Relationship status

[This is a long post! Hope you've the tenacity to finish if you're reading it =D]

Finally exams are over... and I've started my 3 months holiday! I reallt wanna make this holiday a fruitful and exciting one.

I have been wanting to put up this post for quite some time but have been suffering from the P-syndrome (P for procrastinating, haha). Well, facebook is the in thing now. When you look at people's profile, some people display their relationship status. You can choose your relationship status as either single, in a relationship, engaged, married, it's complicated or in an open relationship.

I was just thinking, what's the difference between a dating and a married relationship. These days the lines are so blur because so many married couples divorce and non-married couple cohabit. I don't think I wanna discuss whether divorce or cohabition is right or wrong. But there definitely are differences between dating and a marriage.

I don't think dating and marriage are on the same spectrum. You don't get married just because you've dated the person very long though dating for some time will help to make the decision to get married. Marriage is a relationship where two people have pledged themselves to each other in a manner of a husband and a wife. It requires a come-what-may commitment, through high waters and deep valleys, thick & thin kind of love and lives that are inseparably intertwined. Dating relationship has no pledge to each other. Each couple still live their separate lives and comes together on every date and parts when differences are too much to bear. I think one very important element that is missing in dating is the come-what-may commitment.

Part of a poem "I need you" said this about marriage:

...
There is no longer the choice as to what we will share.
We will either share all of life or be fractured persons.
I didn't marry you out of need or to be needed
We were not driven by instincts or emptiness;
We made a choice of love

- Jerry and Barbara Cook

I really love this poem. It really depicts marriage. It's quite interesting to hear how young dating couples telling each other they wanna marry each other. I've heard the girl calling her boyfriend "lao gong" and guy calling the girl "lao po". How many of them really understand what it means to be married?

Relationship with Jesus is like a marriage. I started out by "dating" him, because I chose to let him love me and be pampered by his love. Commitment? Well, let me think about it...Didn't have to take long to make that decision cause after awhile, I realize if I "date" him (=go to church and enjoy cgm) every week, it means that sometimes during the weekends when my family has activities and my friends have gatherings, I have to make some arrangements or may occassionally forgo them. And this can sometimes be inconvenient. But I'll did it cause I decided to date him, instead of playing an open relationship or just networking (like what facebook relationship status has or like what some people do).

Then there come times when I prayed, I worked hard, I was not too bad but I didn't do so well in my studies, relationships, faced many disappointments and failure which are sometimes due to my own mistakes and because sometimes bad things just happen to anyone. So the question becomes, should I continue to "date" Jesus who is invisible to my natural eyes and who some people say if I hang out with him, everything is going to be a bed of roses? Well, I told myself...I'm in the relationship already. I'll just stick around him and see what he's got for me.

Now, I'm older. I am been greatly blessed, given many opportunites, more successful, have so many responsibilities... then I think, I have many important things to do and I like doing them. Do I still want to "date" him? Cause if I date him, means, I may have less time for things which I am now excelling in. By this time, when I look back and see how he helped me through the times when I am most down and most rejected by others. I remembered when I ignored and hurt him, he still tells me he loves me. He has been supporting, inspiring, strengthening, believing and loving me. And he just never fails to be there when I called him. How can I forsake him even though the opportunities I have in life seem so golden and hard to come by? Well, I will stay on with him. Because I don't want to go on "dating" Jesus. I prefer to give him all my commitment and love, much like a "married" relationship. Because I'm not better off without him.

We all either watched on tv or saw in real life how a spouse got tempted by an attractive individual and forsook the marriage. Or how either one person in the marriage got caught up with work as a result of pursuing ccess in career and loss the marriage. This doesn't mean we don't get married. Because marriage is more beautiful than a dating relationship. When we see an old couple walking hand in hand and strolling in the park, even a person who never wants to get married, will melt at this scene and somehow hoped that will happen to him/her. A successful marriage has the greatest joy and produces the greatest satisfaction in life. And successful marriage comes only with unconditional commitment. Commitment sounds like a huge thing and it means choices must be made. But it's worth every bit of it. And even more so when you have a perfect partner.

Thank you Jesus for your faithfulness in this "marriage" relationship that I will always want to be in.