A stone from memory lane: a promise God made

 Ten years ago, March 20, 2012, I had this dialogue with God while at work:

(for context, God's words are in red, mine in response are in blue, and the words in black are my reflections after-the-fact)

I wrote more stuff today. Had a fear so paralyzing late this morning that I texted a bunch of brothers for help. After several encouraging texts and an encouraging phone conversation, I found peace. And in the midst of this peace I felt I heard God speaking to me. I will share some of what he said:

Have patience: if she really does care for you, she'll wait for you. If she does choose another man, it either means she wouldn't have been good for you in the first place (i.e. her heart is not in the right place -- see [name edited out]), or she was meant for him (see [name edited out]).

If she is right for you, you'll know it because she will willingly wait for you, no matter how long it takes. She'll be there when you're ready.

I know [what your heart desires]. But I want to give you [what]'s best for you. Sometimes that means ya gotta wait. I don't want to just give you "just anybody."

I then wrote a question I had for God:

question I have is this: if I don't know her yet, how do I know that she is really waiting for me?

He then continued, seemingly ignoring my question, but not ignoring what I probably really was asking:

Remember how patient you were with [name edited out]? That's the type of person [referring to the patience I had] I want you to have.

...it's an "active waiting"

that's how I want you to wait on Me.

I spent the entire commute home (I took the train today) re-reading through these words and meditating on them. As I was reading, it hit me that I don't think I could have been able to let them sink in if he had tried to tell me any earlier. I've always had a thing of ignoring words of wisdom if they weren't quite exactly what I wanted to hear. These words were words I've been waiting to hear for a long time, and I was finally ready to hear God directly address this.

It was one of the first times in my life that I had ever written down such a dialogue between Him and me. Of course, we know that He comes through. And, boy, has He ever. My love and I are not married yet, and we aren't quiiiiite in a position to officially prepare for it as of now, but the last couple weekends at church featured two conversations between my love and me, and someone on staff at our church checking up on us and encouraging us.

Still actively waiting. Ten years later, though... it's a lot closer now! Praise God!