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“God’s still getting him ready for you”

I’ve heard this, or some variation, time and time again as a single person. Sometimes it’s that God is still getting my husband ready for me, other times, its that I’m not ready, or we aren’t ready for each other. And I can understand the intention. There is a certain degree of finding and knowing yourself that’s important ahead of a relationship, and a level of being prepared for the commitment. But while I understand, my gut reaction to those comments is always one of feeling like somehow this means my future husband and I are currently inadequate the way we are, that neither of us have done enough to find ourselves, and that at our age we still couldn’t handle a serious relationship. That’s why we haven’t met.

But seriously, if by almost 30 (assuming I don’t end up a cradle robber), neither one of us are ready, what’s wrong with us? How in the hole did we start on the readiness scale? And how much more getting ready could we possibly need? Maybe I’ll look back one day and realize that the answer to that question is “you needed a whole lot more”, but right now, there’s no comfort in the thought that he and I aren’t ready.

Where I do find comfort is in the thought that God isn’t ready.

There’s a much greater reason for why my husband and I haven’t met yet, and it isn’t me, or my husband, it’s God. In the God-sized plan of the universe and the impact that we will play on it as a couple, our entrance isn’t needed yet. We are needed exactly where we are right now, separately.

Our individual lives, whether our relationship status, our career, where we are living, or who we are interacting with, are playing a part in a plan that is much bigger than our future marriage.

To say that we haven’t met because we aren’t ready for one another is to ignore a plan much greater and more important than the two of us. Our entire existence isn’t to find one another and be in preparation for it. God has a plan and purpose for us separately and a future plan for us together, and right now we haven’t finished the former.

Are we both learning and growing and possibly becoming a better match for one another in our time apart? I’m confident of that. But we also have people to love, commitments to fulfill, moves to make, and places to explore that all fit into the picture of humanity and the lives of those around us. Our time apart is more than just getting us ready for one another. It’s about our own God-given lives and the impact they are meant to make.

We can’t be certain of when our paths will finally cross, but we can be certain that God is using us both for other purposes right now.

It doesn’t always feel fair and some days it’s painfully frustrating. But if we could zoom out on the picture that’s forming, we would see how in all that God has planned for us both to do, he is orchestrating our coming together at the same time. We are moving toward one another as we act out his other plans for our lives, and we don’t even realize it.

That’s the best part of it all. In the middle of what God has planned for me, and how I’ll impact this world, he has someone else’s life moving to intersect mine right when it’s needed. And right now? It isn’t. We are needed where we are.

So whether I’m ready, whether my husband is ready, God isn’t.

And so we wait expectantly in the middle of a plan far greater than our marriage. We wait for when we are needed together.

We wait for when God is ready.