why i am getting married young (guest post by shelby grosser).

Shelby with her fiancee, Patrick.

I am overjoyed to introduce Shelby Grosser as the guest writer for today's blog post. A few months back, I wrote a post on singleness and why I have found joy through it in my personal life. That being said, I very much tried to uplift both marriage and singleness as beautiful, glorious things. So, I thought I'd ask Shelby to write a post on why she has found joy and beauty in marriage, as she is engaged to be married to Patrick Ray in a little over a month.

I've known Shelby for a few years now, and she is such an encouragement to be around. She is absolutely in love with Jesus, and out of that love pours a deep love for all people, which will become clear as you read her post. She is an urban studies major at Northwestern College and a church planter in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a radical heart for hospitality. I'm so blessed to have her featured on my blog. Also, make sure to check out her own blog, Letters from Phalanges. It's beautiful.

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I am in an interesting stage in life. I am nineteen years old (though almost twenty). I am a full time student preparing to enter my final year of undergrad this coming fall. I am a church planter. I am a regular overnight volunteer at a homeless shelter. And I am thirty-eight days away from being married. I was asked by a friend to write a post about why I have chosen marriage, and young marriage at that. So here I am.

Most of my life I assumed I would get married, be a mom, and a loyal member of the local church. As I grew older and wiser, these desires only grew, but their shape has changed with the seasons, molded by the knowledge acquired and the passion placed in me. One important thing for you to understand about the shape of my life thus far is that the Lord has seemingly walked me through experiences a bit ahead of the normal curve, quite consistently. I have always felt too old for the short years my body has lived, and I think this has partially influenced my contentment in pursuing young marriage.

But let's get down to the basics.

I have chosen to marry Patrick when I will be twenty and he will be twenty-one because I genuinely believe that he and I will be able to glorify the Lord more together than apart, and to delay the marriage would be to delay a beautiful partnership.

When I met Patrick we had a long string of conversations and experiences where we found likemindedness in each other that we each craved, but had yet to find. I believe the Lord called me to be a church planter my junior year of high school, and until I met Patrick three years later I had never met a peer who had a similar passion or call. Likewise, we bonded over a common heart for the city, orphans, adoption, hospitality, and those experiencing homelessness.

You do not need everything in common to choose to be married or to make a good marriage. In fact, Patrick and I don't even have a majority of things in common, but we do align beautifully on the big things. Patrick and I both find worldview and values to be crucial commonalities in order to pursue a lifelong covenant with someone. As we grew in friendship we found great likemindedness in values, faith, and in the direction the Lord was asking us individually to go. It fell beautifully into place that we would walk into what God has asked us to do individually, together.

I cannot fully articulate the blessing this has been in my life. To have found someone with such a similar passion for life, Christian ministry, and love for our neighbors has brought such a sincere joy and a beautiful trust in the strong cornerstone of our relationship.

We each separately are sacrificing several things in our decision to marry young. At an obvious level, we are giving up some freedom in relationships with the opposite sex. Though we will joyously continue our friendships, there are necessary boundaries now put on my relationships with men and his with women. Additionally, we are choosing to learn to live with the same person for the rest of our days. We will sacrifice our "normal" way of life to adjust to someone else's. We will surrender much of the freedom of singleness and independence. But I wholeheartedly believe that the cost is minimal in comparison to all the joy of our young marriage.

In marrying young we will have the pleasure of growing into each other as adults, rather than growing older separately and then learning to live in such an intimate relationship with someone. We will be able to adventure into a life on mission in Minneapolis, Minnesota, planting churches, serving our neighbors, inviting in the stranger and the friend in a way that we cannot do to the same extent as just friends, or individuals. In getting married young, we are choosing to form our lives and our adult years around the Lord and around a life long covenant to love and submit to another well.

I am getting married at the young age of twenty because I truly and wholeheartedly believe that Patrick Ray is someone who will grow me in my love for the Lord, serve me in the hard and easy places, and be a phenomenal partner in life and mission, enabling both of us to do more than we could have imagined being able to do for the Lord. I am getting married young because the cost is well worth the joy and beauty to follow.

As a disclaimer, when I talk about the joy and beauty of marriage I am not simply referring to the happiness and fun times. I am referring to the hard places, the soul work, the brokenness and pain of surrendering your life and trusting someone in hard places. I am referring to the holistic picture of the life long covenant, with circumstantial beauty and joy, and circumstantial pain and struggle.