Marriage Preparation Questionnaire Review

Bookly here.

We got the call last night from one of the marriage preparation class facilitators. Our couple's questionnaire results are in and they want to meet with us privately to go over them.

The first thing Smartbottom said to me after I hung up the phone was "I can see it now: 'You guys scored a little differently on your thoughts around what God's role is in your romantic life. (Bookly – Um, God creates life; Smartbottom – Thank God for our romantic abilities?) Lets talk about these differences.' And we'll look at each other and tell them we already talked about it and agree. Then there will be an awkward moment as they weigh us on whether we can be rescued." She's probably right. It isn’t that were unfaithful to our religion. It’s that we aren’t such strong believers that we think about God in everything we do, especially our romantic life. We’re spiritual, not religious. Spirituality is not religion. Religion divides people. Belief in something unites them.

Anyways, to make matters worse, this private meeting is at the house of one of the facilitators. And it just so turns out that I went to school with one of her daughters, for twelve years.

That's just great! I can just imagine that these overzealous religious facilitators will find our questionnaire responses & review answers a little contrary to their safe and secure little world and that they will talk with their daughter about us. "I saw Bookly tonight! You remember him, right? When you were in grade 4 he's the kid you punched in class and blamed by telling the teacher he was kicking your desk, when all he was doing was minding his own business, bouncing his knee and drawing. Anyways, he and his fiancé think God doesn't have much of a role in their romantic life! That's strange for a Catholic raised couple, isn't it? But is this how couples in your age group tend to think?"

I may be jumping to conclusions, but we got the sense that this kind of thinking will occur. People, we just want to get married. We’ll work with you on preparing for our marriage as part of our desire to have it sanctified by the church, but please don’t measure and judge us based on your religious conviction.