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Taking the plunge: Marriage conversations

When I first told friends that David and I were having serious marriage conversations, I expected smiles and congratulations. Instead I observed raised eyebrows and puzzled frowns.

My friends’ first question is understandable. “He lives in Arkansas. You have another two years in New York before you finish your doctoral course work. Won’t you be engaged forever?”

“No,” I reply, “we’ll go ahead and get married next year and just live apart for a while. It will be tough, but temporary.”

“Why get married then? What’s the point?”

Floating along?

It was with a dose of suspicion that I started reading the feature article in the New York Times Magazine (Feb. 27) about the Scheibners, a large family intent on creating a well-defined Christian subculture in the midst of what, from its perspective, is a world gone hopelessly awry. The parents shop at consignment stores, homeschool their kids, keep the teen pop culture at bay (no Leonardo DiCaprio posters!) and teach traditional family values.