.
It's an honor to be asked, to have the offer of another person's life laid down for you. It's humbling. The reality of the bowing down, the tears in the eyes, the honesty of heart intertwined in the words, "Will you marry me?"
I love a Love Story. I love a Dream. I Love being asked to be a Bride.
The gracious beauty that fills my life is unending.
That He, the Lord of All Creation who has known me from before my earliest memory, would ask me to be His Bride. It requires profound trust and weighty submission, but the confines are all freedom. Peace, joy, hope, redemption, unfailing love.... everything my heart has ever longed for is found in Him. Obedience to His commands are all blessing. There is nothing He asks of me that He HIMSELF does not give me the strength to do. It is often that I realize I am not doing much more than laying in the palm of His hand, resting in Him as He carries me through a storm high above the waves of fear and doubt.
His offer is precious, stunning, gloriously unique.
I know His hand well now, yet am humbled as if He has asked again for the first time.
Song of Songs 4:7
To have your entire life planned out for you. Whom you will marry, where you will live, even what you will cook, and quite possibly what your children's names will be. I marvel at the submission and trust that living in those confines would take. I wonder at the potential security that may come from knowing your life mate from your earliest memory. I also know myself well, and it's pretty safe to say that I would buck those confines at every turn.
No choice. No voice. Absolute obedience without any thought to what is in your heart, your personal desires, YOU.
I don't doubt that the people who engage in this practice believe that they are doing what is best, honoring a long standing tradition.
As I was pondering this a few weeks back I got to thinking about being a bride. Not just my personal experience, but the experiences I have observed over the years. Young brides, cheeks flushed with anticipation and the glow of fresh dreams. Widows remarrying, preparing to once again love and become vulnerable after pain and loss, learning to open their hearts and lives in a new way. Brides with a past more inky black than the leather of the old Bible that sits in my nightstand drawer, who never even dared dream that they would have someone who would accept them, love them, want them just as they are. Let alone a wedding.
It's an honor to be asked, to have the offer of another person's life laid down for you. It's humbling. The reality of the bowing down, the tears in the eyes, the honesty of heart intertwined in the words, "Will you marry me?"
I love a Love Story. I love a Dream. I Love being asked to be a Bride.
The gracious beauty that fills my life is unending.
That He, the Lord of All Creation who has known me from before my earliest memory, would ask me to be His Bride. It requires profound trust and weighty submission, but the confines are all freedom. Peace, joy, hope, redemption, unfailing love.... everything my heart has ever longed for is found in Him. Obedience to His commands are all blessing. There is nothing He asks of me that He HIMSELF does not give me the strength to do. It is often that I realize I am not doing much more than laying in the palm of His hand, resting in Him as He carries me through a storm high above the waves of fear and doubt.
His offer is precious, stunning, gloriously unique.
I know His hand well now, yet am humbled as if He has asked again for the first time.
Song of Songs 4:7
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