NEW ALBANY — My baby girl is getting married Saturday. Well, she's hardly a baby anymore, but you know what I mean. She's a gifted young lady in her early 20s; it hardly seems possible that not long ago, she was a newborn who fit into the palm of my hand.

Her mother and I were beginning to wonder whether there was a young man anywhere in the world who not only deserved her, but could love and cherish her as much as we do. We needn't have worried. Her husband-to-be is a fine young man who has very quickly become part of our family.

“Happy Dollars.” If a member wants to promote a fund-raiser, a community event, or is just plain happy about something, it will cost them a dollar to announce it. In case you were wondering, our happy dollars help fund scholarships and a variety of community projects. I had two happy dollars last week; one was to celebrate the fact that my daughter was getting married soon; the second was to announce that I had sold my wife's car that morning to help pay for it! That got a laugh; “Does she know?” someone yelled out.

Well, she does now.

To my way of thinking, marriage is the first and most important human institution, created by God for our pleasure, benefit, and protection. Ideally, it is a life-long commitment; the vow we make at the altar is intended to remind us of that truth, and to encourage us to do everything in our power to work out our differences and stay together during the tough times.

Marriages will be tested; how we handle each test determines not just the future of the couple involved, but also that of our children, our community, and our entire society. Too many people have given up on their marriages too soon, and have missed out on the experience of working through the hard times together and coming out on the other side, stronger as a couple and more deeply in love with one another than before.

In recent decades, marriage has fallen out of favor in some segments of our society. There have always been people among us who rejected the idea of getting married in favor of a bohemian “anything goes, anytime, with anyone” philosophy. In retrospect, the “free love” movement of the ’60s hurt us more than it helped us. The rapid profusion of sexually-transmitted diseases over the last four decades is just one of the many negative consequences we've suffered for throwing marriage overboard and failing to honor the marriage bed.

Marriage is important because children thrive best when they grow up in a loving, peaceful, and stable home, headed by a mother and a father who are married to one another, and have made an active commitment to work out any differences that may arise.

One important parenting skill is the ability to fight with your spouse without disturbing the family's peace. The ability to disagree without lashing out with verbal violence seems to be a lost art in a culture that glorifies and promotes such self-centered behavior as getting in someone's face and shouting them down.

Single parents have the toughest job in the world; unfortunately, children raised by one parent generally do not do as well as children from two parent homes. Kids need ongoing love, discipline, and guidance from both a mother and a father. There are gifts that only a mother can give to her children, and gifts that only a father can give. When it comes to raising children, there is no such thing as “quality time.” The quality time concept is nothing more than a feeble attempt to justify parents giving very little face-to-face undivided attention to their kids. Kids need “quantity time” with both parents if they are to become spiritually mature, emotionally healthy adults capable of handling the challenges of life. Kids do not know when they are having quality time; all they know is that they hardly ever get to hang out with dad or mom. Kids do even worse when dad is missing in action and mom is selfishly placing her own “need” for sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll ahead of her children. She abandons them for days or weeks on end, often turning them over to the care of her own mother while she does her own thing.

This scenario frequently leads to mom's arrest, conviction, and incarceration for mostly substance abuse related offenses. According to studies, the child of an inmate has a seventy percent chance of becoming one too. Pass the pain, please.

For society to prosper over time, the next generation must be properly prepared to take over responsibility and leadership from the generation that precedes them. As long as they are still young and vulnerable, our kids cannot be left to figure out on their own how life works by consulting with their equally-confused peers, or getting their information from the internet or TV. Confused, ill-informed children eventually become confused, ill-informed adults.

We do what we know to do. The products of today's broken homes and non-existent marriages are at risk of producing the next generation of “lost boys.”

I do not like this future, but we are not helpless; nor are we stuck with a pre-determined outcome. This Saturday, my daughter and new son take a stand on behalf of love and sanity when they stand before God, family, and friends, and make each other this solemn yet joyful promise; “I do…no matter what.”

May their entire generation of promise make the same promise.