A Year's Journey

A year ago I started a journey. A journey of becoming the woman, the wife, My Beloved needs. My Beloved's identity is still a mystery to me, but over the last 365 days I have fallen in love with him. Yes, I know exactly how insane that sounds! But it's true!

I asked God what I needed to do to become this woman. The first thing I started was to purge. I purged a lot of the stuff that was overwhelming my home. It has been so freeing. I have donated boxes, many boxes, bags, and crates of items. I have thrown away stuff, lots of stuff. I am not done yet. Like I said, it's freeing and I want to have less. I will never be a minimalist, but I certainly will be a lot less-ist. (Yes, I made that up.)

That was a practical change, and a good one, but definitely not the most important one. That change was prayer. I pray for this man. In the past, I prayed for God to bring a man into my life, but I didn't pray for him. I searched Pinterest for prayers for my future husband. I came across a lot of blogs and basic ideas of how to pray for him. Then I found a woman who created 40 prayers for husbands. These prayers involved praying Scripture over him. So for nearly a year, I have prayed one of these prayers over My Beloved almost every day. Now, there were times when I felt sure that they were just words and that I was fooling myself by praying for this "imaginary" man. There were days I felt too sad to pray at all. Doubt plagued my thoughts. Other days, I prayed through the doubt and fear. There were times I cried in fear through each and every word. But most days, thankfully, I pray for him with joy. I pray for him with tears of joy more than ones of fear. And honestly, it is the very best part of my day. I read my daily Scripture and then I pray for My Beloved. My heart loves him so much that I feel like it's going to burst as I pray! Once again, I know how insane that sounds.

The thoughts of how crazy this all is and the feelings of my heart war almost daily. I'm not young and the wait has been long. Like I said, I don't even know who this man is that I pray for. But I do. And  love him. Wow, this post is definitely more honest than I planned for it to be. I was just going to write about the journey, but this blog has brought out the raw in me so many times before, so why should this time be any different.

This year has also been one of the hardest of my life. I don't want to go into that at all, because that's not the point of the journey. But I do believe the struggle is part of this journey. God is using every cruel comment, every judgement, every lie about me, to make me a better person and somehow the better woman, wife, that I need to be for My Beloved. I can't say I understand, or like it, but I am thankful for it. This part of the year's journey is important too.

I would love for the end of this year to bring me face to face with My Beloved, but if God's plan is to continue longer without knowing him then I will take it. I can take it because I trust the One who is taking me on this amazing, crazy, sometimes painful, but also joy-bringing journey.