Love is about waiting

I waited my whole life for “The One”—except I wasn’t looking for him, per se. It was just a tiny yearning within me, natural for a woman to have.

Every woman wants to be loved. But since committing my love life to God back in 2015, I had conditioned my heart to be content with singleness and with a reality that if I never did get married, I would be okay. I would have my career, my family, friends. I’d be alright…Right? You had the same mindset, as well.

And I was content. I was so content that when you showed me kindness all day long on 28th Dec 2019, my heart was guarded like a brick wall. And when you held my hand for the first time at the wedding reception processional, I didn’t allow myself to melt or even flinch—my mind was radio silent; my heartbeat continued its normal rhythm. And when you smiled at me across the table during the dinner portion of the reception, I returned a smile but quickly averted my attention elsewhere because I was content in my season of singleness.

But when I got home that same night, God broke down my wall of contentment. I stared at pictures of us together, and then it began. I lost my contentment in singleness, and my soul began to crave contentment in a life with you.

I waited 24 years of my life. And God waited a little shy of 12 months until he decided to bring us together right before 2019 came to a close.

We fell in love fast—faster than the speed of lightning and its following boom of thunder. Our emotional bond was almost instantaneous. Our fun facts and similarities and common interests unraveled before our eyes as if we had been friends forever. I had indeed met my match. I felt it that night we sat in front of the waves at the beach, comfortable and at ease with just being in each other’s presence.

Then we had to part ways

God, how could you bring us together just for us to have to part ways?

Ways.

His ways are higher than our own. [Isaiah 55:9]

Your parents had to wait 28 years for their firstborn to meet his true love. Maybe waiting is a blessing in disguise. It made your parents cherish me all the more because of how long it was until that witness themselves that you had met someone special, a woman that you wanted to marry. You don’t know how strongly you cherish or even desire something without first having to wait forever for it.

And now, we wait for what is feeling like an eternity to become husband and wife. I wish I could be with you daily. This is harder than I could have ever thought.

Thoughts

His thoughts are higher than our own. [Isaiah 55:8] God, why would you instill 8,490 km and the Atlantic Ocean right in between us?

Could it be that God knew we wouldn’t be able to resist each other before our wedding night? Could it be he did not want us to ruin what he had designed and reserved as intimate enjoyment and fulfillment between husband and wife? Could it be that he did not want us to hurt ourselves and our relationship at the tender stage of its ripening?

Hey, these thoughts are crazy. I could never understand the wisdom of God. However, where I can start to comprehend is his word and what he reveals to me through it:

1) He is a Father of good gifts. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the one who never changes or shifts like shadows.[James 1:17]

2) Patience is a virtue. Patience is an unavoidable aspect of the Christian journey with Christ. We are patient to wait on the fulfillment of God’s promises, and the return of Christ in glory. We exercise patience to endure and make it through tough seasons and difficult people and trying circumstances and strong desires.

Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, character produces hope.

If we hope for what we do not yet have or see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance…. Which produces character, which produces hope. [Romans 8:25, Romans 5:3+4]

If we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently (Romans 8:25 - NLT version). We must wait patiently because we have no other choice. God has placed that ginormous physical boundary between us. We have our personal goals career-wise and also educational. We must wait patiently, and we must wait with confidence.

Why?

It’s building all these beautiful qualities within us: perseverance, character, hope, confidence, the ability to endure through suffering from the waiting, the ability to overcome from the suffering, and most importantly…love.

Because love itself is patient

Love is patient, love is kind, love is not self-seeking, love does not dishonor, its hopes in all things, it endures all things, it bears all things.[1 Cor 13]

So, I will train my flesh to be patient in its craving for you, because love is patient and it is not selfish.

I will be patient so that I can honor you as God’s child and also love you at the same time.

I will be patient because doing so is me exercising endurance, and love endures and bears all, and enduring it all and bearing it all—the distance, the time difference, the time spent with you which never feels like enough, the WhatsApp disconnections, the temptations, the cravings, the wanting you beside me always, the wishing I was near you always, and the hating that I have to wait so long—that is how I can love you in this season of our lives together.

And so, I’ll continue waiting.