STEPHANIE FORMENTI | CONTRIBUTOR

Summer is upon us and so is wedding season! This means that many engaged couples are anticipating a wedding and preparing for marriage. The season of engagement can seem like a time created for planning a wedding, attending bridal showers, celebrating with friends, and booking a honeymoon. But engagement is much more significant than that. It is a unique season full of opportunities for growth and maturity. So don’t waste your engagement! Whether you are engaged yourself, walking alongside engaged friends, a mother-of-the-bride, or a spiritual mother to younger women, here are three things to consider about preparing for marriage.

Embrace the Tension

First, embrace the tension. The season of engagement is wrought with mixed emotions. There is a growing sense of commitment which leads to contagious excitement, ear-to-ear smiles, and hopeful anticipation. On the other hand, the engagement season comes with a heavy load of details to think about and plans to make. This can be overwhelming and even paralyzing. But, more than that, there is an underlying tension present during engagement. When you get engaged, you make a decisive move towards planning your life with someone; you make a significant commitment. You decide what dishes you want, the thread count for sheets, and pick out a mattress. In premarital counseling, you talk about budgeting, conflict-resolution, family dynamics, and sex. And all these small decisions and weighty conversations inch closer and closer to becoming “one flesh” the way God intended marriage to be. You talk about the future as if you are already married. But here lies the tension: you are not married yet. This tension makes engagement a tricky experience that can be difficult to navigate and even frustrating at times.

But the truth is, every Christian woman finds herself sitting in an already/not yet tension. We are fully united to Christ and yet we await his return when we will see Him face to face. We are already “blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” and have already “obtained an inheritance” (Ephesians 1:3,11) even as we wait to “acquire possession of it” (Ephesians 1:14). We are the bride of Christ waiting for our groom to arrive making the Christian life a long exercise of waiting in tension. Your season of engagement is therefore a concentrated experience of this reality. It is an opportunity to keep this already/not yet aspect of your journey with Jesus front and center. When you feel yourself longing to be married and tired of waiting, take it to Jesus as a realization that such a desire, as real as it is in the moment, also points to a deeper sense of longing as we wait for the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Build some Muscles

Second, build some muscles. It is common for couples to hit the gym more often during engagement. But don’t forget to also build some spiritual muscles as you prepare for marriage. Here’s what I mean: as you embrace the tension of growing in intimacy on one hand and not yet being married on the other, you are presented with an immense opportunity to develop spiritual muscles of self-control and patience. It can be easy to believe that engagement is a culturally constructed season and to convince yourself that sexual intimacy is harmless at this stage in the relationship. But part of embracing the tension is choosing to live faithfully in the current season in which God has placed you. You are not yet married, so boundaries of sexual intimacy are clearly drawn. Instead, consider the difficulty in this area as an opportunity to grow as a more patient and self-controlled woman— as a woman driven by the Spirit rather than the flesh. Because the truth is, life will consistently present opportunities in which you will need to use those muscles of self-control and patience. The habits you form now will be the habits you bring into your marriage; building strong spiritual muscles now will benefit your marriage later. You may not find yourself needing self-control in the exact same areas and you may not find yourself needing patience in the exact same way, but you will need those muscles later in some way, shape, or form. The more you can strengthen them now, the stronger they will be later.

Play the Long Game

Finally, play the long game. Engagement is for a season; marriage is for life. So, prioritize accordingly. Weddings are a big deal, and as Christians, we should readily celebrate marriage with festivities and joy! But resist the urge to make engagement all about the wedding day itself. Instead, spend some time thinking through what it looks like for you to be a couple on a mission— invested in the mission of God and the expansion of His kingdom. Even while there is much to plan, identify the things you value as a couple and then work from there.

Your wedding day is a good place to start. For example, as Christians, weddings present a unique gospel opportunity. If the gospel is something you value as a couple, how will that be visible in your ceremony? How can you practice hospitality and service even as you consider catering and seating charts? How can you love others more than yourself even as you find yourself in the spotlight as a bride? Then move the conversation beyond the wedding day. Are you invested in godly community? Do you have ways to use the gifts God has given you in your local church? Are you generous? Life doesn’t stop when you get engaged. Your engagement and the plans you make during this season are indicative of the kind of marriage you want to have. Play the long game and begin thinking beyond the wedding day as you embrace the invitation to participate in the redemption of all things with your soon-to-be spouse.

Engagement is wonderful, hard, exciting, and exhausting. But it is also an opportunity. Don’t waste it!

Photo by Jeremy Wong Weddings on Unsplash