To The Altar

In high school I wanted romantic love, but I had dance class and that was that. My schedule was full.

As I neared graduation, I had my first brush with romantic interest in me, and I had no idea how to handle it.

In college I needed love. I wanted to love and be loved, but I needed to feel worthy and worried I would never get the marriage I longed for as the years of singleness dragged on.

Early postgrad I labored for love. I was ready for marriage, but marriage didn't come. Nothing came except more waiting and the need for surrender to God, which I didn't feel capable of as I hung on to my desire. 

As new year became new year, I had unrequited crushes and one real potential, but no one ever traded my singleness for more.

But on December 11, 2021 something changed, and my love life took a profound turn. In some ways I believe that's where my marriage started because that's when I started believing God for it. That's when I started trusting Him with it. That's when I finally released it to His hands and His timing. In my newfound hope and confidence, I put my life in God's control (where it had always been). I started praying for my marriage and my husband, not as theoretic hopes for the future, but as a realized promise--a real marriage and a real husband, who was living his life in that very moment--for which I had not yet reached the appointed time of revelation and fulfillment. 

During that time my waiting changed; it became sweet.

As 2023 became 2024, I went on my first official date, but by February the man was out of my life again. 

Then on March 18, 2024 my waiting season changed yet again after an intimate worship night. The women around me asked how to pray for me, so I asked for prayer over my marriage and my singleness. The day prior I had felt such an intense ache for my husband--I had no despair, but the longing in the midst of my waiting hit me with a physical force--and though I had no urgency, I wanted to pray into that. Afterwards, a woman I'd met that night approached me to share the many women she'd known who had waited for their husbands and ended up with strong, godly men and marriages. She spoke life, telling me that I am spiritually gifted and that God needed to raise up a spiritually gifted man for me. 

This interaction was kind, but it flourished far beyond encouragement. As her words settled over me, God sparked something inside me, and I entered a season of anticipation.

For that whole spring, I felt the joyous weight of that anticipation. As I went about my every day life, I felt the presence of the reality that God was moving, working towards my future in every moment. I was in a season of expectation. I had moments of intense attack, but even those God traded for His good, marking the season by joy and removing hurry from my heart that I might enjoy the blessing He was bringing to me. My marriage was coming soon, and although I didn't quite know how long "soon" would be, I felt the joy of living on the cusp of it.

As I stepped into summer, God started a revealing work. He'd been asking me to step into ministry opportunities, and He was revealing more and more passions in my heart, including deeper visions for my marriage. He was also pruning a lot, revealing where insecurity still gripped my soul and showing me how to rest in His wisdom instead of fearing that I could not discern the difference between the foolishness of the cross and life as a fool.

On July 11, 2024 nothing changed, and there's a sweetness to that. 

The prior weekend God had led me into Song of Songs, and asked me to stay there. I hadn't read Song of Songs much, but I'd fallen in love with it during two sermon series that followed on the heels of my newfound confidence in marriage at the beginning of 2022. As I lingered there, I wondered about my past and my future and how it would all fit together. I wondered about the details of my life and my love story. I asked questions, but even as I did, I knew in my spirit that I didn't need them answered. That God had already confirmed everything I needed, and He would reveal all the rest in His time. My eyes were on Jesus, and all I needed to know was to keep following Him. 

That same weekend and completely unrelated in my mind, God drew me to the promise of Abraham. I tracked through Scripture how Abraham had learned to hold God's promise and how God had interacted with him in it; I started to wonder if my waiting story would look anything like Abraham's: life born in the place of famine.

The following Thursday, July 11, God gave my sister a vision. Earlier that week she'd remembered a dream from the night before of me in lacy, long sleeves on my wedding day, but as she ran that Thursday morning, it became a full blown vision. With details of confirmation built into it, with the kindness of God shining through it, and with timetables that felt unlikely at the very best. 

I basked in God's kindness, but I didn't seek confirmation. I didn't need it. I held the vision loosely, wondering how He would move as I kept my eyes towards Him and went about the work He was already calling me to. But though I didn't ask for confirmation, God was persistent in giving it to me anyway. The very first details my sister gave me touched on key words and songs that had been buzzing in my heart, and I knew this was not just hers to hold. With each confirmation I thought God was done, but He kept pressing in more and more like He desired me to believe it.

I wrestled with that belief. With the impossibility of it. I believed God wanted me to hold it, to trust Him for it, but I also worried that in doing so, I would lift it above Him, try to make it happen on my own, or hold it too tightly. In the Spring I'd asked God who my husband was, not expecting much, because I felt like I was afraid to ask and needed to break that, but then I felt like God revealed the answer, and I didn't know how to hold that either. At times I had great joy and confidence that I would be married by the end of 2025. At times I had great doubt. At times I had fear both of it happening and it not happening. Sometimes I held the promise too tightly, and sometimes I couldn't bring myself to hold it at all. 

But God bore fruit.

Through this season of learning to hold loosely, of trusting God, of depending on Him, I experienced so much depth of joy and delight as I praised Him for His kindness, His goodness, His provision, His blessing, His faithfulness--I could go on. I also wrestled against every fear that sought to swallow me whole in the midst of waiting and wondering and not knowing how it would or could all work out. In both God taught me who He is and who I am in Him. In both of these God refined my heart to know Him more and positioned me to experience the faith I knew in my heart.

When I was younger, I always wanted to know the details. When I would get married. Who I would marry. I didn't want to risk wondering or needing discernment to make the right choice. I asked to know out of fear.

As I got older, I realized how hard it would be to know. How much I would struggle with that knowledge. Trying to believe. Trying not to strive. Waiting on God. Not knowing how He could make His story good while trusting that He would. So I didn't ask...also out of fear.

In 2024 I asked because I didn't want to be bound by fear. I didn't ask because I wanted to know but because I felt like faithfulness in that moment was asking. And I was right about it--the glimpse was beauty, and it was hell. It was the greatest experience of God's kindness in blessing and in pruning, and there was a lot of fear to prune. Primarily the fear that I would get it wrong. That I would hold it above God. That I would move without God. That I would be convinced I was following God when I was actually following my own flesh. 

In this season God pursued confidence. Not only in Him but in developing the wisdom He had given me. In trusting that His Spirit was in me, moving. Time and time again, He taught me to trust in who He is and what that means for who I am and how He moves within me.

In this season God taught me how to receive. To rest. To respond to what was before me instead of all the scenarios in my head. To be set apart by Him in the waiting and in the blessing. To trust in His good desires for me as a Father who loves His child. 

His blessing is always about more than the physical change He brings; He's a God who reaps fruit in us and who teaches us how to cling to Him in the waiting and to hold His promises in trust. In this season He strengthened me to hold His gift and to receive it with gladness rather than anxiety and fear. He prepared the way.

In 2025 my waiting ended; I am enjoying my man of promise.

The gift He taught me how to hold even if imperfectly.

The story He wrote from impossible to possible.

The sunflower promise of eyes turned to His glory, radiant in the light of His love.