Friday, January 15, 2010

Learning contentment along with other pearls

But godliness with contentment is great gain.
1 Timothy 6:6

This scripture has been a "God-send" to me for my new life at college. I (as you are most definitely aware)have been struggling with living away from home and the pressures of the university world. I knew I had to make a change this semester, being so depressed was NOT God's calling in my life. How can I serve Him when I let myself fall down? My focus is going to be positive from my return to school to my very last final in May. I know there will be some blue moments, trying moments, and overwhelming moments, but I am going to give up my struggles this time around rather than hold them inside. I'm going to keep contentment at the forefront of my mind in any and every situation seeing as God has blessed me with an education, food, family, & friends! How can I complain? So keep praying for me! This will be (and has already proven to be) one of the most difficult struggles and adjustments of my life--emotionally as well as physically.



On to another fun topic...heehee. Love! Ok I always seem to focus on the same few topics: Modesty, love, school, headcoverings, etc! But I simply cannot help myself. I'm young and many of the blogs I read (well the teenager bloggers) create a lot of love/marriage centered posts. I'm going to be 19 this year...whoa that was weird to write out...but anyways. Turning 19 is a scary point for me. Many of my cousins, who have been dating steadily for years now, met their boyfriends at around this time. I have friends who are already engaged. And oddly enough, I've been proposed to twice already. So marriage is on my mind, however I'm not seeking or pursuing it in this point in my life.

I will admitt that I think about it a lot. I have met one Christian guy at school and he off the bat started discussing marriage (not between us!) I think he is going down the courtship path, which was something I thought was the safest and godliest way to discern marriage, but I think it stays strictly within Protestant circles.

My friend made a comment about there being only elderly, middle aged, and children/pre-confirmation aged parishioners in the 3 churches we attend and how she just plans on settling on a non-religious man to marry. I really hadn't worried about meeting guys before, but this year I have really rewired my brain toward a more holy lifestyle and now the guys I was once easily able to hook are not the guys I want to be around. A good Christian man is hard to find and a Catholic one is even harder. The only catholics guys my age that I have met, with a sincere faith, are not interested in dating or marriage at all...because they are discering vocations. Which is an INCREDIBLE thing!! Very honorable. I just wonder...with a school like the one I attend...where is it that I will find a husband in the future? No relationships I cultivate here will really be anything I'm looking for years down the road....after graduation and on. It's just something we have to blindly follow God with, but it's such an exciting part of life that I can't help but wonder.

where did you meet your spouses/fiancees? (for those who are married) and how long did you date/court? were you more traditional or did you do things "your way"?

Peace & Blessings!~

7 comments:

Stacy K. said...

I met my husband when I was 20 and he was 23. We were both going to North Central in MN. Its a Christian school. We both knew that we wanted to get married and the relationship had that focus from the beginning.

We referred to it as dating, but I guess it was more like courting, although we did spend time alone.

We met in Sept. of 2003 and were married in May of 2005. We actually wanted to get married in summer of 2004, but decided that it would freak our parents out too much :-) I brought him home at Thanksgiving break in '03 and introduced him to my parents. They loved him right away and that definitely helped seal the deal for me!

caraboska said...

I met M while engaged in music ministry at church. And after this experience (if there is ever an 'after') I would have to think twelve dozen times before getting into a relationship in any other context except that we have a joint ministry in place *before* there is any thought of a relationship. We do spend time alone together - pretty much a necessity, since his aged parents live with him and at least one of them has a definition of privacy kind of incompatible with serious conversation about topics that need to remain between the two of us. And besides, we I think both prefer to meet where we do: 'in the house of God', i.e. on church premises. In the over 6 years we've known each other, we have never spent time alone anywhere else. Both of us are considerably over 40, only children, never married and, as far as I can tell, quite content to be single. Which is, as you rightly point out, just as it should be.

Deltaflute said...

I probably have the oddest story of all.

I met my hubby on a speed date. Yep...those things where you meet people for three minutes. It was not open to the public. It was something the graduate student college cooked up so that people could meet other people from different departments.

I went to the speed date because I saw it in the school newspaper and I had just broken up with a guy who I loved but was not interested in marriage. I thought that it would be a good idea to go out and mingle. I had no intention of taking the thing seriously. I just thought it would be something that I could say that I did once. Kinda like going to Disney World or a foreign country.

Anyway...my hubby was not in my mind the person I was going to end up with when I initially met him. But he said that he studied rocks from space and that sounded cool to me. I figured if nothing else we could hang out and talk about what he was studying so I wrote his number down (they give you numbers and if you both write each others they will send you their e-mail address).

The next "date" was a coffee shop where we brought books that we were reading since we couldn't remember what the other person looked like. It wasn't until several dates later that it looked like we were going to get along and were compatible.

My hubby and I dated about 9 months before I proposed. I actually asked his mom if that would be okay before I did it. And we married about 1 year and 3 months after we first got serious. Now we've been married almost 3 years and are going to have our first child sometime in the very near future.

Oh, and my hubby is not Catholic. He's not really all that religious either. It's kind of hard to explain. The main thing is that he has great morals. He's very family oriented and I trust him completely. It's not always about religion; it's about what is important to you. Hubby may become Catholic (he was baptized as such) and maybe he won't. That department I leave up to God.

I know a lot of people who marry "fall off the wagon" Catholics that end up going back to their faith. I wouldn't totally ignore people who don't attend church. Faith is a journey. We're all on different parts of it.

caraboska said...

deltaflute, You did the proposing too? That's great!

Deltaflute said...

Yeah, I proposed. It's a family thing. My mom proposed to my dad. We're not really liberal. It's just worked out that way.

Charisms on Campus said...

thank you for sharing your stories ladies! very interesting :D

caraboska said...

Proposing has nothing to do with being liberal. I did my own proposing too - and God knows I am no liberal. Just way out of the box.