Marry Right

Marriage has been on my mind.

Not exactly my desire to be married or anything with me being married, but merely the subject of marriage.

I was taking to a retreat group leader who was telling me about a camp he is part of planning. It is for couples who are dating each other for the purpose of getting married and is a boot camp to see if they actually are a good match for each other and to see if they should continue to date. 50% of the couples that go through this class break up.

50%!!! 

This stat shocks me!

To sign-up for this camp, you have to think that your relationship is going to end in marriage. It's a Christian based, and I think most of the people who attend are believers in Jesus Christ.

I learned about this camp a week ago, and can not stop thinking about it. I have so many questions; I want to know so much more about this camp and the people who attend it. I want to know what they talk about and why so many people break up. What makes them a bad match for each other. I was talking to my co-workers about this, both my boss and our receptionist told me that they most likely wouldn't have married their spouse if they went to this camp. They had really really hard starts to their marriages.

As I am processing my 50% stat, I heard a story about a friend of a friend who just found out that her husband has been unfaithful to her. It turns out that he is a con-man and that he has been married over 5 times (she thought she was his second wife) and that he has put her in an enormous amount of debt.

I kinda know this girl (I met her and her husband 2-3 times) and I was telling my friend Katie about this story, thinking that she has never met them. She stopped me in the middle of the story and asked if it was Joan and her husband, Ken. --It was Joan and her husband, Ken. I had forgotten that Katie and I met him on the same night. Both of us, and my friend who knows Joan all had a bad feeling about Ken. None of us trusted him. None of us were shocked that he was the one who was that hurtful to his wife.

I just wrote in my last post about how I have a guest group that I had a gut reaction that they were untrustable. I think that the feeling that we get is straight from the Holy Spirit. He give us some warning signs that make our gut go "bing" and we know to run. I often call it intuition, but I think intuition is just a fancy word for saying that we are in tune with what God wants us to know and speaks it to us.

I have been thinking about the camp with the 50% breakup rate for dating couples and Joan and Ken. I wonder how different their life story would be if they went to this camp while they were still dating. Would Joan realize that Ken was nothing that she thought he was? Would she have clarity into his character? Would they have broken up then and not have to go through the journey of divorce, debt, and deep heartbreak right now?

This camp and the story of Joan and Ken make me distrust people a little. How do we really know who people are? Who do we know we can trust? Right now, I am feeling thankful for that gut feeling when things aren't okay. I really need to be intentional about trusting God in who I am around and seeking Him to ensure I know who I can trust.

It is easy to become hurt and broken by people we need to guard ourselves.