We've heard it a lot: "You're getting married?? Already?? Why so fast?" First of all, we’ve been friends since 2015, so it’s not as quick as everyone seems to think! But we’d still like to address the question. I think the main reason that people have asked us this question stems from a misunderstanding of why we want to get married. In our experience, we've seen our culture value individualism above nearly every other virtue. Placing individual freedom and happiness above everything else defines the priorities for a potential partner: you have to find the right person who makes you happy, or completes you, or will accept you as you are without requiring any change or effort from you. This results in a view of marriage that asks questions like "what if He isn't the right one?" or "what if we aren't compatible?" or "what if we get out of the honeymoon phase and just don't love each other anymore?" or "what if we change and it's no longer a good fit?", mostly founded in the fear that if we don't pick the right match while we're dating, we're going to miss out on the fulfillment that we might have otherwise gotten from the "right" spouse. In a lot of relationships that we see, this fear either prolongs dating: hoping that eventually it'll be obvious that the relationship is a good match, or results in serial dating: running away from each new partner as soon as a flaw is spotted. The thing that frees us from these fears and allows us to be confident in committing to each other for the rest of our lives is the gospel. For both of us, the gospel is the foundation upon which our lives and decisions are built on. Although we have many other things in common, we're most deeply unified through these core values and beliefs. The gospel's central message is that people aren't perfect, and the only way that we are able to find fulfillment in our lives (and in eternity) is not through relationships with other imperfect people, but through a relationship with a perfect God.

The message of the gospel means a couple of things to us. First, we don't need to date forever to make sure we found the perfect person. The perfect person doesn't exist! Going into our relationship (and into our marriage) with the knowledge that we're going to have flaws let's us focus on using the time while we've been dating not to search for each other's shortcomings, but to understand how we are going to work through those shortcomings together when they come up. Second, we don't need to run away from our relationship and look for someone better when we see a flaw in each other. If one of us isn't able to love the other perfectly, it isn't debilitating, because we get our worth and fulfillment through God and His perfect love, not through our partner's imperfect love for us. The realization that we are both imperfect leads us to what we believe is one of the most fundamental purposes of marriage: it's a mechanism for building each other up into people who better mimic the perfect example of love, found in Christ. In choosing a partner, we're committing to sacrifice our own freedoms in order that we might help form each other into better people. Christians call this process "sanctification", and as we seek to live it out in our marriage, it's designed to be a beautiful example of the way God loves us: He chooses and loves and brings us close to Him knowing that we have flaws, and within that safe environment of being loved and fulfilled by Him, He nurtures us and allows us to grow into the beauty of what He originally designed us to be. We're excited to commit to this lifelong journey, the way that it will challenge us and change us, and the fulfillment that we will get out of seeing (and helping) each other grow into the glory and purpose that we were designed for.