I Wasn't Praying for a Husband, but He Still Showed Up!

  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.