Marriage Postponed Quotes

Something that’s bothered me for a while now is the current profligacy in YA culture of Team Boy 1 vs Team Boy 2 fangirling. [...] Despite the fact that I have no objection to shipping, this particular species of team-choosing troubled me, though I had difficulty understanding why. Then I saw it applied to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy – Team Peeta vs Team Gale – and all of a sudden it hit me that anyone who thought romance and love-triangles were the main event in that series had utterly missed the point. Sure, those elements are present in the story, but they aren’t anywhere near being the bones of it, because The Hunger Games, more than anything else, is about war, survival, politics, propaganda and power. Seeing such a strong, raw narrative reduced to a single vapid argument – which boy is cuter? – made me physically angry. So, look. People read different books for different reasons. The thing I love about a story are not necessarily the things you love, and vice versa. But riddle me this: are the readers of these series really so excited, so thrilled by the prospect of choosing! between! two! different! boys! that they have to boil entire narratives down to a binary equation based on male physical perfection and, if we’re very lucky, chivalrous behaviour? While feminism most certainly champions the right of women to chose their own partners, it also supports them to choose things besides men, or to postpone the question of partnership in favour of other pursuits – knowledge, for instance. Adventure. Careers. Wild dancing. Fun. Friendship. Travel. Glorious mayhem. And while, as a woman now happily entering her fourth year of marriage, I’d be the last person on Earth to suggest that male companionship is inimical to any of those things, what’s starting to bother me is the comparative dearth of YA stories which aren’t, in some way, shape or form, focussed on Girls Getting Boyfriends, and particularly Hot Immortal Or Magical Boyfriends Whom They Will Love For All Eternity. Blog post: Love Team Freezer

According to Crittenden, young women today are deeply unhappy and confused because they ignored the siren song of the new momism and instead followed the really bad advice of their feminist mothers, who allegedly told their girls to forget marriage and motherhood. Instead, feminist mothers supposedly insisted that happiness only comes to those who climb the corporate ladder by impaling men's balls on their Ferragamo heels. (We are both card-carrying members of the feminist axis of evil, and we know of no mothers of twenty- and thirty-something daughters who have said, "Honey, I definitely do not want grandchildren. I want you to get that promotion and work seventy hours a week instead of sixty." Having heeded their feminist mothers' advice, these loser young women have "postponed marriage and childbirth to pursue their careers only to find themselves at thirty-five still single and baby-crazy, with no husband in sight." (No mention of the fact that once you remove the 10 percent of guys who are gay, and the other 30 percent who are snorting wasabi till they puke because they saw it on Jackass, the pickings can be slim.)

At one time, marrying at an older age than average raised a woman’s chance of divorce. Today, every year a woman postpones marriage, right into her thirties, reduces her risk of divorce.

But, perhaps, I should have known then, I should have known that night, standing in the kitchen, that foul meat in the air- looking back on it now, I see that it was the end and the beginning of something more than dinner. More than ruined appetite, a postponed meal, a marriage strained, a freezer unplugged. I could smell the death between them.

....It was to complete his marriage with Maimuna, the daughter of Al Hareth, the Helalite. He had become betrothed to her on his arrival at Mecca, but had post-poned the nuptials until after he had concluded the rites of pilgrimage. This was doubtless another marriage of policy, for Maimuna was fifty-one years of age, and a widow, but the connection gained him two powerful proselytes. One was Khaled Ibn al Waled, a nephew of the widow, an intrepid warrior who had come near destroy- ing Mahomet at the battle of Ohod. He now became one of the most victorious champions of Islamism, and by his prowess obtained the appellation of " The Sword of God." The other proselyte was Khaled's friend, Amru Ibn al Aass ; the same who assailed Mahomet with poetry and satire at the commencement of his prophetic career ; who had been an ambassador from the Koreishites to the king of Abyssinia, to obtain the surrender of the fugitive Moslems, and who was henceforth destined with his sword to carry victoriously into foreign lands the faith he had once so strenuously opposed. Note.— Maimuna was the last spouse of the prophet, and, old as she was at her marriage, survived all his other wives. She died many years after him, in a pavilion at Serif, under the same tree in the shade of which her nuptial tent had been pitched, and was there interred. The pious historian, Al Jannabi, who styles himself "a poor servant of Allah, hoping for the pardon of his sins through the mercy of God," visited her tomb on returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 963, a.d. 1555. "I saw there," said he, "a dome of black marble erected in memory of Maimuna, on the very spot on which the apostle of God had reposed with her. God knows the truth ! and also the reason of the black color of the stone. There is a place of ablution, and an oratory ; but the building has fallen to decay.

As every close observer of the deadlocks arising from the political correctness knows, the separation of legal justice from moral Goodness –which should be relativized and historicized- ends up in an oppressive moralism brimming with resentment. Without any “organic” social substance grounding the standards of what Orwell approvingly called “common decency” (all such standards having been dismissed as subordinating individual freedoms to proto-Fascist social forms), the minimalist program of laws intended simply to prevent individuals from encroaching upon one another (annoying or “harassing” each other) turns into an explosion of legal and moral rules, an endless process (a “spurious infinity” in Hegel’s sense) of legalization and moralization, known as “the fight against all forms of discrimination.” If there are no shared mores in place to influence the law, only the basic fact of subjects “harassing other subjects, who-in the absence of mores- is to decide what counts as “harassment”? In France, there are associations of obese people demanding all the public campaigns against obesity and in favor of healthy eating be stopped, since they damage the self-esteem of obese persons. The militants of Veggie Pride condemn the speciesism” of meat-eaters (who discriminate against animals, privileging the human animal-for them, a particularly disgusting form of “fascism”) and demand that “vegeto-phobia” should be treated as a kind of xenophobia and proclaimed a crime. And we could extend the list to include those fighting for the right of incest marriage, consensual murder, cannibalism . . . The problem here is the obvious arbitrariness of the ever-new rule. Take child sexuality, for example: one could argue that its criminalization is an unwarranted discrimination, but one could also argue that children should be protected from sexual molestation by adults. And we could go on: the same people who advocate the legalization of soft drugs usually support the prohibition of smoking in public places; the same people who protest the patriarchal abuse of small children in our societies worry when someone condemns a member of certain minority cultures for doing exactly this (say, the Roma preventing their children from attending public schools), claiming that this is a case od meddling with other “ways of life”. It is thus for necessary structural reasons that the “fight against discrimination” is an endless process which interminably postpones its final point: namely a society freed from all moral prejudices which, as Michea puts it, “would be on this very account a society condemned to see crimes everywhere.

There is some concern among the Brethren that some of you who are still single may not be moving in the direction of preparing yourselves to seek out and commit to an eternal companion. This applies both to young men and to young women. The greater burden, however, rests upon the young men because in our society it is a responsibility of young men to initiate activities that lead to courtship and to marriage. The doctrine of the Church is very clear and it anticipates that individuals will be married in the temple and rear a righteous family as guided by the inspired document we call "The Proclamation on the Family." . . . Speaking of the obligation of men to marry, President Joseph Fielding Smith taught as follows: "Any young man who carelessly neglects this great commandment to marry, or who does not marry because of a selfish desire to avoid the responsibilities which married life will bring, is taking a course which is displeasing in the sight of God. Exaltation means responsibility. There can be no exaltation without it. "If a man refuses to take upon himself the responsibilities of married life, because he desires to avoid the cares and troubles which naturally will follow, he is taking a course which may bar him forever from the responsibilities which are held in reserve for those who are willing to keep in full the commandments of the Lord. . . . "According to modern custom, it is the place of the man to take the initiative in the matter of a marriage contract. Women are, by force of such custom, kept in reserve. . . . The responsibility . . . rests upon the man." President Smith continued with the following advice to young women: "If in her heart the young woman accepts fully the word of the Lord, and under proper conditions would abide by the law, but refuses an offer when she fully believes that the conditions would not justify her in entering a marriage contract, which would bind her forever to one she does not love, she shall not lose her reward. The Lord will judge her by the desires of the heart, and the day will come when the blessings withheld shall be given, though it be postponed until the life to come.

Blissfully unaware of all that, Elizabeth continued to love him without reservation or guile, and as she grew more certain of his love, she became more confident and more enchanting to Ian. On those occasions when she saw his expression become inexplicably grim, she teased him or kissed him, and, if those ploys failed, she presented him with little gifts-a flower arrangement from Havenhurst’s gardens, a single rose that she stuck behind his ear, or left upon his pillow. “Shall I have to resort to buying you a jewel to make you smile, my lord?” she joked one day three months after they were married. “I understand that is how it is done when a lover begins to act distracted.” To Elizabeth’s surprise, her remark made him snatch her into his arms in a suffocating embrace. “I am not losing interest in you, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” he told her. Elizabeth leaned back in his arms, surprised by the unwarranted force of his declaration, and continued to tease. “You’re quite certain?” “Positive.” “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?” she asked in a voice of mock severity. “I would never lie to you,” Ian said gravely, but then he realized that by withholding the truth from her, he was, in effect, deceiving her, which in turn, amounted to little less than lying outright. Elizabeth knew something was bothering him, and that as time passed, it was bothering him with increasing frequency, but she never dreamed she was even remotely the cause of his silences or preoccupation. She thought of Robert often, but not since the day of her marriage had she permitted herself to think of Mr. Wordsworth’s accusations, not even for an instant. In the first place, she couldn’t bear it; in the second, she no longer believed there was the slightest possibility he was right. “I have to go to Havenhurst tomorrow,” she said reluctantly when Ian finally let her go. “The masons have started on the house and bridge, and the irrigation work has begun. If I spend the night, though, I shouldn’t have to go back for at least a fornight.” “I’ll miss you,” he said quietly, but there was no trace of resentment in his voice, nor did he attempt to persuade her to postpone the trip. He was keeping to his bargain with the integrity that Elizabeth particularly admired in him. “Not,” she whispered, kissing the side of his mouth, “as much as I’ll miss you.

Throughout the history of the church, Christians have tended to elevate the importance of one over the other. For the first 1,500 years of the church, singleness was considered the preferred state and the best way to serve Christ. Singles sat at the front of the church. Marrieds were sent to the back.4 Things changed after the Reformation in 1517, when single people were sent to the back and marrieds moved to the front — at least among Protestants.5 Scripture, however, refers to both statuses as weighty, meaningful vocations. We’ll spend more time on each later in the chapter, but here is a brief overview. Marrieds. This refers to a man and woman who form a one-flesh union through a covenantal vow — to God, to one another, and to the larger community — to permanently, freely, faithfully, and fruitfully love one another. Adam and Eve provide the clearest biblical model for this. As a one-flesh couple, they were called by God to take initiative to “be fruitful . . . fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Singles. Scripture teaches that human beings are created for intimacy and connection with God, themselves, and one another. Marriage is one framework in which we work this out; singleness is another. While singleness may be voluntarily chosen or involuntarily imposed, temporary or long-term, a sudden event or a gradual unfolding, Christian singleness can be understood within two distinct callings: • Vowed celibates. These are individuals who make lifelong vows to remain single and maintain lifelong sexual abstinence as a means of living out their commitment to Christ. They do this freely in response to a God-given gift of grace (Matthew 19:12). Today, we are perhaps most familiar with vowed celibates as nuns and priests in the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Church. These celibates vow to forgo earthly marriage in order to participate more fully in the heavenly reality that is eternal union with Christ.6 • Dedicated celibates. These are singles who have not necessarily made a lifelong vow to remain single, but who choose to remain sexually abstinent for as long as they are single. Their commitment to celibacy is an expression of their commitment to Christ. Many desire to marry or are open to the possibility. They may have not yet met the right person or are postponing marriage to pursue a career or additional education. They may be single because of divorce or the death of a spouse. The apostle Paul acknowledges such dedicated celibates in his first letter to the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 7). Understanding singleness and marriage as callings or vocations must inform our self-understanding and the outworking of our leadership. Our whole life as a leader is to bear witness to God’s love for the world. But we do so in different ways as marrieds or singles. Married couples bear witness to the depth of Christ’s love. Their vows focus and limit them to loving one person exclusively, permanently, and intimately. Singles — vowed or dedicated — bear witness to the breadth of Christ’s love. Because they are not limited by a vow to one person, they have more freedom and time to express the love of Christ to a broad range of people. Both marrieds and singles point to and reveal Christ’s love, but in different ways. Both need to learn from one another about these different aspects of Christ’s love. This may be a radically new concept for you, but stay with me. God intends this rich theological vision to inform our leadership in ways few of us may have considered. Before exploring the connections between leadership and marriage or singleness, it’s important to understand the way marriage and singleness are commonly understood in standard practice among leaders today.

During boomer years the ethic of self-denial, including concepts of duty, postponed gratification, and self-restraint, which earlier Americans considered virtues, were no longer advertised or considered valuable. Only rights and opportunities. By stressing the liberation of the self, expressive Americans came to treat every commitment—from marriage and work to politics and religion—not as moral obligations but as mere instruments of personal happiness. And millions “caught the spirit.

work vehicles and a lone motorcycle, her SUV had the road to itself, which meant she would get there faster. Indeed, the familiarity of turning onto Caroline’s street was a lifeline. Once she parked in front of the mint-over-teal Victorian, she put Tad on her hip and hurried up the walk. The squeak of the screen was actually reassuring. And the smell of time when she stepped inside? Heaven. “Mom?” Caroline ran barefoot from the kitchen, stopped short, and put a hand to her heart. “Mother and child,” she breathed and slowly approached. Her hair was a wavy mess, and her face blushed in a way that made her look forty, but her eyes, moist now, held adoration. Wrapping a firm arm around Jamie, she said by her ear, “We will not mention the show. It has no place in this house with us right now, okay?” Jamie hadn’t even thought about the show, and certainly couldn’t think of it with Caroline’s soft, woodsy scent soothing her nerves and giving her strength. “Mom,” she began, drawing back, but Caroline was studying Tad. “Oh my. A real little boy. Hey,” she said softly and touched his hair. Jamie felt the warmth of the touch, but Tad just stared without blinking. “I think I know you. Aren’t you Theodore MacAfee the Second?” Those very big eyes were somber as he shook his head. “Who, then?” “Taddy,” came the baby voice. “The Taddy who likes cats?” Caroline asked, to which he started looking around the floor, “or the Taddy who likes pancakes?” “Pancakes, please,” Jamie inserted. “I promised him we’d eat here. Mom—” She broke off when Master meowed. Setting Tad on the floor, she waited only until he had run after the cat before turning back to her mother and holding out her left hand. Caroline frowned. “You’re shaking.” She had steadied the hand with her own before she finally focused on that bare ring finger. Wide eyes flew to Jamie’s. In that instant, with this first oh-so-important disclosure, it was real. Jamie could barely breathe. “I returned it. Brad and I split.” “What happened?” Caroline whispered, but quickly caught herself. Cupping Jamie’s face, she said, “First things first. I don’t have a booster seat for Tad.” “He’ll kneel on a chair. He looks like Dad. Do you hate him for that?” Tad was on his haunches on the other side of the room, waiting for Master to come out from under the spindle legs of a lamp stand. “I should,” Caroline confessed, “but how to hate a child? He may have Roy’s coloring, but he’ll take on your expressions, and soon enough he’ll look like himself. Besides,” she gave a gritty smirk, “it’s not like your father gets the last laugh. If he thought I was a withered-up old hag—” “He didn’t.” “Yes, he did. Isn’t that what booting me off Gut It! was about?” “You said we weren’t talking about that,” Jamie begged, knowing that despite this nascent reconciliation, Gut It! remained a huge issue. Not talking about it wouldn’t make it go away, but she didn’t want the intrusion of it now. Caroline seemed to agree. She spoke more calmly. “Your father’s opinion of me went way back to our marriage, so this, today, here, now, is satisfying for me. How happy do you think he is looking down from heaven to see his son at my house, chasing my cat and about to eat my grandmother’s pancakes, cooked by me in my kitchen and served on a table I made?” The part of Jamie that resented Roy for what he had made Caroline suffer shared her mother’s satisfaction. She might have said that, if Caroline hadn’t gone from bold to unsure in a breath. “I’m not equipped yet, baby. Does Tad need a bottle for his water?” “No. He’s done with bottles. Just a little water in a cup will do, since I forgot the sippy.” In her rush to get out of the house, she had also left Moose, which meant she would have to go back for him before dropping Tad off, which meant she would be late for her first appointment, which she couldn’t reschedule because she had back-to-backs all day, which meant she would have to postpone to another day, which

Most young people today know they need to approach their careers with a variety of skills, maximal flexibility, and readiness to retool as needed. That itself pushes youth toward extended schooling, delay of marriage, and, arguably, a general psychological orientation of maximizing options and postponing commitments.

College. Owning a home. Marriage. Children. Having a cushy job. Postponing our dreams for when there will be money. “Work hard and succeed!” Ten thousand hours to mastery. And so on.

Isn't fear the biggest enemy of everybody, especially fear of the unknown? It is. Most of the time, It is the single reason why we fail to live the way we would have wanted and loved. Some people would have loved to marry that person they truly love but they wouldn't because they are afraid. They are afraid that marriage could be a huge distraction that may derail them from the path they have worked so hard to construct. This fear has caused many to postpone marriage to an indeterminable future date or to forget about it completely. For these people, their career is their spouse. Now, don't blame them. Their fear is real and justified.

This saying of Nietzsche is well known: "Nicht fort sollst du dich pflanzen, sondern hinauf. Dazu helfe dir der Garten der Ehe." (Do not plant for the future but for the heights. May the garden of marriage help you in that.) It refers to the idea that today’s man is a mere form of transition whose only purpose is to prepare the birth of the "superman," being ready to sacrifice himself for him, and to withdraw at his arising. We have already done justice to the craze of the superman and this finalism that postpones the possession of an absolute meaning of existence to a hypothetical future humanity. But from the wordplay of Nietzsche’s saying, one can deduce the endorsement of a concept that marriage should serve to reproduce not "horizontally" (such is the meaning of fortpflanzen), simply breeding, but rather "vertically," toward the summit (hinauf pflanzen), elevating one’s own line. In fact, this would be the only higher justification of marriage and family. Today it is nonexistent, because of the objective existential situation of which we have spoken, and because of the processes of dissolution that have severed the profound ties that can spiritually unite the generations. Even a Catholic, Charles Peguy, had spoken of being a father as the "great adventure of modem man," given the utter uncertainty of what his own offspring may be, given the improbability that in our day the child might receive anything more than mere "life" from the father. I have already emphasized that it is not about having or not having that paternal quality, not only physical, that existed in the ancient family and that grounded his authority. Even if this quality were still present—and, in principle, one should assume that it could still be present in the differentiated man—it would be paralyzed by the presence of a refractory and dissociated material in the younger generation. As we have said, the state of the modem masses is by now such that, even if figures having the stature of true leaders were to appear, they would be the last to be followed. Thus one should not deceive oneself about the formation and education still possible for an offspring born in an environment like that of present society, even if the father were such in a more than legal sense.

He called them women (an-nisâ') which is a plural which does not have a singular form. For that reason, he said, "He made me love three things in your world: women..." and he did not say, "woman". He took note of the fact that they came after him in existence. The word an- nisa' also means postponement. Allah says, "The month postponed is an increase in disbelief," (9:37) and the sale of "nasi'a" is said to be by postponement, that is, by credit. That is why he said an-nisa'. He loved them only by rank, and they are the place of the passive. They are to him as nature is to Allah in which Allah opened the forms of the world by the projection of the will and the divine command which is marriage in the world of elemental forms, and aspiration (himma) in the world of luminous spirits, as in the order of premises and their meanings through deduction. All of that is the marriage of the first uniqueness in each of these aspects. Whoever loves women in this measure, loves with a divine love. Whoever loves them in respect to natural appetite in particular, deprives himself of the knowledge of this appetite. For him it is a form without a spirit (rûh). That form in the heart of the matter is the essence of a spirit, but it is not witnessed by the one who comes to his wife or any woman by pure gratification, and he does not perceive the one it is for even so, he has no knowledge of himself, as others have no knowledge of him, since he has not been verbally named so that he could be known.

The father thought to himself that his younger girls were but children, and that the trouble of arranging their marriage portions might well be postponed a while. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. “That Moffat is a griping, hungry fellow,” said the squire. “I suppose Augusta likes him; and, as regards money, it is a good match.” “If Miss Gresham loves him, that is everything. I am not in love with him myself; but then, I am not a young lady.

Accepting our greatness means no longer playing small. It often starts with baby steps. But eventually it means making major changes - in our lives, jobs, relationships, and dreams. If I had believed in my own self-worth, I would never have been willing to make the financial moves I made in the past. If I'd known my value, I couldn't have spent so many years ignoring the whispering - and sometimes screaming - voice that told me to leave my marriage. For a long time, that truth was just too scary and painful for me to face. Talk about keeping my head in the sand! But how many years did I waste, postponing what has proven to be a much better life - simply because I went into hiding and didn't see that I was worthy of something better?

Stanley must have realized that this postponement would probably be fatal. But while he did not give up, he never for a moment thought of abandoning his African quest [...] Yet Stanley still longed for the security of marriage, and hoped he could find Livingstone and marry Katie. [...] The romantic side of his nature told him that their story ought to end in marriage: the workhouse boy, having distinguished himself beyond all expectations, weds the daughter of the respectable local gentleman, and they live happily ever afterwards in a big house [...] But Katie had never understood his inner conviction of being chosen for a great task.

But when we choose to pursue purity and postpone intimacy, Jesus’s sacrifice looks costly, like our most expensive and prized possession. When we do not push boundaries, we announce the priceless weight of every one of his wounds. When we keep our clothes on and our hands from wandering, we celebrate the immeasurable mercy he carried on a back destroyed with lashes. When we wait in dating, we declare again that he really is risen from the dead and reigning in heaven. Our sexual purity will either make the cross look real and valuable, or it won’t. With our eyes happily fixed on Jesus, the once-for-all sacrifice for our sins, he will increasingly be honored in our bodies, whether in singleness or marriage.