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I know that life will change when I get married, but there are many things that I currently do that I will still be doing even when I'm married. For instance, right now I'm at Noah's Bagels drinking coffee and eating a bagel and stalking friends on Facebook. I think I would still be doing this even if I was married and my bagel would taste just as good. The only thing that might be different is that I would probably also be swapping texts with my wife, with lots of smiley faces and romantic innuendos and making plans and such.

I do look forward to the day when I don't have to have my antennas up anymore, on the lookout for the one, constantly asking myself "What about her?" When that question is settled, I will have so much more brain space, I think I will be much smarter. Yeah right. Most likely, I will be faced with more enigmatic questions about love and I will probably feel dumb all of the time. Whenever I've been in a relationship in the past, it's always been somewhat of an unsolved mystery, a hallucinogenic riddle. Right now, I'm not in a relationship and I do feel free. In a relationship, you do give up some liberties in order to have other liberties. But what is freedom? Being dragged around by only your desires, isn't really true freedom. That sounds more like slavery. Maybe, real freedom happens when you completely give yourself to someone else. That's how it works with God. You give up your life and you gain eternal life. You thought you were free before and then you realize that you didn't even know what freedom was because you'd never experienced it.

I marvel at how Jesus said that in marriage "the two become one." It's like you become siamese twins. Two worlds collide, two stories coalesce, two destinies merge. You become so intertwined that life without the other person doesn't seem like life at all. You find out that competing with each other is futile because you're both on the same side. If you win an argument then you actually lose in the end, because their loss is your loss. If you insult her, then you are actually insulting yourself, because you are both one. I pray for a marriage where we are fighting for one another, instead of fighting each other. It would be such a travesty if we used all of our passion and strength against each other, instead of combining our efforts to do wondrous things for the kingdom of heaven.

I have to admit, sometimes, life without love seems much simpler. But that is impossible. We love no matter what. If there is noone else to love then we just love ourselves more. But self-love leads to self-destruction, because true love is meant to be given away.