A story that needs to be told – PS

This is a post script to my last post, available here.

Well after writing my last post a few weeks ago, a few important things have occurred to me about what I wrote. I’ve been procrastinating about dealing with this issue because for me this is a very tricky issue to write about. The truth is that on this subject there are a few things that I don’t want to share, meaning that I cannot be totally candid.  This creates a big conflict in me, and in some ways it would be easier not to say anything whatsoever.  However I also feel that I need to admit the “Will of God” thing for the sake of transparency. Someone might ask me why I told a man that it was the will of God that he and I should get married. I hope that anyone reading this can believe that I carried out all my actions in one hundred percent integrity of heart.  Actually, erm (she reflects, giggles!) – let’s say instead overwhelming, outstanding integrity of heart, if not truly 100 percent! 

Still on this subject I really want to communicate the fact that I gave one thousand per cent to this “Will of God” interaction with this man. Through this “Will of God” thing I set a few powerful precedents for myself:

– I set a precedent for myself of giving an absolute one thousand percent in various relationships. Throughout my writings on my blogs I will often say about different interactions I’ve had with different people, (not only in potentially romantic contexts): “I gave a thousand percent.”  I really do mean a thousand percent, and it was in this one incident with this one man that I first set this precedent for myself. Prior to this I had never really given my all to any interaction with anyone. 

– I set a precedent for myself of not playing hard to get, but rather being completely transparent. So imagine, in a potentially romantic situation I will be completely transparent, and I will be giving one thousand percent, and the guy in question will be playing games – and giving zero percent. I have no time for that whatsoever – seriously!

• I set a precedent for myself of being completely candid. Hard as it may be for me to remember this now, candour is not my natural inclination, by any means! But now that I have made this a habit for myself, I now see that this extremely candid person was who I was born to be. It was in this interaction with this man that I first pushed myself to admit things about myself that were not necessarily beautiful or attractive. I’ve been pushing myself to this same level of candour on my blogs for a few years now, so now I am a bit more fluent and confident in this.  However back then there was a rawness to this and the whole thing was unspeakably awkward!

  –  I set a precedent for myself in humbling myself and apologising.
  Before that incident I found it just as hard to sincerely apologise as anyone else. After that incident though, I can sincerely say that I am genuinely good at apologising when I have done anything wrong.  This is an area in which I criticise people a lot. I need to remind myself that this is an area in which I myself was not always strong. 

  Man in that one interaction with that man I genuinely gave a thousand percent. I pushed myself so far beyond the emotional pain barrier.  It was desperately difficult yet I persevered, at least as long as I felt necessary.  That was the one interaction I’ve ever had where I most laid the foundations for myself of an earth-shatteringly phenomenal marriage. After investing all that effort, I just can’t accept mediocrity in a potential marriage –  I just can’t. 

  TOO FUSSY?
  Whenever I start giving my thousand and one criteria for my husband, people will invariably say that I am too fussy. Just today (the day when I’m editing the post after initially publishing it yesterday) I was watching a short clip where a well-known Christian speaker said that having a long list of criteria places unfair pressure on a potential spouse, because there is no way that they could live up to these expectations. To be honest, I can’t help feeling that this is quite a modern Western way of viewing this issue, from the same sort of people who suggest that Proverbs 31 is an unrealistic benchmark for women to measure themselves against, or the kind of people who shriek online about how apparently impossible it is for a stay-at-home mother to look after two or more children at the same time – as if generations of women have not been living out Proverbs 31 or looking after multiple children for thousands of years around the world (by working together). At any rate I hope that I can sincerely say that I am all these things that I ask for. When I say that I want a man who is giving his thousand percent for God, pushing himself in candour, someone who tells himself the truth, always, and acts on it, someone who will tell me the truth, someone who will invest his utmost for his marriage, I am all these things and more.  I have demonstrated these attributes not only in this one interaction with this man but in countless other interactions with other people, to the point where I can say that this was not just a one-off, this is actually who I am.  If I can consistently attain these characteristics, then obviously  it is not “unrealistic” to ask for these things; they are not “impossible” to attain. What I am asking for is someone who is going to invest his thousand percent towards me as I plan to invest towards him. I am not asking him for a greater investment than I myself plan to make. What I definitely don’t want is to invest my thousand percent effort in a marriage only to be “rewarded” in return by his zero percent effort. 

  AND YET.
  As I wrote in that last post, I have been congratulating myself endlessly for the way I behaved towards that man. But what I have been forced to acknowledge/remember over the last few weeks is this:  even with all that effort that I invested, even with all the beautiful things that resulted from that effort – that was not even the real test!  No, if all of this represented some kind of divine test for me to pass, the real issue was actually in  a different area to the areas in which I invested all my effort.  Because of the sensitivity of the whole thing, I don’t want to go into details about what the real issue actually was. However it is one area in my interaction with this man in which I (manifestly) failed to set a positive precedent for myself.  

  In my last post I said that I believe that this blog is a reward from God for my obedience regarding this man.  And I truly did give my all to obey God in most aspects of this thing. The truth too is that before starting to get the ideas for this blog, I actually complained and complained to God because I felt that I had invested so much towards this man, and I had been left empty-handed with nothing to show for my effort. 
  As much as I love this blog (and I sincerely do!) I’ve often wondered why, in response to all my effort God would “reward” me with a blog, instead of an actual husband which is obviously what I really want!  I think that it is because of this one big failing of my interaction with this man that I have not yet truly been ready for a marriage that is as awesome as I dream of.

  I’m finding it hard to talk about this without going into details but one lesson I hope I can share with everyone from my failures and successes regarding this man is to make sure that you totally surrender your heart to God even as you seek to obey Him.