- [Jen Wilkin] I would imagine
this is a question you guys have gotten before. I know it's one that I receive
fairly regularly, a lot of younger women interested in
knowing this, single women. How do you know when
you've met "the one?" - [Jackie Hill Perry] For me
personally, when I met my husband we were friends for
maybe three or four years. And so when we became friends
that was never my thought, I didn't think that we would end
up how we did, but I remember when my heart had started to
shift towards him where I started to have an affection for him,
I knew something was different because I was
willing to follow him. We had gifts that
were very similar. He pushed me in a...not pushed. That sounds terrible,
but he stretched me in a way that was welcomed, and I felt
willing to trust him with my heart and I didn't feel
that for anybody. And so that was one of the ways
I saw like, "Man, I think. Maybe, I don't know. He might be."
You know? Yeah. - [Jen Pollock Michel] I have a
lot of unmarried women in my church congregation. And so this question comes up a
lot, and I always laugh that they have these really kind of
crazy ideas of like, "Okay, like I'm a firstborn so I could
never marry somebody who's a middle child because like that's
never going to work." I'm like, "What book did you
read that in?" You know, you know, I kind of
feel like, you know, whether or not you think he's
the…he becomes the one after you say yes to him.
He becomes the one. That's the person you promise
yourself to and of course you want to make like the wisest
decision possible. So you should be in community
with people, you know, you should be...do other people
say, "This seems really good for you," you know, are you the
kind of relationship where you sort of isolate yourself from
your community and all of a sudden you're just you know,
this pair that you know, you've lost connection
with your friends. What do your friends say about
this….about this guy? Like does he have really good
guy friends? and for me when I...similar to you,
Jackie, when I met Ryan at Wheaton College, the thing
that was really different is that it wasn't that I just liked
him or was attracted to him. I actually admired him. He was the first man I really
admired where I said, "I have so much
to learn from him. I really want to be like him. I think I want him to teach me
things that he obviously knows." And that for me was so
different. - [Jen Wilkin] I had...with Jeff
we were friends for a solid year before we ever went out,
and I had a huge distrust of romance anyway, and so I know
the Lord knew that was what I needed, and I grew up with
four brothers. And so I was accustomed to
friendships with guys and the romance part felt just almost
disingenuous to me, I think because I had enjoyed such good
friendships with guys, not just my brothers,
but other guys as well, and I think I always saw
marriage as when you give up your male friendships,
you know and marrying someone who I was really good friends
with has been just a delight, and it has been, I look at the
hard marriage stories that we hear in our church and I'm sure
you guys hear them too. And I think, "Gosh, I can tell
you guys love each other. I just don't know if you like
each other," and I wish that more women were thinking about
marriage in terms of do I feel a genuine just affection for this
person as another human being, because for the long haul, you're
probably going to be more willing to lay down your
preferences for someone who you just genuinely like. Romance is only going to carry
you so far, and we've really encouraged our kids as well,
"Hey, why don't you form good friendships with people of the
opposite sex? Because if you can identify what
mutual respect and friendship look like and then you can have
that be part of the marriage relationship." At least in my experience,
it has saved us a world of heartache and that,
but then like you said Jen not everyone did that before they
got married, and they find themselves on the
other side of it. It's like now what and you're
exactly right. It's well now, how do I show
preferential love to this person even though there are going to
be difficulties, and you do, you have to look for the things
that you can celebrate about them and for the ways that
they make you better and focus on those things and nurture
those things. And also there's no reason that
on the far side of a marriage that wasn't founded on
friendship that you can't look for ways to develop that around
shared interests and all of that. - [Jen Pollock Michel] I mean,
I think it's a constant growth after you get married, you know,
it's not as just you're constantly investing in the
relationship and the friendship and the Various other kinds of
ways of intimacy that you experience in a marriage,
like it's not just that you know, you marry and it's all
perfect and it just stays, you know, it's not static,
right? You're constantly changing,
your lives are changing as you grow and mature and I think you
know, I got married at 22. What did we even
know about each other? - [Jen Wilkin] Nobody knows anything.
Why are we getting married? - [Jen Pollock Michel] Right? And so
that's why I feel like one thing, too, that I really appreciate about Ryan that I saw in him in
when he was 21 and 22, and I continue to see in him is
that he's a learner and a grower and someone who's just committed
to first of all growing in Christ. I mean for sure if you can marry
somebody whose whole life is given to Christ, who loves the
Lord, you know, that goes a long way, right? I mean it's kind of that very
cliché thing like, you know, two people growing toward the
Lord are also growing toward each other. And so if you can marry somebody
who's committed to growing in Christ and just
growing as a person. - [Jackie Hill Perry] Because you're going
to be with them forever. - [Jen Pollock Michel] Yeah.
- [Jackie Hill-Perry] God willing. - [Jen Pollock Michel] That's right.
God willing. Exactly.
