Man the bar just keeps getting raised higher and higher for creative marriage propsals. Usually not into these sort of videos but thought this one was especially cool and was filmed in my second home Portland Oregon.
Tag Archives: marriage
Floating Thoughts
- Back in my own apartment after a week of house/dogsitting. I had a good time staying there but its always nice to be back in your own bed and space to ya know?
- Man 2011 seems to be the year for WEDDINGS! Went to Michael Brown’s wedding in beautiful Mt Tabor Park. Always a mix of emotions when you are 30, single and watching a 22 year old guy you have known since he was 16 getting married.
- Had a great hike today with Sam Campbell up Angels Rest in the Gorge. After an awesome hike I introduced him to the best middle eastern food in Portland at Hoda’s
- Speaking of weddings…I am honored to be Austin’s Best Man in his wedding coming up on July 16th. Gonna be putting the final touches on the bachelor party this week. Doing my best to create a memorable, fun and clean party…not easy but worth it when you keep the big picture in mind.
- Excited to see Transformers 3 tomorrow night. Heard that its gonna be much better than 2 and alot more like #1…which is important since #2 sucked so much in my opinion.
- Beginning to think abit more about my big move coming up in late August…gonna be hard to leave Oregon.
Strike Against Me?
When you are applying for jobs you learn alot about how “marketable” you are…especially in this tough economy. From my experience and what I’m reading these days, employers are able to be very selective due to the large number of applicants. I am very thankful for the resume that I’ve built over the years, for the unique places that God has allowed me to serve/grow as a leader. Ironically the biggest strike against me might actually not even be on my resume at all; my marital status.
I assure you I am not being pessimistic here, but know from serving on hiring committees myself and having applied for numerous ministry jobs over the past year. While legally they aren’t supposed to discriminate due to marital status (thus asking questions related to it) churches are very interested to know if they are hiring a single guy or a married guy. And while I completely understand them wanting to know my marital status, I hate the perceptions that some churches hold that it’s risky to hire a single guy. This is yet another example of the church being influenced by a cultural perception rather than holding to what the Bible explicitly teaches on singleness. There are benefits with either reply to the marital status question and churches take just as great a risk when hiring a married man for he is just as capable of moral failure as the single guy.
I appreciate very much some bold enough in ministry to speak up for singles in ministry as they are swimming against the current in Christian culture today. I recently read a great post from a single pastor who addresses the issue of bias towards singles. I encourage you to check it out HERE. (Thanks Michael! ~ who ironically is getting married this summer)
I get enough pressure from mainstream culture, friends & family and the voice between my ears and it’s lame to think being single might be what keeps me from a good job.
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin For… (Part 5)
If you didn’t find Tommy Boy to be a funny movie than you are more than likely not my soul mate.
All kidding aside…wait no keeping the kidding inside: I am looking for woman who shares my love for Humor. I want to marry someone that can make me laugh, I can laugh with and usually gets my sense of humor. Life is hard and soooo much better when your days can be filled with laughter. I believe the best relationships are the ones that can be really silly one minute and get deep the next…in fact I think the degree to which you can become silly AND serious is in direct correlation with how close you are to a person. I don’t want a dry, serious marriage, but one that doesnt take itself too seriously. After a long hard day at work the best thing my future wife could give me is something to make me laugh, to get my mind off of the day.
So yeah HUMOR that’s part of what I’m lookin for.
This is the final post in the “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin For…” series and I hope you have enjoyed getting to know a little more of what I’m looking for. I will say in closing that this “list” wasn’t by any means exhaustive, nor is it a litmus test that everyone must pass to get a chance with me. I know there’s a lot of variables out there, but these qualities are ones over the years that stand out as important to me. Also want to mention that part of the learning over the years is that we are most compatible with those LIKE ourselves…so yes I believe I exhibit each of these traits in this series to one degree or another.
(*This post is the final post of a blog series…you can catch the first four posts below;)
POST #1 – Intro
POST #2 – Ambition
POST #3 – Cultured
POST #4 – Godly
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin For… (Part 4)
After reading my first three posts in this series some of you might be thinking what a heathen I am for not saying anything about Spirituality. Well that’s because a “spiritual” woman isn’t attractive to me. What I am looking for is a Godly woman. What’s the difference? Some of you get it right away. I am not looking for an Oprah watching, The Secret reading type whose spiritual” life tends to come in and out like an ocean tide. Spiritual people are still very often self-centered doing whats best for them, seeking their own wills. A Godly woman seeks the will of another, she grabs a hold of her bible and takes what it says seriously…as if God Himself wrote it for her. When I think of the family I would like to have one day the woman in it places a high priority to her personal faith. It would be natural for her to suggest seeking God’s will in making family decisions for she has done so many times before in her journey with God. It would be natural for her to lead a prayer before the family eats dinner or for her husband at the end of a rough day because she has had alot of practice as she has prayed for many years on her own.
Some of my male cohorts in seminary might argue for a male-led home when it comes to faith issues. They would quote verses with men being the head and women being beneath the man. Well even if I were to give them that, like a speaker once said; “the man can be the head of the house, but the woman is surely the neck.” Now that might seem a little too cliché for you, but I think the basic point behind it is true…a Godly marriage is a partnership. If anyone leads it is always done so with the other closely in-step and never forced or manipulated. Though these marriages are rare in our world today I know they exist for I’ve seen them and will not settle for anything less.
So yeah GODLY that’s part of what I’m lookin for.
(*This post is part of a blog series…you can catch the first three posts below;)
POST #1 – Intro
POST #2 – Ambition
POST #3 – Cultured
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin For… (Part 3)
This is a picture of what I am hoping to marry someday…beautiful isn’t she? No I am not hoping to marry an oyster or even just any pearl, but a cultured pearl. Do you know the difference between a cultured pearl and a regular one? Basicially pearls happen in nature without any human involvement, cultured pearls come when scientists help the process along and arguably produce more stunning pearls than nature does on her own. My desire is to marry someone who is well cultured.
I learned this when I went out on a date with a gal from eharmony back in 2007. We decided on a movie for our first date after her effort to get tickets to a band we both liked had failed. As we sat waiting for the movie to start, I did my best to spark conversation with a topic that I thought would be easy and connect well with the moment; movies. About 10 minutes into conversation it became crystal clear this girl had not seen many movies that I assumed most had. And then she shared the clincher; she had fallen asleep during Transformers! Fallen asleep during Transformers? Was she drunk? To me that is the cultural equivalent to falling asleep in the middle of a Duck game at Autzen Stadium! Now I’m sure many of you will gladly stick up for this poor girl (GO HOMESCHOOLERS!)…but you cannot argue away the fact that she was not a match for me. What I learned driving home that night was more about myself than her, I learned I wanted a woman who liked movies, live music and going to events. Well I don’t like the labels “extroverts” or “introverts”…I pretty confident what I’m looking for is more likely to be an extrovert. .
So yeah CULTURED that’s part of what I’m lookin for.
(*This post is part of a blog series…you can catch the first two posts below;)
POST #1 – Intro
POST #2 – Ambition
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin For… (Part 2)
If you were to ask me what I find most attractive about a woman (setting physical attributes aside) ambition always rises to the top. I have always admired women who know they want in life AND have the drive to get it. While some guys prefer the “servant” wife whose sole existence seems to revolve around him, this would be least attractive for me. It’s important to me to find a woman who has already discovered her purpose for being on this planet, (or is in hot pursuit of figuring out what that purpose is) and that purpose is not to support me in fulfilling my purpose. An ambitious woman is a confident woman. She has no problem speaking up for herself or being in large groups, she has little if any marked insecurities.
Note of caution here to those of you who might be thinking this is a slam against stay at home moms…definitely not. Stay at home moms could be quite ambitious and be living out their purpose to raise kids and make a home. However I think it is highly unlikely I will marry a woman that doesn’t have career/volunteer ambitions outside of the home.
Bottom-line, I want a woman who doesn’t need to be in relationship with me, rather she wants to be in relationship with me. This is a woman who existed just fine before knowing me and if tragedy hit could go on existing after me. As I shared in the first post, relationships for me are more about “wanting” than “needing” and I need someone who is compatible in this area.
So yeah AMBITION that’s part of what I’m lookin for.
(*This is part 2 of a blog series you can find part 1 HERE)
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Lookin For… (Part 1)
A week from Saturday I will turn 30 and most of me simply cannot believe that is so. One of the things I hoped would have happened before I turned 30 would be getting married and unless something miraculous happens (like Scarlett Johansson divorcing her husband, moving to Portland …meeting me and deciding we were meant to be all in the next 12 days) it looks like I will start my 31st year off single.
People love to talk about my singleness…and generally I get two common questions;
1. Do you want to be married? And the answer to that is most days. I am not the type of guy who has ever felt he “needed” a girlfriend (hence the lack of them over the years) but thats not to say that I havent “wanted” one. To me there’s a big difference between feeling you need someone and wanting them.
2. Do you know what you are looking for? I think most assume that one of the reasons I would arrive at 30 and still be single would be that I simply didn’t know what I was looking for in a mate. I think this was definitely true in my early twenties when all that really mattered was attraction and some character. But thankfully I’ve matured through observing/interviewing married couples, reading relationship books, going on dates, eharmony, taking relationship tests AND working on my past junk. So YES I feel I have a pretty good handle on what I’m looking for in a mate…and if anything my problem tends to be that I am looking for abit much 
For the rest of this week I am going to share with you some of the traits that I am looking for in a wife. These will not be in any particular order of importance, nor will they be overly profound…just what comes to mind rather quickly when I think about what I would like to spend the rest of my life with. Feel free to offer your own thoughts on the trait I’m sharing, but I would humbly ask for you to shy away from clichés or talk to me as if I have some sort of relational cancer and need a pity party….I have heard em all over the past decade.
Oh and I would recommend listening to THIS as you read each post in the series.
