Are You Ready for Marriage?
Marriage is for grown-ups. It is not for children. It’s too complicated for the immature.
But maturity is not about age. The world is filled with children who live in adult bodies; with babies who are six feet tall, with small boys who have hairy chests and pot bellies, and little girls who have gray hair and wrinkled faces.
“Oh yes,” you say, “I am not a child and the person I am planning to marry is not one either. Don’t you see the hair on my chest? I was not born yesterday.” And so you think you are a grown-up and mature enough to marry because you are 30 years old now, or 40, or 50.
Being a grown-up is not about when you were born. It has to do with how you see yourself and others, how you behave when you don’t get your way, and how you handle responsibility. Many people grow older without growing up.
Would you marry a 10 year old? Then why are you willing to marry a person who behaves like a ten year old emotionally? And why should someone marry you, if that’s how you behave? A thirty year old man or woman who responds to life like a child is a child, no matter what his or her birth certificate says.
After more than 30 years of counseling of men and women in marriages, one pastor said he could sum up what they all needed to do in two words: “Grow up!” How true! If you are contemplating marriage, make sure you plan to grow up first. And before you agree to marry someone, make sure he or she is a grown-up as well, and remember, you cannot rely on their birth certificate or driver’s license to determine their true “age.”
Believe me–you do not want to be married to someone who behaves like a child emotionally. All of us have seen children rolling around on the floor, having temper tantrums, or retreating into a corner and refusing to play with other children when they don’t get their way. We’ve seen them pout and puff because somebody said no to them. But I have seen many adults behave in a similar way. When things do not go their way, they blow a fuse, holler like a baby, and start to pout and puff just because they do not get what they want or think they deserve. I do not care how old you may be, that type of behavior is a sure symptom of childishness, and an indicator that you are not as grown-up as you think.
Perhaps, when old men and women like us behave like children do, we should be sent to our rooms like children and told to stay there until we grow up; or we should get our derrière spanked to teach us such behavior is unacceptable, in children, but most certainly in people who are supposedly adults and contemplating marriage.
Listen, if you have marriage in mind, then you need to pay attention to what is now being called a person’s emotional IQ. How developed, how mature, how healthy are you and your potential spouse emotionally? How do you both behave when you do not have your way? You need to be honest with yourself about your own maturity level and that of the person you are thinking about marrying before deciding to marry, or you will be setting yourself up for much misery.
Marriage really is for grown-ups. Are you willing to grow up? If not, you are not ready for marriage.
A Moment of Grace 
God bless you so much my Bishop and Father….This is a timely word for me. Merry Christmas to You and Mama.
This is a quick note of reminder to me.
Amen! Thanks for the reminder. It makes long married woman like me search my own heart again!
Good morning Bishop, I’d like to thank God for you on another great and powerful teaching on this institution, marrage.
It is said that “Maturity is not an age, but it is a state of mind”.
Merry Christmas to you and family, like Moses, may he continue to reveal deeper things to you.
Reblogged this on A Moment of Grace.