God Spoke Clearly. I Didn’t Follow

It was late afternoon, and the March sunlight felt dim and russet as I walked across the asphalt parking lot of our family doctor’s clinic toward my mother’s Pontiac. My heart was heavy. I had just heard devastating news, and my thoughts were crying out to God silently so my mother wouldn’t hear.

Why do I seem to be targeted by men of low estate, Lord?

Are hurtful men all that there is in this world?

Will I ever find a good, kind man who genuinely loves me?

Is there such a thing?

Why aren’t men with ambition around? Men who might become doctors or lawyers? And if they are around, why aren’t they attracted to me?

Aren’t you preparing a husband for me?

When will I finally meet him?

Then I proceeded to give God my shopping list for a mate.

Could he please be a career man instead of someone who wants to live off me?
I’d like it if he were taller than me, but if not, could he at least not be insecure about it?
Lord, he can even have a belly instead of a ripped physique. Just make him kind.

I felt like I was negotiating for my sanity. I thought I was negotiating for the only source of love I would ever find on this planet.

Instead of platitudes, I heard one simple sentence.

“I am preparing your husband, but you will not meet him until your late thirties.”

“What? No! That’s over twenty years away,” I shot back.

For a sixteen-year-old, that feels like a life sentence without hope of parole. Especially for a girl desperate to feel accepted, wanted, and enough.

I pushed back immediately. “Lord, I can’t wait that long.”

God knew, and I would soon learn, that this was not a negotiation.

It was His specific plan for my life. And there was no worming my way out of it.

I didn’t like that. I couldn’t imagine going twenty years without someone to love. Truthfully, I was terrified of loneliness. That emotion had been with me all sixteen years of my life.

So I packed God’s words into a neat little box and ignored them. I set out to make my own future in relationships. What followed was fruitless searching. I dated here and there, hopeful each time, only to find the same emptiness, the same poor morality, the same brokenness. I both hated these men and couldn’t imagine being without them.

So this is love, I settled.

One day, I was on a plane to Las Vegas with the man I was dating. We were accompanying his mother and her fiancé for their wedding. Under relentless pressure and manipulation, I caved when he begged me to marry him while we were there. Exhausted and afraid, I agreed, quietly telling myself, I can always get it annulled.

After the most surreal ceremony at the Little White Wedding Chapel, complete with an officiant waxing poetic about wolves howling in the desert, I woke the next morning determined to annul the marriage.

When my previously doting, love-bombing fiancé, now turned new husband, caught me flipping through the hotel’s thick yellow pages looking for annulment information, he snapped, “What the hell are you doing?”

Terror struck. I slammed the book shut and said, “Nothing.”

In that moment, I realized the man who had been sweet and attentive no longer needed to pretend. And that marked the beginning of three years of tiptoeing through my first marriage with a dark triad personality. More on this later.

God’s plan had been better.

I didn’t reject Him.
I ran ahead.

I tried to force fulfillment of God's promise and learned a painful lesson. Much like Abraham and Sarah, when they took matters into their own hands rather than waiting for God’s promise. Why do we do that? Why do we rush to manufacture what God has already planned?

But here is the good news.

Despite my impatience and disobedience, God did not leave me. He walked patiently beside me, waiting for repentance, humility, and surrender. Though I was wounded and abused, I was still protected.

After three years, I fled that marriage without allowing God to finish the work He wanted to do in me. I devised my own rescue. I loaded what I could into my truck, gathered my two children, and left. But I carried my pride, control, and disobedience with me.

Now I understand why it would take twenty years before I was ready for the husband God designed.

Two failed marriages. Two nearly identical men. And deep, soul-wrenching surrender later, I found myself in my late thirties, healing from damage I could have avoided. This time, the fire refined me. I learned to lean on God alone for acceptance, love, and approval. I learned that men are not my god. And I learned to respect God’s timing.

God answered the heart of my teenage cry.

Now, at fifty-four, I can say I have been happily married for fourteen years to the exact fulfillment of that sixteen-year-old’s prayer list. He is the kindest man I’ve ever known. Generous beyond words. Tall, dark, handsome, with a bit of a belly. And yes, he’s a doctor.

Isn’t God something?

God answers cries, even messy ones.
God speaks to the young.
God is not offended by immaturity.
God does not revoke His care when we get it wrong.

So if you heard God and acted too fast…
If you’re waiting on clarity you didn’t have when you wanted it…
If you wonder whether you “ruined” something…

Take heart, dear one. God is not done.
He is faithful with timing. And He has not left you.