My Advice To A Single Friend

I got married at the age of 28. I was a single mother for 4 years before I met my husband. The thing was I can honestly say I was perfectly happy being single. I led a transient Boho-like lifestyle. Not only that, I sought the Lord and I will always look to my single motherhood to remember as my spiritual pinnacle.

I was going to marry my son’s father who happened to have a drug dependency. We both tried to make it work but that wasn’t God’s plan for me. I got saved and he wasn’t. I moved out of New York to my sister’s in Virginia to get away from it all. While being with her, I became the babysitter to her three children while she went to work. Both her and her husband happen to be in the military. I stayed with her for months while her husband was deployed to Korea but I eventually went back to New York and it was only shortly after that I was introduced to my future husband by a mutual friend who’s a Christian. The funny thing was I wasn’t expecting too much from it. I just thought, “Okay, some guy, Whatever.” But everything just happened so fluidly (my theory is if it’s God ordained, this would be the case, nothing forced or manipulated).

My husband wasn’t even from New York. He lived in Miami at the time and we talked every day over the phone. His mother had died just several months before I was introduced to him. He was an only child so you can imagine his grief over his mother. He grew up being raised by a man who wasn’t his biological father and in a family who had a background with Witchcraft. God gave me a husband who knows exactly what it’s like to be raised by someone who wasn’t his biological father and that God was putting him in a position to do the same by raising my son as his own, and not only that, he could easily relate his occultic childhood stories to me since I could relate with my occultic exposure to New Age and Astrology. I was looking into practicing Witchcraft and got close to casting spells but God in His mercy intervened. What God gives is truly good, like fitting pieces in a puzzle.

My prayer to God was that I was done with all the flakes and that if I were to find someone, that man would have to be one who sought after His heart. That was my only desire, a “God-fearing” man. I tossed out every notion of preference and that was my way of saying to God that I trusted in Him to give me what is good. I am putting emphasis on this because for someone to say they trust God and yet give Him their own preference and specification, in my opinion is kind of contradicting. Don’t get me wrong, you can ask God for what you want your mate to look like and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what you asked for is what He has for you. After all, He alone knows who is absolutely perfect for you. He sees and knows all things.

I have a couple of friends who are so set in their notion of who is perfect for them and it mostly has something to do with what they want their mate to look like. I think those things actually hinder people from seeing the person whom God has brought into their lives because they are blinded by something superficial. You are looking for a soul mate, one who happens to be going to the same eternal destination, a person who is also a believer in Jesus Christ (a committed one). This is the priority. It sounds like settling but it isn’t. God honors your desires as long as they align to His will as you put Him first. It is a guarantee.

This coming November would be my 9th year in wedded bliss, sometimes not but that’s every marriage. And no I am not throwing my husband under the bus Haha. He’s a Godsend to me. The advice I gave my friend “J” who was desperately seeking and longing for a mate at some point (she happens to have realized the joys of being single now) was taken straight from the Book of Psalms, not theoretical since I consider myself as living proof.

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.“
Psalm 37:4