Wife.

As I have previously told you all, before I got married, I prayed constantly about my future spouse.

It consumed my every thought.

It took me far too long to realize I had been going about everything the entirely wrong way.

I had been taking the advice from several different well-meaning people and was shocked when God told me I needed to spend less time on waiting for the right one and spend more time on becoming the right one. Which is why I want to take the opportunity to tell you to be careful about who you ask for advice and who you allow to speak into your life.

Sometimes people have good intentions, but terrible advice.

From my experience I can tell you that many, many Christians who do in fact truly love Jesus, won’t always tell you the right thing. They may tell you to pray for your future spouse. To write letters to him or her. To makes lists detailing all of the things you desire. And while I know your close friend has good intentions, I want to tell you this isn’t always the best way to go about it. In fact, if you listen to all of this advice like I did, you will find that you are suddenly requiring the other person to meet a list of standards before they are deemed “acceptable” for you. You will find that you have stopped extending grace. You will find that you have become stagnant in your spiritual growth because it is tied to a person you haven’t met yet. You will find yourself missing someone you haven’t met yet. You will find yourself feeling incomplete. You will find yourself feeling alone.

THIS is the reality of what happens when you spend more time focusing on marriage than on becoming the right person.

This is what happens when you stop fixing your eyes on Jesus.

THIS is what happened to me.

And THIS is what led to my surrender.

You see, even though I too, like many of you, meant well by praying for my future spouse, it had actually started to hinder my relationship with Christ.

My relationship with Him became less about simply loving Him and enjoying His presence and more about when I was going to get something from Him. (I looked at marriage like it was my reward for being faithful to Him. As if He wasn’t reward enough.)

I was holding onto the idea of marriage so tightly that I couldn’t fit anything else in my hands.

Then, like a ton of bricks, it hit me. This marriage fascination had to go.

I needed to finally surrender everything I had to The One who gave it all.

I needed to finally become His.

And when I did this, everything changed.

I had finally let myself love and be loved by someone. Someone none other than Love Himself.

Then, right after my heart and my will were in complete submission to Him, I met Wesley. (This whole story is found in previous blog posts so I won’t repeat it all here.)

Obedience releases blessing.

And now I’m a wife.

I’m Wesley’s wife. Sweet, funny, honest, selfless, wonderful, Wesley.

And, other than being a daughter of the King, being his wife is the most important thing…

It will forever amaze me that God has trusted me to love Wesley selflessly. The same Wesley who was the joy set before Jesus on Calvary.

That’s a huge honor. A huge blessing. A huge responsibility.

And it requires dying to myself daily- sometimes hourly.

That, to me, is one of the most fascinating things about marriage…Your spouse truly becomes a mirror. And sometimes you don’t always like the reflection you see.

I have never realized my seflishness more than after I got married. This though, is all apart of God’s grand design- by joining together with another person for life you are entering into a refinery process. And it is by God’s goodness and grace that we are made into anything other than coals.

Think about this: When you initially marry your spouse, you make an intentional choice. You say, “I do.” But, these “I do’s” shouldn’t stop once you get married; they should actually be your daily mentality. Because, even though God told Wesley to pursue me and even though I KNOW this whole thing was God’s will for our lives, we still chose each other. (This is where free will comes into play.)

Even though God had wanted us together, we could’ve chosen otherwise.

I chose to be with Wesley and he chose to be with me.

And guess what? We still choose each other every single day.

We make it a point to say “I love you.” We make it a point to pray together every single day. We make it a point to not take each other for granted.

We are so, so in love with one another, and we are forever thankful to God for bringing us together.

So I want to encourage all of you who are married to keep choosing your spouse and to never give them the chance to doubt your commitment. Let them know you love them and never forget that we are only able to love our spouse because He first loved us.

Isn’t He wonderful?

More marriage posts to follow.

xo

– Brittney