Editor’s Note: Our weekly guest spot is our effort to help our reading community connect with each other. Emerson is the daughter of our very first guest post contributor Heather Mertens of 40yearwanderer  and what a talented family they are! For all of us still waiting for “Mr(s). Right,” may her words encourage us now. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately – about love, marriage, future family. I know every girl dreams about it, but this is different. I’ve started seeing it in a whole new way. True that I’ve gotten older and more mature, but something happened that changed my perspective. I started to really see into the details of what it means to love. I don’t see it as trying to find the right guy to fall in love with almost as if it would happen by some magic, but instead I see it as completely giving it over to God and trusting Him because He always takes care of me in every part of my life. I always knew that if God’s plan for my life included someone to share it with then He would bring me the right man, but what changed for me recently is how I feel about it. It was always a nice thought, but I never really thought too deeply about it. Now, I’ve started to realize just how amazing it is that He loves me and cares for me so much that he has someone waiting for me who will love me – truly love me, even with all my many imperfections and mistakes.

I realized the more I focused on God and my relationship with Him and the more my love grew for Him, the more free I was to love others and myself. And then something happened that I can’t even begin to describe or even completely understand. I started to feel love for my future husband. I never knew it was possible to have that deep kind of love for someone I don’t even know. It makes me so excited and emotional to think about being able to actually get to express that love to my future husband someday, and it makes me cry. Cry like I just watched a Nicholas Sparks movie kind of cry. Only much deeper. It’s a true longing and desire to know the one that God has made for me to love. I actually feel a sense of missing him, and I don’t even know him yet.

Maybe you think I’m crazy. I know nothing about actually being married, I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I’ve never even been on a date before so I don’t know what it’s like to love a person to that extent. But it’s not thinking I love someone I know, it’s knowing I love someone I don’t know. There’s a big difference there and I’m aware of that. I know that this is something that is coming from me getting closer to God and wanting what He wants for me. God has put that love inside of us all, and it is a true love because it comes from Him.

I see now that the biggest blessing in marriage is not to be loved by someone, although that is an incredible and indescribable blessing, but to given someone to love and to be able to fully love them. It’s something I know only God completely understands, and He’s giving me only a small glimpse of it. I really wish I could put how it makes me feel into clear words, but there is no way to describe it exactly. I want to tell everyone out there how it feels to know that God has already taken care of it all and the peace it brings, and that they don’t have to go searching for love. Love has already found them, and He has someone for them that will love them more than they could even begin to dream about.

I talk to God about it and I pray for my future husband all the time. I pray for our future relationship and I pray for his relationship now with God. Instead of trying to find the “perfect guy”, I’m striving to become the person and the future wife that God wants me to be while I wait for the one He has for me. I always want to be myself and be loved for who I am, but I want to always be the best of myself – the woman that God made me to be. So instead of only wishing and dreaming about love and marriage, I’m preparing myself for when that time comes. I want God to always be first in our relationship, and I want my husband to always put God before me. I pray that we can build each other up and also help and support each other in our individual relationships with God. This has also made me see friendships and family in a whole new way, and how every kind of love is an amazing blessing from God. I don’t ever want to take any of it for granted.

I could really write about this forever because it’s such an amazing thing to think about, and that is only a tiny bit of what God is showing me now and how I feel. That’s all I could manage to get into words, and I prayed that God would give me the right words to express it in the best way that I could. I just wish everyone could see the truth about His love and what He has prepared for those who accept it. I hope this helps anyone who is waiting for their future spouse to come along. It has certainly helped me and I am beyond excited about the future and what God has planned. And I have to admit, I’m more than just a little excited to finally know who it is that God has had for me to love all along.

-Emerson

Images by Emerson – © Emerson Mertens