OUR STORY - GOD’S GLORY: How I met my husband!

It's going to be more than 9 months since we got married and here I am to tell our story and give God the glory...! This is how it goes.  

MARRIAGE TABOO:

Marriage, oh such a talked about topic in our societies, yet one thing I was personally so uncertain of. Well, for starters, it did not dawn on me that I have to fall in love with a person who is chosen by God, and get married to him and live with him for the rest of my life. I had a deep belief that the God who brought me my studies, work, home and everything else will also serve my husband on a platter. Well, he did bring my better half in the most unexpected way, but I thought it would be super easy. Yes, I've had crushes and I thought my Godly crush would be my husband one day. I never really bothered getting to know people, expanding my friends circle, or make Godly friends who could be potential suitors, all of which is good. I did my normal life, writing, playing, reading, baking and so on.

INDIAN AUNTIES, UNCLES AND FAMILIES:

In our dear country India, once a girl is matured, they begin looking for matches and all the aunties and uncles around start dreaming of someone they think would be a good match. It's sometimes so evident that the girl is like, Oh, these people are really jobless. When all of them started asking me, nagging me, even questioning me like a prosecutor does to the prosecuted, I was the least worried, because I was damn sure that God was going to send my prince charming on a horse, and he will sweep me off my feet like I watch on Disney movies. I didn't really understand the importance of dating, forming friendships until my family stepped into my personal life showing me a picture of a person, mostly someone I never knew asking me if I was okay to marry them. I had no clue on how I was supposed to actually live with someone I didn’t know and will have to get to know. I naturally thought I should love him and to an extent understand him, before we could travel and live together. My grandma, made her own assumptions that I planned not to get married and tried to force it on me. One thing about marriage is that no one can or should force it on you. If your parents want you to marry someone, they like the person for reasons, maybe they have your best interests in mind, but they have their own interests too.

Elders in the family who had no say in who I am supposed to choose as a spouse, had a say and were looking for someone who they thought would fit perfectly into the imaginary mould they had for my future husband. Thankfully, my mom and I were on the same page and waited on God, I didn't have to fight her thoughts or reactions, and she was a huge support. Others in the family started wondering who I was in love with because I gladly refused to say yes to people who had great jobs and came from better families than ours. I didn't give a damn, seriously and if you are going through the same phase of life, you don't have to worry a bit about what people say as long as you are in tune with God. My marriage was the hot topic for my family, people at church, people in the neighborhood, people in my mom's workplace, people in my workplace just about everywhere. I do confess that a handful did support who I am and believed that God would do what I believed him to do. 

MY DREAMING

I was dreaming, not doing anything about it. But yea, I was praying for my future husband, the list of qualifications that I looked for kept changing from time to time but, I always had a list. Sometimes, it went up to 3 pages, other times, a page, and I also had a tiny notebook with the details of what I was looking for in a husband. A stranger husband was not what I dreamed of, being a sucker for any fairy tales or even just romantic movies and good love stories. I looked back and I had lost two years on Covid and the earlier years on being a naive person who thought relationships were absolutely not necessary.

I dreamed of My Prince Charming as a perfect individual, someone who just fit into all my boxes, qualified all my personal degrees and loved me so much that he would work 7 years for me like Jacob did. (After all, we had quite an influence from Bible stories). My list was big too, a lot of negotiables which I knew I could compromise if I fell in love but still I needed them to fall in love! I set my standards pretty high because love was not a component yet in my heart, I thought if I see a guy who filled all these, I would naturally fall for them, head over heels in love. (I did fall in love with my husband, but I never really checked the negotiable list, not in any way, it was happening just as I prayed it would). Of all the men who liked me, I didn't like anyone and if I liked someone, I was in their friend zone anyway! To be honest, it never really worked with anyone but now I'm thankful it didn’t. Even during my prime times, I wasn't lonely or desperate for a relationship. On the other hand I prayed that I will fall desperately in love with the guy who was meant for me. That’s one beautiful thing about prayers, we literally tell God all that we feel like in our heart, most of which doesn’t make sense to us in the first place. Our creator however makes sense of all of those mumblings and gives us an answer we can blindly say was because of Him and that no one else could do it but HIM.

MY PRAYER

I was going to be 26 if my birthday arrived and when it was just four months before that, I made a prayer. I said, I will have to put myself on matrimonial sites if I turn 26, I’m deciding to do that but if you want the glory instead of bellsandrings.com or Christianmatrimony.com you will have to intervene in my life and bring the right one before I turn 26. Little did I know I’ll be recording it here right now “To God be the glory”!

& GOD’S INTERVENTION:

Probably a few days after that prayer, I was at Bangalore visiting my mentor’s place and on that Sunday I remember vividly the memory of listening to the sermon at their church. The pastor was talking about how Ruth had no idea what was waiting in store for her when she was peacefully gleaning at the fields of Boaz, maybe heavy over her dead husband, over the unknown people that she was surrounded by, burdened of having Naomi to feed and hopefully no hope for the future except the little trust she had in the sustenance by Naomi’s God. And in a quick turn of events, her life turned around and she was a wife and mother in no time. Sitting in the pews, I was like, will I ever have a story like that? It was just like that for me, I wasn’t ready to marry a stranger, I needed to fall in love and it didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon. Also I remember mentioning to my mentor the name of my future husband saying, at least I kind of know him a bit!

SKIP TO THE GOOD PART:

As soon as my Bangalore trip was over, I updated a picture of myself with my mentor on a social media platform, I wouldn’t forget it for my life. About that picture was the first conversation I had with my future husband. God works in mysterious ways and that’s where our modern love story started. And until that moment I fell in love, I didn’t really know how it felt. When Jesus tells the Sadducees that Heaven won’t have marriage, I do feel a bit bad about it, because now I know that if I have to choose someone to live with as long as Methuselah lived, I’d like to live with him, the love of my life.