The Struggle Before "I Do"

I know it's pretty late in the evening, but let me just tell you that I had no intention of posting on here today. Then I saw India's post over at My Life As India on her obedience to God calling her to move to Atlanta not being as glamorous as people would assume. I'm not going to lie: I assumed her move was smooth and full of glamour! Little did I know, her struggles are just as real as the next girl who moves to a new state on faith.

This inspired me to talk about the story behind Toby and my engagement and the days leading up to the wedding. I am going to try to keep it short and sweet. I'm sure by the Instagram posts, the tweets, and the Facebook statuses, everyone thought we were living out a real life fairytale. False. I'm sure everyone thought that those short months of engagement (we were engaged in September and married in December) were nothing but smiles, giggles, and all the fun wedding stuff. False. I'm sure everyone thought that we had everyone in our corner, cheering us on and excited for the big day. False. False. False.

The day after we got engaged, we got hit with "ya'll aren't getting married right away, right? You're going to wait at least a year, correct?" from relatives. We heard we weren't ready because of our age, our finances, the divorce rate in America. We were told we couldn't afford a wedding. We were asked if I was pregnant (seriously?!). We've had people try to contact my pastor, making horrible accusations against our church, in an attempt to persuade us to wait to get married. We even had close family members tell us that we shouldn't expect them at our wedding because they did not agree with it.

Now, while all of this was going on, Toby left one of his jobs because he felt the Lord told him to, which also happened to be the higher paying one of the two. Shortly after that, I left my very part time job to take on an unpaid internship while completing my last semester of undergrad. So our money changed significantly, which meant we couldn't afford a wedding. But we kept our date for December despite the questioned looks, the snide remarks, and lack of faith on others' parts and sometimes our part as well.

Then, my dad's brother and my uncle passed away suddenly in October. At the same time, things were getting rocky at home and I was getting stressed out (hence my lack of blogging those months). I couldn't call some of the friends I wanted to because they seemed to be distancing themselves from me. During this time I was surprised at how I began to see people's true colors. Some people suddenly wanted to hang out with me because I was engaged. Some friends who I thought would be there just started to slowly stop talking to me. It was hurtful. My pastor even warned me at our premarital counseling that some may not be there for me because they wanted what I had. Sadly, I feel this was true and some of the people I thought would be there for me and celebrate with me weren't there at all, and seemed to only show up for the pictures. In fact, those that truly blessed me during this season were those who I would not have thought would bless me (ya'll know who you are... Thank you so much!).

To make matters worse, about two weeks before the wedding, we lost Toby's car, which left us with my gas guzzler. Then, we couldn't find an apartment. It literally seemed like the world was screaming "don't get married! You're being stupid! Look at all that you're losing! You don't have money! You can't even afford gas!" Did we feel stupid? Yup. Did we feel like we missed God on this one? Yup. Did we want to give up and call the thing off? Yup. Did we feel hecka lonely? Absolutely! It was probably one of the hardest seasons of our lives, and we weren't even official yet!

But we prayed and we trusted God. We wanted to be obedient and get married. This whole process was so far from what I envisioned for myself. I love what India said in her post:

See, what people don’t see is the fight. They don’t see what happens in your life. They assume that everything is easy or so perfectly planned without realizing that all you’re doing is trusting God with everything. I say this all of the time…I am not living the life that I’m planning for myself... Obedience is NOT a one time event. It is a daily process.

As I look back, I realize that God never promised that what He told us to do would be easy and sweatless; He promised to be with us. And I must say that God is good on His word: I felt so close to Him during that season because sometimes, He was all I had. I learned to not focus on what man says, but on what He says. I learned that God handles those details that you worry about when you just be obedient to whatever He tells you to do. For example, I knew we couldn't afford a wedding, but clearly we had a wedding, and basically for free! Seriously! I didn't pay for my dress, the venue, the pictures, the cake, my hair and make up, the reception, nor our hotel (well, except the last day because we wanted an extra day ;) ). If ya'll want, I can blog about my wedding day later (just let me know in the comments).

Our journey wasn't supposed to look like other people's story. They might have had a super smooth engagement, and there is nothing wrong with that. But we didn't, and I don't feel anything is wrong with that either. Your wedding process won't look anything like mines and as hard as you may try, it won't look anything like the next couple's. But that's okay, because if you are being led by God, your story will unfold exactly the way it's supposed to. At the end of the day, it's not even about us, but Him.

Did our happily, sweatless, ever after come after that? Nope. We had some more tests and battles to face. But we faced them together, as one flesh, stronger than we could individually. I've seen the fruit of our obedience. I've seen the fruit of people watching us as we faced big hurdles during that time. We've grown closer to our God. And although we are looking to have our big wedding celebration at the end of this year, I would not have traded our journey to the altar for anything.