God knows what you need. And meets you in your wanting.

I wouldn’t say that I was overly picky when it came to dating.

I just wanted to know if a dude was “it” before we launched into a full relationship.

I think you see the problem there, before I did.

I wasn’t over particular about looks. It was more of interests that drew me in further than one’s swagger. I never liked pretty boys and as a result can’t really name many Hollywood actors. Being too pretty usually goes to your head anyways.

I wanted someone who sought to love God more than himself, and put others before him. After all loving God and loving people are inseparable.

I wanted someone who treasured and lived God’s Word, valued family and community, and upheld my desires to serve my family full time someday, as well as my heart for missions.

These are good things to want. But then there was a much longer informal second list. I am embarrassed to admit some of its contents but, hey can’t a girl dream? I kinda wanted dating to look like a friendship in fast forward. With it ending in an engagement precisely 6 months later and marriage rounding out the perfect year of a homegrown relationship.

I probably don’t need to tell you at this point that I idealized. A lot. Especially about the future of a relationship. I sometimes missed seeing what was right in front of me.

That proved to be crushing.

So I swung the other side of the pendulum, and forgot that you need to at least share the same ideal ways of actually living the day to day.

I dated all types through the trajectory of my years. Common mistakes and erratic threads binding the two ends of that line into a circle. I found myself dizzy. I spent years looking for a man with a ministry focus, associating this with godliness. I unfairly judged some based on their lack thereof, and I missed the lack of relational character in those who hid behind the idea of one.

Turns out cracks in trust don’t make for a good foundation.

I pivoted towards those who drew the deepest empathy out of me. I dated a few not-so healthy guys in an attempt to convince myself, that together we made a whole.

Come to find out in relationship, it’s two wholly broken people healed by God’s grace who are made one in Christ.

I spent a lot of time chasing after a perception of who I thought someone was, and my perception of what God wanted for me.

Sometimes we have to circle around a few times to realize we are the ones digging the trench around trust instead of placing ourselves in it.

Over and over I would have these conversations with God.

“If you would just change his heart towards me.”

“If you would just change him.”

At one point even praying, “God, open my heart.”

There was a good reason it wasn’t.

God showed me that essentially there are two places for my faith-trust to be planted.

One- In Him, fully confident that every “no” brought a greater “yes.” (Certainly not all seen in this lifetime.) And to trust that God was walling my way in with great care and kindness.

Or I could believe that the painful doors closed were purposeless and careless of God as he “tried” to orchestrate good from the ground zero of mine and other’s disastrous choices. He appeared to be failing miserably as my health tanked more with every risking of my heart. I couldn’t see the imminent good from the piles of smoke and ash as I kept circling.

Or He just wasn’t finished yet.

Psalm 139:5-6 became an anthem for me in my resolve to trust, “You hem (wall) my way in, before and behind me, You lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, I cannot attain it.”

I didn’t know if marriage was something God had for me at age 36. But I was learning to trust that His ways really were good. And what I needed. And more than that, God was what I needed most.

About the time I surrendered again for the 100th time and was learning to let go of my ways, when I was contemplating why arranged marriages were not valued in our culture…

Enter Cap K.

He lived 1,234 miles away.

Who serenaded me with Kip songs. (As in Napoleon Dynamite. Told you I don’t care much for the bright lights of Hollywood.)

Did I mentioned how far away he was?

Who called me consistently.

This technology thing isn’t really the old fashioned love story I had in mind.

Who showed me he was really listening by lifting up my friends, family, and their stories in his prayers with me every evening. Before he even met them.

So… why isn’t he married??

Who flew down with renewed hope in his step and faith in his long-journeyed heart to meet a girl he had only talked to on the phone.

What kind of man does that?

Who confessed his faults. And showed me grace in mine.

This kind of man freaks me out a little. Ok, a lot.

And in whose broad shoulders I finally felt at home, at rest.

I could be me.

He was genuine.

Together we fit.

It’s as if God arranged it all along.

It turns out His severest kind of mercies were truly His kindest.

PRAISE GOD FOR ALL THE PAINFUL NO’S!

God knew in my health struggles I needed a man who would support and provide for me, not just financially/physically, but who would uphold and treasure my empathetically big heart, and encourage my spirit and giftings with his quiet, steady strength.

God knew I needed someone whose ministry was everyone around him, because that’s what my life had become, without even realizing it. (Through trial pursuit of far and away doors, God kept bringing me right back to where I was. “To be all here-” Jim Elliot.)

I am not trying to say that in finally letting go it all happened. I had let go 1,000 times before. We certainly don’t get everything we want. Thank God! But sometimes the wanting is hard. I learned that our journey through our desires is about trusting a God who is good, who hears our prayers, and is moving on our behalf, for our good. Always.

I am still learning this.

It’s coming up on two years now, of that fatal moment when we met. It wasn’t quite love at first sight. I was still a bit blind. God graciously knew my heart needed to set its vision on the right order of things. So He sent me the most patient man on earth.

We wholly committed our dating to the Lord. And slowly, God said yes through a thousand little flashes of sight into each other’s hearts. Like the fireflies that dance in quiet harmony, their illumination is only seen against the falling of time.

A year later, after Cap K courageously had answered all the questions in my head, I answered his question with a resounding, “Yes!” from the depths of my heart.

At our wedding, we had our parents gather around us and pray. The beautiful irony of God ‘arranging’ our meet up through their life long prayers and love was not lost on me.

Psalm 139 was the passage my beloved brother unknowingly wrote our wedding sermon on.

Along the way of God “walling” me in, it taught me to look up. It caused me to trust in painfully real ways, but it brought me deeper into His goodness.

He filled the trenches of my weary walking with His unmeasured grace. The altar of trust I had encircled for many years had cost Him everything. What was the mere measure of my laying down what was not mine to own?

It’s amazing how God uses the disappointments of our wants to bring us to what we need.

Him.

This is written in honor of my husband of 6 months. Happy two years of growing in our wanting of each other, and having all we need supplied in Christ Jesus our God for all eternity.