Preordained?

When I was 11 years old, I prayed for my husband. I prayed hard for him, every single day, for weeks on end.

I wasn’t praying to GET a husband. Or to find one or to obtain one. I was praying for D____. My current husband.

He was not sick, I was not married. I did not pray for him like old women pray for people in books.

I just got on my knees daily and said, ‘Oh dear God, please please let me marry D____ when I grow up.‘

Just like that.

I have no idea why I did that. I knew him since I was 4 years old. He was just my friend’s older brother. He had this huge smile and these really white teeth, and the blackest hair you ever saw.

When I was eleven he ceased to be just someone I saw from time to time. I was so in awe of him that I could barely look at him. And so I totally ignored him, did not look at him, and just prayed every single day…

Dear God, please, please let me marry D____ when I grow up.

And then, just as suddenly as the crush overwhelmed me, it was gone. I grew up. Grew older. Grew taller. My prayers were peppered with other dreams, possibly equally as fleeting. I moved across the globe. I fell victim to dastardly plots. Miserable schemes. I obtained an education. I did regretful things. I totally forgot about him.

And then I married him. It was a sudden thing too. It felt pre-ordained. I always tell him it is that big smile of his. The minute he smiled at me like that, when we were both adults, my heart did a funny funny thing in my chest.

It was a courtship and a marriage. We were both so young and so…. small.

We have a photo book of every year of our marriage and in our first year, 7 years ago, we looked like children. Heck, we WERE children.

Green as green can be.

A few months into the marriage I was standing somewhere, and he was walking towards me, and he smiled that big smile of his, and suddenly, as though it were an echo through time, I heard my own little voice say, ‘Dear God, please please please let me marry D______ when I grow up.’

I was pretty shaken up to be honest. I had completely forgotten about that episode in my life. Some things are fated to be.

This year was a pretty tough year on our marriage. When I wrote my 7 Year Anniversary post in January, I had no idea what was about to implode. We are not a soppy pair. We are pretty regular and don’t really do public displays of affection. I think I might have put D____ on a pedestal a bit. Something which has certainly crumbled this year. When you forget each other, negative things are bound to creep into a marriage.

I think, in my hopeful and growing mindset, that I finally understand what those old couples who have been together for decades and decades mean when they say ‘love takes work, love means sometimes turning a blind eye, love is choosing each other despite the heartbreak and pain.’

Some things are preordained.

I don’t know what possessed me to pray relentlessly for my husband.

But I guess and hope I will be doing that until I die. Pray for him, that is. In the way old women pray for people. YOU know, like in books. Pray for their souls and whatnot.

Unless he does something truly truly awful and he knows what it is already as I have vividly described the scenarios to him.

Dear God, please please please let me marry D_______ when I grow up. And let this marriage work.

Do you pray? Do you believe things are preordained?