Two Criteria, One Decision

I didn't date much in my twenties. That is not a boast , just a confession. The honest version of that season is that I was making my way through some significant blind spots when it came to relationships, and I didn't have the guidance I needed to navigate them well. No mentor pulling me aside, no trusted voice walking me through what to look for and what to run from. I was, in a word, on my own.

And I paid for it in the usual ways, emotionally driven decisions, and relationship flags I chose to look past because something else was pulling me forward. The kind of pattern that continues until something, or someone interrupts it.

For me, the interruption came quietly, the way the Holy Spirit often works. Not a dramatic moment, but a growing clarity that I needed criteria that were non-negotiable before I met the next person rather than after I was already invested. Two criteria, specifically. Two lines I decided I would not cross regardless of how the conversation felt or how much I wanted to cross them.

The first: she had to be a follower of Christ.

The concept of being equally yoked wasn't as fully formed in my theology at that point as it is now. But somewhere beneath the surface, I knew. I knew that a marriage without a shared faith was going to be two people pulling in ultimately different directions, even if things felt aligned in the early seasons. The most important relationship in my life, my relationship with God, could not be a private matter in my marriage. It had to be shared, that was not negotiable.

The second: she had to abstain from alcohol.

I've written about my own boundary with alcohol elsewhere, and those who know me understand why this was a hard line. This wasn't a preference, it wasn't a hope, rather it was a criterion. And I was prepared to live with whatever that requirement cost me in terms of narrowing the field.

As you can imagine, those two criteria together dramatically reduced the available options. I want to point that out because the prosperity version of this kind of story often skips over that part, as if obedience to wisdom is free of cost. It is not. There were moments of loneliness. Moments of wondering whether the criteria were too strict. Moments of sitting with the tension of a standard that felt, from the outside, like it was working against me.

It was not working against me.

The Holy Spirit was working for me. Faithfully, patiently, in ways I could not see at the time. My wife is the most beautiful woman on the planet, and I mean that in every dimension that phrase can carry. I cannot imagine what my life looks like without her. I cannot imagine navigating the hard seasons, the losses, the decisions, and the daily joy of building a life together with someone whose faith is not an add-on but a foundation.

I cannot understand how marriages hold together without Christ at the center. That is not a judgment of people in difficult situations, it is an observation from inside a marriage where His presence has been the constant. Being committed to someone is not the same as being in a covenant with God at the center. The difference is not semantic.

The wise/foolish question, applied to dating and marriage, comes down to this, are you willing to define your criteria before you are emotionally compromised by the situation? Because that is the only version of wisdom that actually holds. Criteria decided in the moment of attraction are not criteria are negotiations, and they rarely end well.

Make the decision before you need it. Then trust the One who guided you to it.