Alrighty, I'm Married!
It's a crazy story... and I can't ignore God's role
Okayyyyyy. I’m back. I’m back I’m back.
I just married my “Super Christian Boyfriend” (turned husband), after an insane whirlwind 5-week engagement, after just a year-ish of dating.
And what I do know is … this was God.
Really, I’ve basically been praying for a husband, in some form or another, since I was in high school. And for a very long time, God just …never delivered.
Though to be fair, I also spent 15 of those years of manifesting and mantra-ing instead of truly praying and surrendering. And, I suppose, luckily for me, it didn’t work. And it wouldn’t work.
Just 3 years ago, I wasn’t even Christian. And Mike was in a different relationship anyway.
If we had met before that relationship of his, we still wouldn’t have dated because… I certainly didn’t date Christians. And he didn’t date non-Christians. I didn’t date any conservative-type men at all, because I was liberal and wise and I didn’t want to be oppressed by the patriarchy or whatever instagram had convinced me about feminism.
We could never, and would never, have dated before.
If I was going to marry him, it couldn’t have been until now. At my quite ripe age of 37.
This inevitably leads to way bigger questions about destiny. I don’t know how destiny works. Or how destined things are in the first place, if at all. I don’t know how everything can be in God’s perfect providence when we have the free will to rebel and stray. I don’t know how time works in heaven. I don’t know how off-path you can go. I don’t know if it’s more like: God has a good plan for you, but our own sin and straying from his will for us takes us on detours, like a GPS, and only turning back to God can reroute you on His next best route. Or were you supposed to do every single one of these dumb, tragic, or exploratory things all along? Or what.
I don’t know how it works. But apparently, I wasn’t going to meet my husband until I became Christian. And I don’t know if this was always the plan, or if this was just the way it shook out.
Again, I’m 37. I’ve never been married. I have waited a long long time.
And even still, it almost didn’t happen.
I’m not going to tell the whole story now, though I’ve written the pre-story already. I wrote a little bit about my surrender journey with God and dating and relationships, about 7 months ago in a post called Peas that surpass all understanding: Does God Like... Puns? It’s actually a pretty crazy story, about God talking to me through a friend, and with a pun about peas.
God literally told a friend, while she was praying: “Tell Caroline I hear her prayers, and all will come together” about a month and a half before I met Mike.
The story after meeting him is almost crazier. A bit like a …zany and also very-Christian Rom Com. It’s all a bit stranger than fiction. I will tell the story in time.
Quick version? We met on Bumble when I was 35. And we only went on two dates before I ended things. Then we started dating again when I was 36, last March. I didn’t even plan to start dating him again. I had decided not to.
When I look at the story, the only way I can really explain it is… it was God.
I don’t know why I reached back out to him, just to be friends. I don’t know why, except… God.
And, why didn’t I want to date Mike, you may ask?
Why did I end things with him? Why was I (for some unknown reason) prompted to reach back out to him a few months later to be his friend but surely never ever date…?
Well, because on our second date, he told me would not kiss (again) until he married (again).
And I said, “…Oh. You’re cute, but hell no.”
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Ok! More soon!
Paywall is for the voiceover.