Writing a List

In 2015, during a prayer walk in what I affectionately called, “The God Zone” (a stretch of walking trail in which I would almost always hear God and see visions in the beginning of my walk with the Holy Spirit), I felt the Holy Spirit come to me as a loving mother.

A Mother’s Job

The Holy Spirit said, “It is a mother’s job to find a mate for her children because she understands their hearts the best, but your mother does not have the capacity to do this, so I will do it for you instead.” I began crying (no surprise there) and started thanking God for being so loving to me. She continued: “Therefore, I will search the whole world for a man who is worthy of you, and tell you what I find when I return.” Then, I felt her leave.

A week or two later, while I was walking again in “The God Zone”, the Holy Spirit came back to me as a mother. “I have searched the whole world and have found none worthy of you,” she said. I was disappointed to hear it but also a little comforted in my cynicism. “Of course you did,” I replied sarcastically, and, “I guess I was right—I’m destined to be perma-single.” “Who told you that?” asked God. “My life told me that,” I replied. “Just look at me! I’m 34 with no prospects of ever getting married and no hope of anything ever changing. Even God can’t find me a good man!” “Since I can’t find you a man worthy of you, I will make one,” she replied. Then, she went away.

Writing the List

A few weeks passed, and I got kicked out of my apartment for someone else’s dog biting mine and then lying about it. (Grrr… I’m still a bit mad.) However, God made good of it and the situation forced me to look for temporary housing in Virginia while I attended an Army school for a few months. I moved into the basement apartment of a family’s mansion in McLean. There, I discovered that God could still speak to me outside of “The God Zone”.

One day, during a prayer walk, the Holy Spirit came back to me. “I’d like you to write a list of everything you want in a husband,” she said. “Then, I can use that list to make you a man worthy of you.”

I was petrified at the idea. Write a list? I was always told that this was the worst thing a single woman could do because it could cause her to exclude good men from consideration for the wrong reasons.

I was also petrified at the real-life fleece-laying of it all. I mean, it’s easy to “believe in God” as long as God is “up there, watching us with love” and we are “down here, doing our human best by ourselves”, but when God wants to actually be “down here co-laboring with us, changing the world for, with, and through us”, that requires real faith to believe and rely upon God.

This invitation made me realize that I didn’t have any real faith at all. Considering that I had been the perfect church volunteer and even a seminarian for the past nine years, this did not bode well for my Christian upbringing in the mainstream American Church. But I digress…

I went back to my mansion apartment and began praying for God to help me write the right list because I didn’t trust my own discernment when it came to men and love anymore, and I didn’t want to lose out on God’s best because of superficial reasons.

One morning, a couple of days later, I mustered up the courage to tearfully write my list with God, and it looked something like this:

1. He must love God will all that he is
2. He must pursue humility and gentleness
3. He must be intelligent, wise, and talented (dances? music?)
4. He must make me laugh, have fun, and rest
5. He must be attractive, healthy, and active
6. He must be able to honor my family and culture — here, I almost wrote “he must speak another language” but I thought that would be too limiting to God, so I tried to give God more room
7. He must be generous with what he has
8. He must demonstrate great integrity and integrate his life
9. He must pursue all manner of purity
10. He must be a warrior, a protector, and a helper
11. He must be a friend, a good friend, a great friend, to me and others
12. He must be encouraging, excited, and curious about life
13. He must be attracted to a woman like me, how God created me

(I updated this section of this post with the real list from my photo album on 20230719.)

Praying Over the List

After I wrote my list, I felt the Holy Spirit come to me. “Pray over your list everyday for 40 days,” she said. I began crying because this meant that she was serious and we were about to get down to business. That meant that I would finally see if God was going to fulfill her promises to me or be a disappointment like my own mother.

I began praying over the list with great fear and lots of tears. I didn’t want God to disappoint me, but I expected she would, so I would say in my prayers, “God, I’m not putting my hope in you fulfilling my list, but in your character.” In reality, though, I was subconsciously thinking in my heart that all would be well only if God fulfilled my list.

Around day 31 of my 40 days of prayer, I met a man in that Army school who would introduce me to my husband 2.5 years later, but I didn’t know it then.

Sitting on a Bench

Three-and-a-half years after the day I wrote my list, I was sitting on the bench in front of my dog’s flower-covered grave in my parents’ back yard, with the man who would become my husband three weeks later, but I didn’t know it then.

We had been introduced by that man from my Army school, become friends over the past ten months, and eventually began spending time together every single day. After encouraging our friendship God had revealed to us that we had fallen in love, but we didn’t know it. We were now sitting on that bench, trying to figure out what to do next.

The Holy Spirit came to me. “Do you like him, the one I have prepared for you? Do you find him worthy?” she asked. I was shocked! She hadn’t brought up “the list” in over three years! “Isn’t he everything you asked for?” she continued. I reviewed the list in my head. Not only was he everything I asked for, he was everything I wasn’t willing to ask for—like speaking another language. In fact, he spoke a Middle Eastern tongue and was intimately familiar with the Muslim culture that had shaped me and my whole family! I began to cry (no surprise) and told my future-husband what I heard God just say to me. We kissed.

We were married three weeks later. All it took was writing a list, and 40 days of prayer, and 3.5 years of waiting on God to make me a man worthy of me, and make me a woman worthy of him in return.