Congratulations! You made it all the way to the last part of this series of posts I started 2 months ago. It won't even be a long post (I hope). I have talked about why I structured our relationship the way I did. Why I chose friendship, even when I knew I liked her, before trying to court her. Why I did not choose a progression of casual to serious dating before deciding to make things more official. Those were all previous posts (hint: so check them out if you haven't already).
I also talked about what it took for me to ask if I could court her. I did not yet mention this one particular tenet of courtship that is quite unpopular nowadays. I asked for permission to court her. I first got the approving advice of my father and family, who had met her already. After I asked her, and she said yes (after the second try), I then asked permission of her parent for permission to court her daughter.
“I asked her mom for permission to court her daughter. I asked my dad too.”
Yup. I. Asked. For. Permission.
Courtship is a family affair. I know it's counterintuitive, countercultural, counter-everything-you-planned-on-doing. But I have learned that God does not bless relationships that are not condoned by parents. When your family doesn't get along with the person in which you are interested, that is a red flag. You're probably thinking of a thousand reasons why I am wrong on this. You're also probably of the opinion (like I was) that my parents don't get to decide my relationships for me, and I will date who I please and love who I love. Well, I've told you how that worked out for me. You probably have some stories of how that has worked out for you.
Proberbs 21:1 says that "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes." God can sway the hearts of your authority figures in order to get a message to you. Yes, that means your parents, even if they haven't been great parents or don't know the Lord. If you seek the advice of the Lord through your parents, He will turn their hearts wherever He wishes, thereby letting you know what is His will for this time or this person. God doesn't need them to be great parents or even spiritual to talk to you through them. If you seek Him, He will use both sets of parents as lane markers to guide you down the right path. If any of the parents is uncomfortable with the decision you are making, it is a sign that now is not the time to move forward.
But I got my permission. So I'm going to move forward with this post.
So I asked my parents, I asked her, and I asked her parents, and now I'm in a courtship relationship. Essentially I like her, she likes me, and now she is my girlfriend. And that is awesome and I love it and life is good. But I'm still a leader, and I must still have a vision and plan.
You have to make sure you're not falling in glove.
Our job is now to get to know things about each other that we would only need to know if we were someday thinking about getting married. Of course we deepen our friendship, and we hang out more exclusively (in safe, non-tempting places at safe, non-tempting times --yes we had a curfew), and we spend time and do fun things together. But after a short while of dating, (you've already read about this if you read Bev's posts), we decided it was time to become well equipped in getting to know each other. I was ready to enroll in a class right from jump, but Bev wanted to wait a little while (which I think was smart). Please know that "a little while" was like 2 months. Not a year or even 6 months.
We took a sort of pre-premarital counseling course called "So You Think You Want To Get Married." This course is designed not to help you stay together but to help you find out whether or not you should stay together. The teachers, Skip and Beverly Little, authors of So You Think You Want To Get Married (check them out at www.skipandbeverly.com), actually told us that the class is designed to break us up if we were not a good fit for each other. It takes some bravery (and some wisdom) to take that class.
“ When you’re in love, you feel like you can make anything work. Too bad you won’t be in love forever.”
But we discovered that there are soooo many things that a courting couple must discuss and find out about each other before it is safe to make the decision to get engaged and married. This course taught me that there is no way a couple should be getting engaged without seeking some side of outside counseling BEFORE getting engaged. When you're in love, you feel like you can make anything work. Too bad you won't be in love forever. So you're going to need a cool set of eyes and unchanging set of principles to help you make your decisions while your decision making ability is impaired by love.
You have to discuss so many things about your own personal goals (that you made prior to or independently of your love interest), your values, your plans. You. Yourself. Not you and your boyfriend or girlfriend. Just you. And then you have to see if you both link up and if you both really are going in the same direction. I'm talking specific stuff too. We had to talk about things like what neighborhood we each wanted to live in, what we would do when family members wanted to borrow money, how we wanted to educate our children, and literally over 100 more topics. They even have one particular session where every person and their potential (their boyfriend or girlfriend) brings their parents (yes from all over the country and even the world) so that they can be educated on what to look for in their child's potential mate before they give their parental blessing.
Because of the things we learned and discussed in this class, we felt like we were as prepared as we could possibly be to take the next step. And we discovered that God was leading us forward.
And the rest, you've already read about! I hope that I have demonstrated in the last few posts how the courtship mindset took a lot of the unnecessary questions and problems out of dating and hopefully even marriage for Beverly and me. And I hope it has challenged you to look at dating in a different light. One that will guide you more safely down the path God has for you.
See? I told you this was the last one! Ha! I knew it. Sorry it wasn't short though. But what are you gonna do? Am I right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯