I have to admit something. I’m a bit disturbed.

Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe a little envy is creeping in, but I get disturbed by the way people on facebook are describing the ones that they will very probably end up marrying.

The descriptions are things like “tall” or “hot” or some other physical attribute. I know attraction is important, but is it the most important thing?

This is the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with and walk through all the seasons and storms of life with. It won’t matter if he’s got six-pack abs when you’re dealing with the loss of a family member. It won’t matter how “hot” he is when you’re struggling to make ends meet and wondering which bill will be left unpaid this month.

The most important thing, the first thing you should be able to say about your potential spouse, is what kind of character he or she has. Is he kind? Is she considerate? How does he treat strangers? How does she talk about her family and friends when they’re not around?

Again, I admit that I am probably making something out of nothing, but I have to get this out in the open so it won’t hang around in my brain and keep me from sleeping tonight.

Mostly, I see a generation that is obsessed with having the perfect weddings, but not nearly ready enough to have successful, impacting marriages. So much of what passes for dating these days is “pretending to be married and practicing for divorce,” as I heard it put once.

One last thing. There’s no prize for how fast you move from dating to being engaged to being married. Take your time and learn everything you can about the other person.

I may be eternally single and date-less, but I do know this: if you try to make a relationship fulfill what only God was meant to fulfill, it will fail miserably.

I have a lot to learn about this, as well as many other areas, but I do know that God is still good and He is still eternally patient with me.

The moral? Take all this with a grain of salt and read it with grace. But keep your eyes open and your mind intact. Love isn’t something you fall into; it’s something that you must choose again each day, something you must work at, something that may at times be very hard, but at all times will be worth it.