You have been in my prayers for many years, future husband. Many of those prayers have been super self serving and totally dramatic..i.e.:

“Dear God, please send husband. Don’t let me die alone, only to be discovered a year later after my seventy- five cats have feasted on my decomposed body. In Jesus name. ”

But not all have… I pray that your first love is God. And not in an undefined and super generalized way. No. I pray that your first and deepest desire is to follow Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Not genie wish granter Jesus, not the get out of Hell for free because I read a track Jesus, and definitely not the impersonal flowery Hallmark card Jesus. No. I pray you know the Jesus that invites you into a relationship that guides and directs your every move. The Jesus, who is the Son of God, and points you to the Father everyday. The Jesus who lavishes you with grace, and restores you with His sacrificial love.

Next, you will be married to a sinner. Expect that from me. I will come with selfishness, pride, and jealousy—just to name a few. I am just as desperate for a Redeemer as you. My prayer is that we will continually point each other, as Jesus is pointing us, to our Heavenly Father. I will naturally look to you to and things other than God to give me my worth. But I will seek and pray to not put this responsibility on you. I want you to know that my identity is independent of you. Who I am stems from the woman God created and redeemed. I am first the daughter of a King:

And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. (Colossians 2:6-7, 9-10)

But this in no way diminishes who we are together. In fact, it is a bonus. The covenant we share under God is for His glory and our identity in Him can be shown through our marriage, future husband. We may no longer be ‘single’ but our identity and mission should not change.

I don’t hide my crazy. And I hope you do not either. The last several years have been a shifting and reshaping in my life that includes drawing back the curtain on me. There have been times when I desperately tried to play a part I thought I was suppose to play, future husband. But that only leaves us empty, right? And definitely is not a course for discovering true identity. Messy is not pretty at first glance, and it has had a history of alerting ever bell and whistle in my body to “GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!” I have often been so anxious to keep the ‘man behind the curtain’ that I failed to see what was really there. In myself. And in others. I am learning to just “give it a minute” though. And when I do, it’s amazing how that ‘messy’ can suddenly look more like authenticity. And wow, that is a beautiful thing.

And this feels like the best time to go ahead and let you know my entire family falls under this ‘mess’ category too. But this is how we handle it, just so you are not surprised: