God’s Assignment for Me

The man standing on the front porch step of our home that we had already created two years worth of memories in…I didn’t choose him.

He crossed his arms after wiping tears from his glossy eyes. I never decided he was, “the one for me.”

He hugged his parents, then mine, and I stepped up to stand next to the man I never dreamed of.

But you know what I did do?

I married the man I was assigned to.

You can argue all you want on how the world turns. You can provide the evidence in hand and give me every scientific reason to believe that we’re all just “here.” However, my faith in that the world was designed and created by God and that our souls were bought at a price from Christ Jesus is infinitely larger than that. And my proof in that belief is through the marriage God gave me.

Our small group through church had spent a significant amount of time last year reading through an online book called, “You and Me Forever” by Francis and Lisa Chan (it’s free to download the book as an app onto your smartphone- I highly recommend looking it up and reading through it yourself). One of the best quotes that has stuck in my memory was from Lisa:

“Christ-likeness may be especially important in our marriages because marriage is such a powerful way to display the gospel and the glory of God. It is the first place people will look to see if we believe what we say we believe. Someone can have a dynamic speaking gift, or generously give to anyone in need, or appear to know a lot of Scripture, but if they have a terrible marriage, it raises questions. How can he treat his wife that way? Why is she so disrespectful to her husband? They obviously do not believe what they claim to believe. It should burden us deeply that many of our marriages paint the gospel in a bad light. Can you imagine if the divorce rate among Christians was next to nothing? What an incredible way to cry out to the world that we are different! We have the mind of Christ, we have the power of the Holy Spirit, we choose to die to ourselves and love and forgive even when things get difficult. This is what God wants for us as His people.”

God gave me an assignment to marry Michael on August 22nd, 2015. You can’t convince me that I could have ever saw that coming. I longed for a perfect love but I never knew how much I needed my marriage to glorify my Creator. I never knew that marrying my best friend meant that I was called to love someone patiently and unconditionally- for more than myself and even more than for my husband. We are far from perfect but every day I am going to keep pressing on to be selfless in this way. It is by God’s perfect timing, God’s perfect decision to bring us together, and God’s perfect love for me that motivates and inspires me to love my husband the same way.

P.S.

In lieu of a unity candle to signify two becoming one flesh (Ephesians 5:31), we took soil from my parents’ yard and from Michael’s parents’ yard and poured both into a single soil pot of a Catalpa tree we would plant in our own front yard a month later. As the years and our love for another grows, so hopefully will the tree to remind us of our two souls becoming one.

Today, the tree stands taller than Michael.