You know, when you begin to ask God for a spouse, you actually are relinquishing control. You are asking God to intervene and choose a mate for you. Not that much different than the betrothal of old… I was allowing my Lord to betroth me to His choice for my life. What a step of faith I was taking, yet what relief of that burden being lifted. I did not need to worry, to rush, to choose – God has His best in mind for me. All I had to do was wait. So waited I did. One year, two years, four years, five years. “ I am not getting any younger, Lord I would say; and I was so very weary of walking that road alone. Yet God still brought me strength every day… through His word – the bible, through brothers and sisters in Christ who encouraged me, and through the Holy Spirit. Even through each relationship I encountered, I learned new things about myself and how I needed to continue to most of all depend on the Lord. One day, while talking with a friend, he shared about when he met his wife. He explained that she was so clearly in love with the Lord, that she even told him, that he would need to come around to the idea of her being totally in love with the Lord, first. He was like – whoa! Who is this woman? Haha. I thought, Oh! To be that woman! And I guess I am, in a way. I am totally in love with my Savior and that is a thirst that has never gone away. There is always more to learn, always more to desire, always more wisdom to glean. Through His word, I have learned that our emotional needs, spiritual needs, physical needs are only truly met 100% through Him. Put that to the test in any marriage… we go into a relationship or marriage thinking that this person is going to meet our needs (well, some of us do) or we depend on that person for support or strength that really we should be looking to our Heavenly Father to provide. Women, especially, are bad with this! If we (women) would stop looking to our husbands to fulfill the needs that clearly God has not designed them to fulfill, we would find our relationships and marriages, much healthier. Our sense of value and worth are not wrapped up in what any human being thinks of us. It is solely based on our understanding of our relationship to God. When we go into a marriage knowing this, we enter in on equal footing…both stepping on a foundation of understanding before God – that only He can truly meet our needs. Then and only then will our focus be right – a right focus on the Lord, a right focus on our spouse, a right focus on our marriage.
So, as I continue down this road of singleness, I hope to have grown in wisdom and knowledge… to perhaps be an encouragement to other women who have walked in my shoes, or to warn some women who think the grass is greener on the other side, in my shoes. But I do not walk this road alone – oh no! I walk this road hand in hand with my Savior and all the while it is a sweeter walk than the day before…
