My Husband's Letter To Girls Who Are Tired of Waiting

When my now husband and I were dating, I wrote a blog titled: "To the Girl Who's Tired of Waiting."A lot of girls related and responded and I knew there was something there - a heart topic that needed some more attention. So, I asked my boyfriend to guest blog and write a post about waiting from a guy's point of view. I joked with him that he had a deadline to turn it in to me, but then I kind of forgot about it.On the day he proposed, before he got down on one knee, he handed me a letter and said, "Here's my blog." And this is what it said: Waiting is tough. Waiting for what God has planned for you can seem impossible. To understand that God doesn't operate on our schedule only complicates matters.Therein lies the secret of dating -- understanding that God has everything laid out for us already... we just have to have the strength and fortitude to trust His plan. For years, I've wondered what God had planned for me. Personally, professionally -- it didn't matter. There never seemed to be a clear, direct path to what I wanted. But that was the problem -- I was so focused on what I wanted that the idea of what He wanted was so far away -- but it had the potential to be so much more worthwhile. Professionally, He made my path clear fairly early on in college. There was such a comforting peace in knowing that I was within my call, and I wanted the same peace in every other area of my life. In order to find that peace in my personal life, I was going to do something I had no desire to do... WAIT.My dating life throughout high school and the early parts of college was very reflective of my generation's stereotype -- it was all about instant gratification. The idea of not having someone was a terrifying concept -- but that fear became a reality my sophomore year of college. The girl I had been dating for a while ended things abruptly, with no real reason and no real closure -- and I was left to pick up the pieces and figure out what was next. Throughout that entire process, I began to realize that God's plan for me required just one thing from me: FAITH. Armed with that realization, I began a season of life where I simply waited to see what God had in store for me. And what a season it was! I grew daily as a person and life really was better than ever. And that's how it was for more than four years. I got comfortable with very simply "being with me." Toward the end of that season, however, I began to feel a stirring that I was ready to date again. And that's when it happened -- the most beautiful girl I had ever seen came seemingly out of nowhere. She was in a church small group I was leading and she had no idea that with each passing week I was falling harder and harder for her. It took me nearly a month of prayer and working up the nerve to ask her on a date. But when I finally did, I knew it was on God's time and there was going to be something special about this relationship. And special it was.She was the most beautiful person, on the inside and the outside, and our relationship was made ever more special because we had both taken the time to find our identity outside of others before we met. I don't say all this to say that everything has been perfect since day one. Any relationship takes a lot of work. The difference is - when a relationship is born out of God's perfect timing, you have a reason to fight. To fight for each other. To fight for a future. To fight for a legacy born out of something greater than any individual part.[bctt tweet="So, wait. It's not what we naturally want to do, but it is what we were called to do." username="kchaprogers"] When we reach that realization and fully cast our cares upon Him, life becomes exactly what it was made to be!-- Caleb