The Danger of an Imaginary Life

I was reading different parts of the GirlTalk blog today and came across a quote that I needed to hear. Nicole Whitacre was talking about her courtship with (her now, husband) Steve. While telling their story, she talked about some doubts she had about Steve. She'd always wanted to be either a missionary or married to a pastor, and Steve wasn't sure that either of those were God's will for his life. She said, "Pause. If I may be so bold as to offer a word of advice to single women everywhere: beware of creating an imaginary life around an imaginary man so that when a real man comes along you can’t see him for the imaginary life you’ve created."

This was a good reminder to me, and probably to any other girl who reads it, that we can't think of what we'd like our lives to look like when we're married and decide that anything different would be less than ideal. As Nicole said, it's dangerous to have some made up fantasy and compare any future life partner to that. Because what we want or think we want may not be what God wants for us. And His way is always better than ours. We need to trust Him with who our spouse will be and not worry about it so much.

Nicole ended her post saying that she'd had to learn to trust God and that she had to marry (or not marry) Steve based on who he was, rather than what he did. Then she said that he now was a pastor at a Sovereign Grace church. But she's glad he wasn't when she married him, because now she doesn't have to wonder if she'd only married someone because he was a pastor.

Such a good story, and a good reminder that it's God we have to follow and trust, not ourselves and our made up ideas of what we want in life.