Take Me Back Tuesday: Answered Prayers and So Much More

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Ok, so this post has been a LONG time coming! Last fall and winter I kept trying to sit down and write it but there was just SO much to say that I just didn’t even know how to say it. With planning a wedding and all the changes of this season, I just couldn’t seem to get it done and I wanted to do it right. Well, since so many people have requested it and since it’s high time I talk about it…let me write a bit about the love of my life and the man I now call my husband. I posted yesterday ’10 Get to Know You’ facts to get us started but now let me get into more detail as I share our love story. 

(I’ve decided to break this up into a few different posts because let’s be real, there is so much to say and attention spans are not super long! So, when we get to the end of this post and it’s not quite complete, you will know why!)

There’s no better place to start than the beginning and well, the beginning is hard to define but it started LONG before we actually met. It started with a young girl who hoped she would get married but wanted to marry the right man so, she began to pray. Of course that young girl was me and for years I prayed for the man who I would call ‘husband.’ Years. Aaaand what felt like more years (now looking back it really wasn’t that long). In fact, I was praying for my husband long before I was even close to being ready to get married! Thankfully, I had some wonderful mentors and even more wonderful parents who taught me to have high standards, even from an early age. As my dad so perfectly said to me when I was a young girl, “You come at a high price.” Those words were said to me about two decades ago and that conversation is seared in my brain so clearly because they were so meaningful.

Prayers for a husband began to get more and more serious through high school and college as I dated more, but probably more so as I launched into adult life and started a wedding photography business. My life was surrounded by weddings and couples in love which only increased my desire to have the privilege of being someone’s wife. My friends got married, my sisters got married and yet I was still praying. People would always say, ‘it will happen when you least expect it, just keep praying,’ and while that was certainly true, I think the lessons went far deeper than waiting for God to surprise me. He had so much more to teach me about what was for my good.

Eventually, my prayers served to give way to the most wonderful truth. I began to see that the real beauty was finding my satisfaction in the Lord and not someone else who simply could not satisfy. I was not promised marriage nor would that be the key to my ultimate fulfillment. Even more so, it was far better to never marry than to marry someone who was not God’s best for me. What an incredibly hard reality but what a beautiful truth! God was enough and my hope was in Him.

I am so thankful for those years of praying and asking God for His best. Thankful that I had to wait longer than I had expected. Thankful that there was heartbreak in the midst of it and difficult seasons of wrestling through singleness. Thankful that God didn’t craft it together like I thought He should. Thankful in the midst of it, He never promised me anything except that I could trust that whatever happened, it would all be His very best and FOR my good. I am thankful for these things, not only because He, in His perfect timing, did answer my prayers, but because they taught me to see Him as all that I need. To know and believe wholeheartedly that His ways are higher and greater than my own and that He truly does know better.

Almost two years ago, I went on a date with a guy and I had no idea that he would be the answer to so many prayers. Prayers from a little girl, a naive teenager, an anxious student, a bright-eyed new business owner and a hopeful woman. Yet, the truest blessing was that, in God’s never-ending faithfulness, He wasted none of it. The years of waiting were just as much a gift as the years ahead of me. I really do firmly believe that. Praising God today for His perfect timing and His perfect faithfulness. He answered my prayers for a man to share life with but He also did so much more along the way and for all of it, I am thankful.

I know that there will be many more seasons of life ahead of me where it seems like my prayers aren’t being answered or that I keep ‘waiting’ and I hope that I will stand on the firm foundation that His ‘steadfast love endures forever.’

So, in the name of long-awaited answered prayers and so much more,

I Say, Take Me Back!

Tune in on Friday to read about how the Mr. and I met!

Teddi Crenwelge - August 26, 2015 - 2:46 am

I love this!! As I am wrestling they the season of singleness (or so it seems) and everyone around me getting married; I love reading the joy you found while reflecting back on those times of waiting! Thanks for posting! 🙂

Teddi Crenwelge - August 26, 2015 - 2:48 am

Thru the* I didn’t proof read and it won’t let me edit my post 😉

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