How I Gave Up on Serial Long-Term Relationships and Let my Father Choose My Husband. by Merritt You all know her…or maybe you ARE her…the girl who dates and dates, even to have a string of long-term relationships, but she never marries. There’s nothing wrong with her, at least not that you could tell from appearances. Good looking, smart, down-to-earth, but older-than-normal to STILL be single.* That was me. It’s a long story that I’ll tell in bits and pieces as I develop this blog, but suffice it to say, I lived one way for a very long time until one day I was DONE. Done “shopping” for Mr. Right in airports, at church, in traffic, at parties. Done spending months and years of my life wondering if my boyfriend-at-the-time was ready for marriage or if he’d ever once thought about proposing. Done asking the “What about him?” question everywhere I go. Done staring at the rocks on the left ring finger of other women wondering, “Where’s mine?” It wasn’t easy to get to DONE. In fact it was practically unbearable, and it took a heart-wrenching unexpected break-up, a couple of therapeutic playlists on my iPod, long drawn out prayers to God asking what in the world I’d done wrong and many, many months of stepping out of old behaviors that had done nothing but bring me pain. It was then that I met freedom. And a few weeks later I met my husband. Actually we’d already met years before that. We had mutual friends, he even showed up uninvited to my 35th birthday party with a few girls I knew. I’d never in my life been attracted to him. And until September 2007 our friendship had revolved around me suggesting other girls he might consider dating. He wasn’t even on my radar as an option. But he was on God’s. That’s what I mean when I say I let my Father choose my husband. My human father helped in his own way too, but God truly stepped in and changed my heart to be available for the man who would become the husband I never knew I needed and wanted. That’s my story. And if you stick around awhile I’ll share more of what I – and now “we” – have learned along the way. *I say all of this not to condemn or criticize singleness or singles but instead to demonstrate my own (and our culture’s) obsession with marriage and the tendency to prize marriage over singleness. I don’t believe marriage is “better” than singleness. In fact, I’ve already written about finding contentment in either circumstance. Article taken from: livesimplylove/my-arranged-marriage/
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 21:26:45 +0000