And Then...It Didn't Happen

There was a determined air to her little chin as she jutted it out as if to dared anyone to challenge her. She was five and she was already tired of the looks people gave down their noses when she answered their all important question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" They could laugh and sneer and pass those "knowing" looks around her for a hundred years and that could not change the dream buried deep within her little girl heart. Yes, despite all the scorn she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. She wanted to be a wife and a mother. She wanted to keep a house, change dippers, wipe little faces, and be there to welcome her husband home at the end of a long day.

 

Maybe her thoughts were not quite as detailed as that, but over time they would grow to be. At five she never even doubted it would happen. At twelve, sixteen, eighteen and even twenty she never doubted and her dream stood strong. And then, after that as each year passed, doubts began to creep in and the dream began to crack just a little and the sureness she had once had began to waver. Would it fall?

 

~

Are you that girl? Are you passing up your twenties with the speed of a freight train on a rickety track feeling that any minute you may come to a bridge that will not hold your dreams up and they will come crashing down all around you? You wanted nothing more than to marry young and thought that by now you would have a house full of little ones. Only, it didn't happen.

 

So now what? What do you do with those desires? And are those desires being shaped in God glorifying ways?

 

I recently sat down to write, to try to make sense of the many thoughts and questions that whirled in my own head. While I was sitting there, fingers poised over the keys, questions began to pop out on the page. "What is it that I desire from marriage? Why do I desire these things? Are they godly desires or selfish ones?"

 

Those were some deep questions but I really did want know my heart answers. As is often my habit when I have something to think through, I slipped on my shoes and set out on a walk, book and pen in hand.

 

As I walked answers did not magically appear, instead, even more questions crammed themselves out through my pen and onto the spaces between the lines. "Why is that I desire marriage? Is it so that I can give, or so that I can take? Is the appeal in having someone to share my life with, or is it sharing someone else's life with them? Is it about my plans being accomplished, or is it about God's plans being fulfilled? Is it about my success and my dreams coming true. Is it about my happiness?

Now, I know that these questions are not an answer to what you should do with your own desires for marriage. And I know that they probably are not consolation to a lonely heart and that they probably cannot mend the cracks in your dreams. They cannot wipe away any doubts you may be having in the likelihood of your own wedding ever being more than a board on Pinterest, but maybe, just maybe they can show you some areas in your thought life that are a little warped. Perhaps you might find that some of your desires are more selfish and less godly, and what better time to realize that than now? Now when you have an opportunity to seek the Lord's strength in realigning your desires with His before your emotions become entangled in a relationship.

 

Maybe I do not have any more answers than you do, but I do know that for you, and for me, and for every other person who has dreams that they feel are crumbling, that God has a plan and it is perfect. How do I know this? Because each day as I seek to align my dreams with His plans He has been showing me that His hands are in the smallest of details. Do not despair my friend, He is faithful. Seek after Him with all your heart and He will meet you there.

"For He satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul

with goodness." ~ Psalm 107:9