bout a year ago, I was out on a walk through a neighborhood filled with families and couples with either their children or dogs in tow.  I walked past them and waved with a smile upon my face but deep down a pang of longing and ache was increasing with each step.  The waiting season for my future husband seemed like it was reaching an unbearable length and I silently cried out, “Lord, I would give anything to have a strong, tender, manly hand cradling mine on this walk.  Where is he, Lord?” 

        From the time I was a little girl old enough to esteem the wonder and beauty of a fairy-tale romance I have waited in anticipation for my own unfolding love story, my day to walk down the aisle, and pursuit of the greatest marriage of all time.  Throughout the intense years of growing up and having every hope of such a pure, beautiful story threatened, I have held unwaveringly in faith that God could and would script such a legendary romance.  Yet with the passing of years, it began to dawn on me that marriage wasn’t just a natural event that occurred conveniently after graduation or even in my early twenties.   There was life to be lived right here and now, either spent pining and waiting for a husband or living a fulfilled life with my Savior each day.

    What now takes center stage is that my soul’s Husband is the very One who has healing for those dying bodies and hope for each perishing soul, the Father to every fatherless child, and the gospel itself Living and active!  At His bidding and enablement each day I can be His hands and feet.  He’s already given me grand adventures following Him to the orphans in Haiti, standing before officials in communist China, and seeing through His eyes a crippled leprous woman.  And He has won my heart with His never failing presence, matchless love, and fulfillment of every promise I have believed Him for!

        Dare I say it, I am now so completely captivated by the Love of this Heavenly Man, I want no earthly man until it will only serve to bring my First Love greater glory on this earth!  And I know now that my heavenly love story with Jesus Christ will be the greatest gift I can one day give my future husband as we will both simply keep living fully for our King...together. *

        However small a thing it may seem to be, my Beloved Jesus’ response to me on that walk was priceless.  It was an unexpected reply but more real to me than the couples I had walked passed.  “Hold mine,”  He whispered.  “It’s here and always has been waiting to be the strength, care, love, and presence that comforts you, upholds you, rejoices in you, and guides you.  Reach out and you’ll see I am more real than you have ever known.”

AT HIS HEROIC INVITATION TO WALK WITH

HIM HAND IN HAND, I GENTLY SQUEEZED

MY HAND CLOSED AROUND HIS...

       At this crossroad, I was either going to keep sighing and sitting in hopes that my prince would soon come along or live out what the Lord was showing me increasingly in His word.  He said He was a very real presence? With Him was fullness of joy?  There was safety under His own wings of protection?  Being with Him is a fountain of Life? Everything I needed for Life and godliness was found in Him?  His Love better than life itself?

       A smile still comes to my face when I think about how I responded.  My eyes closed as tears began to fill them up and a smile that reached clear to my soul graced my once downcast expression.  He was there to be all that His word promised. 

         My companion, my protector, my comfort, my joy inexpressible, and the strong Bridegroom I had so longed to have at my side.  At His heroic invitation to walk with Him hand in hand I gently squeezed my hand closed around His, gripping by faith the nearness of my Groom.  It was then that a wonderful and altogether lovely joy filled up my heart as the walk with this very real Prince extended through the sunset.

         That day took me deeper into experiencing Christ as my First Love.  It was the smallest gesture of my grand King, but it might as well have been a walk through palace gardens.   Every day since then God gives me the same invitation, to meet Him in reality as I go throughout each day.  To rise with Him, start the day with Him, follow His lead with each friendship in my life, share with Him every thought, hear His words of guidance, love, and wisdom, pour out my heart in prayer, lean upon His power to live as He calls me to, and lay down upon my pillow with His strong, protective presence right there with me.

        I had spent hours envisioning the life I would have serving alongside an earthly husband.  We would be rescuing dying bodies and souls, taking loads of orphans into our family, and while He preached the gospel I would be praying fervently for the Holy Spirit to move upon lost hearts.  And while those dreams still exist, they have taken a new place in my heart.  Rather than taking up each moment with waiting, they lie tucked away, joyfully and sacredly kept for the proper time; and when an earthly man is given every single one of those dreams will be possible with our Lord.

~ go to “my assistant” in the menu for more about annie ~