horses and carriages

So he beat me to it on the blog front but I am delighted that transfarmer is indeed engaged to be married to Nelly. I am also delighted that the 2 real people behind these pseudonyms are getting married too – we’ve even talked to each other and everything (he’s even more amazing in real life).

It is all slightly surreal right now and yet it also feels perfectly normal.

There are many cool things about marriage (mainly the saving of money on petrol) but also things like the fact that we get to be a visible picture of God and the church to the world, and two heads are better than one and all that… but one of the most delightful things i’ve realised in the past few months is that marriage doesn’t negate the need for wider community but infact desperately needs it.

I used to have this slightly distorted idea that once i got married i kind of got cut off from my family and friends because I would be making a new start with the man I had married.  In one sense this is not entirely untrue, but in another sense it’s total bullshit.  I had an eerie feeling that I would go from a world where yes i am single but where I am doing life with so many wonderful people who love me, fight for me, protect me, encourage me, keep me company, make me laugh, listen to me, cry with me and all that.  I wondered if being married would mean that i would loose all this, or at least i wondered if being married would mean that i didn’t deserve to have access to all this.  But you know, i realise that so much of my thinking comes from the movies and life isn’t like (and shouldn’t be like) the movies.

I realise now that when i marry Andrew Jeremy (dont laugh) Neill I won’t loose my community and family but rather I will extend it in ways i cant begin to imagine because I become part of his world and he becomes part of mine.  And yes we will have our own new world together but it is never isolated from the church and should never be.

I flippin love the church, it is the most overwhelmingly amazing thing in the world.

So all this to say, people shouln’t do life alone and even married people shouldn’t do marriage alone… it’s not right.

I’m glad it’s not right ’cause otherwise i’d be scared.

rant and ramblings over.