for allie

here’s some advice i want to pass on to allie when she’s older.  a bit of wisdom i wish my mom had given to me when i was younger.  but God is good and filled in whatever might have been missing from my childhood and has given me a wonderful husband who i love very much and who i know loves me very much.  marriage has been a sweet blessing, made even more sweet when done God’s way.  but, this wisdom would have served me well in my high school and early college days.  so allie, this is for you, in the hope that you would remain faithful to the Lord and trust with all your heart that He will bring you the right man at the right time as long as it’s His will for you to be married.  and before you give your heart away, make sure that this man loves the Lord whole-heartedly and will love you in the way you ought to be loved.  let him be worthy of your love, my precious girl.

*****

“Sisters, all the advice from Vogue, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan that talks about going after and getting your man, all the blather about how in this day and age it is just as acceptable for you to initiate as for him, is just that—blather. Be confident and trust your feelings on this matter. Be confident that if he is the man you hope and wish him to be, he will play the man. You crackle the leaves a bit when he is in the area and let him know you are there. Then wait for him to initiate, or not. In the long run, you will be well served either way.” Doing Things Right in Matters of the Heart, page 94

In their newly converted, youthful zeal, my dad and a group of his friends decided that God had called them to remain single. Dad was uninterested in the efforts of women to attract his attention. Put off by their forward manner, it was easy to think that God wasn’t leading him to get married.

Until he met my mom.

When he walked into the canteen at the Christian retreat center where Mom was working for the week, she didn’t try to catch his eye. Instead, she told him the canteen was closed. After pleading for a hot dog (on the grounds that he’d been serving and preaching all day and was tired and hungry) she finally relented. But to this day, Dad claims the hot dog was as cold as her demeanor. (She disputes this accusation, of course!)

My dad, who only a day before thought he would remain single, was suddenly smitten. Something in him—something that wanted to initiate, pursue, and win a woman’s heart—was awakened. So he asked my mom to take a walk. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mom used to remind my sisters and me of this story when we were tempted to try to get some guy’s attention. Allow a man to win your heart, she would say. And if he doesn’t want to, then why would you want him?

God created men to initiate and he created women to respond. Or, as John Ensor also puts it, “His power is in the exclamation [of love]. Yours is in the echo.” When we remember this, things will work right in matters of the heart.