If you missed Tuesday’s post click here and read it first.

My personal stance is that a promise ring is a waste of time. It’s an unnecessary step on the way to the alter. Until a guy is ready to put an engagement ring on your finger, don’t let him put anything else on your finger.

A promise ring allows a guy who is not in a position to make a real commitment to you to make a lesser commitment and thus a mini-marriage is born. The two of you begin talking about what life will be like when you get married, and what you will name your children. In a way, you begin to play house with no real grasp on how much money it really takes to run a household, how to balance a budget and how quickly college loans can add up.

Most guys I know handed out promise rings claiming, “This is just until I can save up for a real ring.” One guy I knew in college even went door to door in the dorm buildings offering to take out people’s trash for a small donation toward his girlfriend’s engagement ring. If a guy needs to save up for an engagement ring, and doesn’t have a job that will provide him with an income with which he can purchase a ring quickly, you’re in trouble.

A guy who cannot afford an engagement ring will never be able to afford real life. A promise ring is like a glaring reminder that this guy is in no way ready to walk down the aisle. You can choose to be exclusively committed to someone in a dating or courting relationship without a promise ring. And while your ring finger is free from a premature promise it might be a little easier not to begin sentences with “When we get married…”

The promise ring changed everything for Cyndi and Mark. They were no longer dating. They were “pre-engaged.” And as the years wore on and more and more of our friends really got engaged, Cyndi’s finger still boasted the simple silver ring Mark had given her long ago. And the two of them were thrust into a pressure cooker.

Cyndi began to grown insecure when people constantly asked when they were getting married. Mark just grew annoyed. And one day the pressure cooker boiled over spilling the remnants of two broken hearts and one wasted relationship. There were tears and heartache.

Cyndi eventually packed up all of her Mark memories and stored them away in a box. Mark said good-bye and packed his bags and moved somewhere new. And for the first time in four long years both Cyndi and Mark were free to explore who God made them to be outside of the confines of a premature relationship.

When she was twenty-one Cyndi got to do what she had never allowed herself to do at seventeen: explore who God made her to be. Her gifts and talents began to come alive at this point. She joined a small group and made some of the greatest friends ever. For the first time she understood what “girl time” really was and she enjoyed the fact that she didn’t have to check in with a boyfriend if girl time went later than scheduled. My heart danced as I watched her get her master’s degree and land her dream job.

For the first time she got involved in ministry on her own as she began teaching a Sunday school class, and she also started digging deeper in her quiet times with God. Verses rolled freely from her lips, and she seemed far more sympathetic than she had ever been when she talked with people who were hurting.

 Her pain had birthed a new compassion in her. And God’s voice seemed to be clearer to her than it had been in the past. And Cyndi grew into one of the sweetest and most genuine Christians I have ever known. Mark, on the other hand, has played the prodigal son. His relationship with the Lord seems sketchy at best these days. He took his freedom to explore to places he really shouldn’t have, proving to all of us that he and Cyndi really never were meant to be.

 Two weeks from today there is a date circled on my calendar with little hearts drawn next to it. My husband and I are going to Cyndi’s wedding—and Mark is not the groom. Four years after her devastating break-up, and eight years after Mark first slid a thin silver band onto her ring finger, another man—the right one—got down on his knee and proposed. And when Cyndi said yes he slid a beautiful diamond—backed with a genuine and mature promise—onto that very same finger. They set a wedding date for eight months later.  

For a long time after the break-up, Cyndi left Mark’s ring on. She later admitted to me that she feared she might never meet someone else. But there came a time when she was ready to trust God and take it off. And it wasn’t until she was ready to remove the promise ring from the wrong guy that the right guy came along and put a forever ring on her finger.

Are promise rings premature? I think so. My only two friends who ever wore them married someone other than the guys who gave them those rings. Ironically, both of those guys who were “so spiritual” and gave their girlfriends promise rings eventually walked away from the Lord entirely. Because of Cyndi’s experience I never wore a promise ring. Instead, I waited for a guy with a real diamond and a real promise to back it up. And because of that, I don’t have any regrets.

(This article first appeared in BRIO magazine.)

I will never forget my friend Cyndi’s eighteenth birthday party. Her boyfriend, Mark, showed up with a promise ring and a dozen roses. Cyndi was ecstatic and I was jealous.

For the next four years I listened to her talk about their future as if it was both sure and steadfast. Her sentences started with “When Mark and I get married…” and they ended with something resembling happily ever after.

Imagine my shock four years later, post-college, as I sat across from Cyndi in a quaint Thai restaurant as she dropped a bomb on me when I asked my usual, “So how’s Mark?”

“Actually,” she said sipping her water slowly. “We broke up.” Her sentence hung in the air for a good few minutes as I tried to comprehend what had just happened. If Cyndi and Mark were no longer CyndiandMark then my world had just been turned upside down.

“What happened?” My mouth finally formed the words my heart had been screaming for the past few minutes. And for the next several hours I sat silently chewing on mushy noodles and nodding every now and then as Cyndi proceeded to tell me how her dreams fell apart.

 As she spoke I noticed three fatal flaws in their relationship that, if avoided, could have saved them from wasting four years of their lives on the wrong person and from spending the next several years getting over the trauma of it all.

The first thing that stood out to me about Cyndi and Mark’s relationship is how it began. One day we were all just friends hanging out as a group—living, breathing, and eating as a group would be more like it—and the next day there was a couple in our midst. Cyndi and Mark had been secretly pairing off for a months before the rest of us knew about it. Truthfully, when I found out they were dating I was shocked.

And they weren’t just dating, they were seriously dating. In the beginning it was hard to get used to. Mark had instantly gone from being everybody’s brother to being Cyndi’s boyfriend.

Their relationship began in secret. Most things that begin in secret don’t end well. When something is done in secret it is done without the input and godly counsel of others who may be able to see something that those of us who are in a circumstance can’t see.

Now, I’m not sure if any of our friends would have really had any objection to Cyndi and Mark dating. But perhaps our youth pastor, or one of our youth leaders, would have been able to caution them against the intensity with which their relationship began.

Proverbs 11:14 tells us that “in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” That means wise decisions are made by consulting other people—godly people—whom we would allow to speak the truth into our lives. Cyndi and Mark began their relationship without a multitude of counselors. They prayed and sought God together and separately before beginning to date, but they did not seek the counsel of anyone else.

This left plenty of room for their emotions to rule out common sense. And instead of being able to learn from anyone else’s mistakes they had to (painfully) learn from their own.

This isn’t a matter of age or maturity. Emotions can run wild at any age if we don’t do our best to bridle them and keep them in check. I was twenty-two when I met my husband, Michael. We were crazy about each other. I had already graduated from college and started my career, but we still sought counsel from our pastor and parents before we began dating. And as soon as we were dating we were open about it with all who asked. There wasn’t any secrecy involved. I was up front with Michael about it from the start.

“We can’t keep this from people,” I told him. “Even if we think it’s not their business. I don’t want anyone saying we started our relationship in secret.” Michael agreed.   

Cyndi was seventeen and Mark was eighteen when they started dating. What we can all see in hindsight is that Mark never had any right to put a ring on Cyndi’s finger. He wasn’t in a position to back his promise up with actions. He had no intentions of getting married anytime soon. Had they sought a multitude of counselors in the beginning, perhaps someone would have seen that and spoken up…

(Come back Thursday for part 2 of this article.)