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I still remember the day clearly. My 12-year-old self had recently finished reading I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

Within my heart was a desire to be set apart from the world. For starters, I decided to save myself for my future husband. In my eagerness, I even plastered the verse from Proverbs on my bedroom wall, “She does her husband good, not evil, all the day of her life.”

In my decision to do my husband good and not evil even before I had ever met him, I made some crazy legalistic demands upon myself. Some that I look back on and shake my head because well, even with the best of intentions, they were pretty stinking crazy!

Other decisions I look back on and praise God that He put that idea in my head because it has done wonders for my marriage even years later!

Also, I remember reading all these articles from other single people when I was single. Often, I wondered if the advice they gave would actually be seen as worth it once they got married.

So, I decided it was time to share the advice that I found has truly blessed my marriage and also clue you in on a few of the ideas that didn’t really play near the effect I thought they would.

Decisions That Continue To Bless My Marriage

Praying For My Future Husband

This was key for so many reasons. First, it kept my love life (or lack thereof) in God’s hands even when I wanted to grasp it back and make things happen on my own.

Second, God used those prayers to change my heart. He used the times of quiet and the times of crying out to Him. My relationship with God gained a depth that I cannot begin to describe.

Third, prayer worked to prepare my future husband. I hope to share our love story in a post soon but here is the short story. My future husband was raised an atheist. He did not come to know God personally until he was 25. Looking back through my husband’s journals from years before we met, I can see evidence of how God answered my prayers to make him a Godly man long before I ever even knew him!

Fourth, prayer worked to prepare me. I truly believe God used prayer to help me step back and learn to think of another person over myself. I will be the first to admit, when I first started praying for my future husband, it was pretty shallow. Like, please let him be a good looking cowboy. 🙂

As the years passed, God changed my heart to pray for my husband sacrificially. This quality is one that continues to bless my marriage the most. When all else seems to be falling apart, I can still turn to God and pray for my husband. And I have seen how God answers those prayers over and over and over again.

Saving Myself Physically

The only guy I ever dated, held hands with, kissed, or had sex with is my husband. From the beginning, I made the decision to save all the physical aspects of a relationship until I knew it was the man God wanted me to marry. And I will be the first to say that by far, this decision has been the hardest one to fulfill.

Back in seventh grade at Vacation Bible School, I still remember having to answer the “who is your boyfriend?” question for the first time. Let’s just say, her tone of voice alone conveyed her utter disdain for my prudish ways.

The snide remarks, eye rolls and more continued all the way up to my engagement to my husband. Even his parents were utterly shocked and dismayed that we were not living together before we were married.

As hard as it to live a physically pure lifestyle in modern day life, I can state beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have no regrets waiting.

In fact, I have the opposites of regrets.

My husband knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no history to come rearing its ugly head. And while my husband’s past is a very different from my own, God still mercifully made it so that there was no ugly past in a physical sense for us to deal with.

Nick knows that he can trust me because I was willing to wait for him before and give myself entirely to him. This has blessed our marriage with a foundation of trust and peace.

Writing Letters To My Future Husband

There is a pink flower spiral bound notebook tucked under our bed that contains all the letters I wrote to my future husband. This journal of letters starts when I was about 13 and continues until a few weeks before I got married.

Whenever I felt particularly lonely or out of place for my decision to wait for my future husband, I would open this journal and write to him.

Sometimes, I would get pretty mushy. Other times, I just whined and vented. I told him he better appreciate me because of all this waiting stuff! As I grew older, the letters changed.

Those letters captured scenes of my heart.

Best of all, I dated those letters.

Want to know something crazy?

Many of those dated letters line up with my husband’s own journals from that time. And often I can see how God was planning and preparing for us to be together over 10 years before we met!

One of the biggest ones I can point to is the time when my husband was dealing with his suicidal thoughts. The week when his struggles were the worst coincide with me waking up every night to write a letter/prayer to God for my husband. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I believe God was using those late night prayers to save my husband’s life.

God is so big and He does amazing things. Writing those letters help me remember that now. Marriage can be hard. Looking back on God’s faithfulness in the past continues to bless our marriage as we look to the future.

Keeping Busy

Singleness comes with so many opportunities to be selfish and mope.

Singleness also comes with so many opportunities to grow and mature.

As I look back over my singleness, I wish I had made more decisions to choose the opportunities that lead to growth and maturity. But I am thankful for the decisions I did make that were in that direction.

During that time of singleness, I completed my associates degree, worked several amazing jobs, helped my parents run the farm while they dealt with serious health issues, joined with other Christians in our community to help teens, and mentored young teen girls personally.

Again, looking back now, I see ways I could have done more but I am thankful that God placed all those opportunities in front of me. They truly shaped me and prepared me for marriage.

Marriage really changes a person’s ability to take on new responsibilities. I am so thankful I was able to fulfill so many options that were available to me as a single person. Those experiences still bless my marriage today because of how they grew me as a Christian woman.

Staying Open To God’s Leading

The man I married was pretty much the opposite of everything I pictured in my future husband.

Growing up, I pictured myself marrying someone just like my dad. A ruggedly good-looking farmer and rancher. A man who worked with his hands all day. Someone who was raised in church their whole life. Most likely, they would have been homeschooled, just like I was. My future husband would know how to hunt. How to fix engines on tractors. He would definitely be conservative in the political spectrum.

Y’all, I am married to a man who grew up in a big city. He was raised an atheist. He was a public school teacher when I met him and is now a librarian (which, by the way, God is amazing for orchestrating that!!) My husband didn’t even hold a gun in his hand until we were married for 6 months. Tools are not my husband’s thing…calling the local mechanic is. And he is a registered Democrat.

It took God quite a while to open my heart to be willing to accept WHOEVER He choose to send my way. When I first started to suspect that my future husband would be my future husband, I felt a peace that only comes from God. And God used that peace to help me stay open to the possibility that where He was leading was different than where I expected to go.

And you know what, God definitely knew best. My husband is an avid reader. Daily, he encourages me mentally and spiritually. He never leaves the house without hugging and kissing me very well. 😉 Nightly, he makes it possible for me to write and blog. When I am down, he provides the shoulder I need to cry on. Then he gives me the kick in the pants I need to take action when I would rather wallow in my own self-pity. Oh, and I find him quite ruggedly handsome too…

Marriage is full of times and situations that don’t go as expected. Jobs end suddenly. Miscarriages steal life from your home. Grandparents pass away. Parents get sick.

God taught me so much about staying open to His leading when life turns out different than I pictured it should. God also showed me that He knows way better than I do and that continues to bless my marriage today!

Decisions That Didn’t Really Affect My Future Marriage

Wearing Blue Jean Jumpers

You have no idea how painful it is for me to write this statement. Blue jean jumpers did not bless my future marriage. And I wore a LOT of blue jean jumpers.

In my quest to save myself for my future husband, I decided to dress modestly. This goal is not a bad one. However, I quickly took it to a form of legalism that still makes me shutter to this day.

My clothing might have been modest but my heart attitude was far from modest or pleasing to God. In fact, I was a pretty harsh Pharisee to live with. What’s worse was I resented the very clothes I forced myself to wear. My parents did not require those clothes of me. I made that decision. And I wore a martyr’s attitude to go with it.

I broke off friendships with girls who got more than one earring in each ear. I refused to even sit at a table with a girl who was considering getting a Bible verse tattoo when she turned 18.

Modesty is an important topic but looking back, I can definitely say my drive to be modest was not a healthy one. It was centered on a selfish, legalistic and prideful heart. Please learn from me and don’t go there!

Seriously, dress modestly but focus more on having a spirit of modesty and humility. Clothe yourself with dignity, not prideful layers of denim!

Hiding Behind My Commitment To Purity As A Reason To Not Date Some Guys

When guys that I was most definitely not interested in dating came along, I would whip out my “keeping myself pure” talk pretty quickly as an excuse not to date them.

Unfortunately, most high school guys took that as a challenge to either pester me incessantly for months on end or they took it as I was a religious nut job.

Looking back now, I would stop hiding behind the excuse of my dating beliefs. Instead, a simple, kind, yet straightforward approach of telling them I was not interested in dating them would have be sufficient. In hind sight, I can see how my answers could be construed in a way that would string a guy along. For that, I am deeply regretful.

Also, if my reason to not want to date them was simply because I wasn’t interested in them, there was no reason for me to play my “keeping myself pure” card or anything. I wish I would have learned to let my “yes” be “yes” and my “no” be “no.”

Expecting My Husband To Be As Thrilled About My Letters As I Was About Writing Them

As I wrote all those letters in that pink notebook, I pictured how someday my future husband would just rave over them. In my mind, he would spend hours pouring over my every word. Years into our marriage, he would still point to those letters as a shining beacon of my love.

Yeah, bad expectations to have.

You all need to hear me when I say this. My husband loves me. He loves that I waited for him. He loves how God orchestrated our marriage and love life. But he honestly is not very interested in reading years of letters a lonely teenage girl wrote in a journal.

And that is okay. He knows what they symbolize. And most of all, he knows the truth behind them. And to be totally honest, there are days when I wonder how I wrote some of the stuff I wrote in there! Ah, the teen years… 🙂

Resources To Help You Further

When God Writes Your Love Story

Eric and Leslie Ludy’s love story shows the importance of being set apart and different in how we approach romantic relationships. God does call us to a standard of purity that the world will scoff at and misunderstand. However, in this book they also show how beautifully faithful God is to meet us in whatever situation we find ourselves in. This book did so much to encourage me as a single person.

The Ring Makes All the Difference

Perhaps you are still wondering if staying pure before marriage makes a difference? Growing up, I heard all the Biblical reasoning for why purity is important. However, it was not until I stumbled upon this book a few years ago that I found out there is actually scientific evidence to back up this Biblical truth. Marriage matters in big ways. Whether you are married or single, this book is a great read.

Your Turn

If you are single, what decisions have you made to bless your future husband, even if you haven’t met him yet?

 

If you are married, what is one thing that you are most thankful you did as a single person, that continues to bless your marriage to this day?

Thank you for stopping by!

 

 

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