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To the roar of audience laughter, Campolo quipped to his audience this following scenario about how a young son or daughter will know whether they are in love with the right person:
Campolo's major point was no matter how sure or unsure you may be going into the marriage, getting married is a risk. Getting married is only the beginning. Getting married only holds for you the potential to build a marriage. Every time we begin any new relationship, whether it relates to finding friends, whether it relates to employment, or whether it relates to the quest for a marriage partner, we place ourselves at risk. Not only do we risk rejection, but we also place ourselves at risk for other things as well. We can summarize those other risks by saying in all relationships, we expose ourselves to the risk of harm, injury, or insult due to the potential of others directing their counterfeit qualities against us. The two big questions, then, are this:
The answer is, "yes!" We can reduce the risk. We can do it by becoming more familiar with the character of others before we make unwise commitments to them. Please, consider this story of Gavin and Paige: Gavin was just sixteen years old. He never knew his father. He got bad grades in school. His two favorite things were playing his guitar while he dreamed about becoming a rock star and getting high on drugs ...any drugs, but marijuana was his favorite. Paige was also sixteen. Her mother divorced her father after he nearly blew his head off with a shotgun in front of the family when she was a little girl. Her mother made sure she was on "the pill" just in case. She was mostly a follower and always hung closely by the in-group. Gavin was part of the in-group. Gavin was typically too stoned to notice his own potential or the worthwhile friends he could have made. He was popular enough that the girls who graded homework for some of his teachers would change his grades from failing to just barely passing to help him out. The first time Gavin and Paige hooked-up together as friends was at a party where they were both drunk. They felt comfortable around each other because neither of them grew up with a father. Paige soon took over the job of getting Gavin's homework finished. She would hand him the homework to copy in his hand writing five minutes before class would start. Gavin stayed away from the pretty girls who had two parents and who did well in school. He wasn't willing to take the risk of rejection ...not then, not so close to the time when his father abandoned the family. Paige had a reputation for sneaking into dark closets with most any boy that she thought was cool. She thought Gavin was cool. Gavin never considered Paige too seriously until the day Paige invited him over to her house. Her mother was never home, and she hinted to Gavin that they could take a shower together. Gavin and Paige finally worked out the details for him to stay with her for the weekend. Just as they arrived together, Paige's mother was on her way out the door for the entire weekend. She handed them twenty dollars, told them what to eat while she was gone, and told them to help themselves to the whiskey bottle in the cabinet. Gavin was devastated in a matter of weeks when he discovered that Paige thought it was only good clean fun to let other boys kiss her in public ...even with him standing right there. Gavin nearly ended their relationship, but hung on in a desperate attempt to avoid being like his father. By High School graduation, most of their time was spent in private. They really felt close to each other. They thought they were just alike. They liked all the same things. They had a lot in common ...well, maybe not a lot in common. But they both liked sex. They both liked drugs, and they both liked going to movies. What more could any two teenagers want? |