While many of my friends were reading Wait For Me and donning their “True Love Waits”
rings/accessories/t-shirts/stickers (the early 00’s were really the time for
these Christian Pop pieces), I was learning the value of purity for more than
just saving yourself for marriage. While the girls in my youth group traded
stories of how they just “bawled for hours last night” pouring out their hearts
in prayer for their future husbands, or how they were “burdened” to write
letters to him expressing all of their feelings, I sat back and wondered when
the Mother Ship was coming back for them.
Maybe that’s a little harsh, I should tell you I tried. I
really, truly tried to sit before the Lord and pray for my future husband, I
have so many wasted sheets of journal pages that simply read “Dear Future
Husband,” and then nothing. In the end, that’s exactly what I had…nothing. No
words to pray over the mysterious “him”, nothing I was burning to express to
him as we waited for each other. What an emotionless wretch I was!
No, no. That’s not the case at all. As a little girl, I loved
my Barbie’s, but the drama of the on-again-off-again Barbie and Ken
relationship was too much for me. I ADORED my dollhouse. There, a happy,
healthy, successful family dwelled and I imagined up all kinds of Leave It To Beaver scenes for my perfect
little family to play out. When I got a little older, I enjoyed the pre-teen
Christian fictions about courtships and love. In my teens, I was a dedicated
reader of Brio Magazine (once a magazine for Christian girls filled with
articles of missions, devotions, and dating). See! My emotions were there! As was the deep-seeded desire
to someday be a wife.
I wanted to be married, so why couldn’t I just start praying
for the man I was supposed to marry! Well, that was just it. See, in those
times of sitting before the Lord, feeling like a pathetic loser because it was
just so awkward to pray for someone I didn’t even know yet, God was showing me
something else…What if what I desired,
wasn’t a part of His perfect will?
Nowhere in the Word of God, does He promise that we will all
be joined in marriage (except for the grand marriage when Christ will come to
collect His Bride, the church), but He does promise that He has a perfect and
prosperous plan for EVERY SINGLE ONE of His children! (See Jeremiah 29:11)
Sometimes, that perfect and prosperous plan of His doesn’t
include the things we desire, even most deeply, including a husband.
When the Lord challenged me with the earlier stated
question, I realized something. Part of my problem with the “true love waits” mantra
was that it was leading so many to pray and seek THEIR will for THEIR lives.
What I desired, even more that my perfect dollhouse dreams becoming my own
reality, was to be in the center of the will of my Father. I wanted HIS will
for the life HE gave me.
I immediately stopped my pitiful attempts to pray for the
husband I wasn’t even sure was coming, and began praying for the Lord to show me
His will for my life and to prepare me for whatever that included.
My desire for marriage didn’t fade away. In fact, it
increased. I struggled a lot in early adulthood as I watched so many of my
friends marry young. I wanted that too. But, because of what the Lord had
revealed to me all those years ago, my heart was stirred to stop longing for my
own desires and to seek again the will of God. Because we serve a very faithful God, the more I prayed to
know His will, the more He moved me to find it. Eventually, one of the moves He
told me to make, lead me to meet a man named Joe…
The Lord worked a lot of things out in both our lives to
bring us together, and now we’re husband and wife! As I look back at our story,
my most favorite part is that I don’t see God giving me what I wanted in
bringing me into marriage with Joe, rather, I see God doing exactly what He
promised and that is, showing me His perfect and prosperous will for me! And
isn’t that the bigger picture for life? Isn’t that what we were made for? Isn’t
that what we should so deeply desire?
“For everything was created by Him, in heaven and on earth, the visible
and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all
things have been created through Him and for Him.” –Colossians
1:16
Friends, we were made FOR Him, FOR His glory!! Sometimes
that means His glory is achieved through our covenant of marriage with another
person, and other times this means He’s most glorified in us when we’re working
solo. Either way, His glory should be our aim. He is good!
I know I’ve been long winded here, but I’d just like to end
with a few clarifications.
A.) I’m not
trying to bash the “true love waits” campaign; I think it’s a nice idea. I know
the Lord is pleased in mine and my husband’s purity entering into marriage,
because it’s a testimony to the way we tried to love and cherish each other’s
hearts. True love, really does wait.
B.) If you are
praying for a husband, I’m not trying to mock you. Keep making your requests
known to God, but I do ask you to check your heart. Are you praying for a
husband because you find your worth in marriage, or is your heart really set on
God’s ultimate will?
C.) Marriage
is a beautiful thing that God has created. I want everyone I know to get
married just because I love being married so much! But church, we’ve got to
stop. Do you know why it was so easy for so many young girls in my youth group
to pray for their future husbands? To write love letters exposing the most
intimate parts of their delicate and precious hearts? To hold their breath in
anticipation every time a new guy walked into service thinking he just might be
the one to put a ring on their finger? It’s because somewhere along the line,
we made marriage THE thing. I’ve listened to many pastors tell me from the
pulpit that I just need to wait patiently on the Lord for my spouse to come.
THESE ARE EMPTY PROMISES YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS MAKING AND CERTAINLY CAN’T KEEP.
God doesn’t declare that those who are called to be given in marriage are more
righteous than those who are called to work for His Kingdom in singleness, so where
do we get off implying that’s the case? Church, marriage is an amazing gift,
I’m blessed by my own marriage on the daily, but let’s stop praying for all of
the young people and singles to find their spouses. Instead, let’s start
praying for each other differently. Let’s pray that EVERYONE would seek and
know the perfect will of God for their lives whether single or married, so that
they might BEST glorify the Father.
I wasn’t praying for my future husband to show up. I was
moving in the direction of God’s will for my life, trying my best to listen and
obey, and in those moves God lead me to Joe.
