This archive Sunday post originally appeared on December 9, 2013. to see the original post and comments go here.
‘Child,’ said the Lion, ‘I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own.’ (“The Horse and His Boy” by C.S. Lewis)
***
I had a boyfriend once, and he was a missionary in a far-off land.
We had been dear friends in high school, and a handful of months after he left on his mission, he wrote me a letter to spill the beans and tell me he loved me. It was a surprising declaration. And I prayed.
Heavenly Father, what should I do? How should I respond? I can’t honestly say I love him back, but I think maybe I could someday. Can you tell me what will happen?
And God answered.
You need to wait for him. Make sure your heart is free when he gets home.
I knew what this meant: marriage! Wedding bells! Pictures at the temple and an eternity together! Because that’s why you wait for a missionary — so you can get married.
It still would have been a lie to claim that I was in love with him, but in my reply letter, I told him that I would “wait” — still with every intention of dating other people, but with the promise to be unattached when he came home. It was following God’s advice. It was an expression of my faith in God’s plan for my life (which, it was perfectly obvious to me, included marrying the missionary — I overshot on my interpretation of God’s words).
And so, the missionary became my long-distance boyfriend. Months passed. We wrote sappy letters (always with the obligatory scripture talk/”missionary work is so important!” stuff) and sent epic care packages. And the words “I love you” became appropriate. They came true. I loved him. I wanted to marry him. And I knew, I just knew, that I would. Because God had told me to wait.
I will sum up by saying that the missionary came home at the end of his two years, and we were blissful for a little while, and then we were hanging on for a little while, and then we broke up. We left things open for the possibility that, when the timing was better, we could give it another try. But we never did.
Things ended up so happy, guys. So happy. I’m married to my main man, and we have a little baby, and we are all so good together. And the missionary got married, too, and they have two kids, and I have every reason to assume that they are the happiest foursome in all the world. Things worked out. Big time.
But God told me to wait. Why would God tell me to wait for someone that I wasn’t going to marry? Did I hear God wrong? Did God want me to marry the missionary after all, and are our real-life marriages just second best? (Let me interject here: NO.) Why would God fool me into that, get me to set my heart on a certain love story, instead of just saying Hey, no, it’s not this guy. There’s another guy. I’ll let you know when you meet him. Would’ve saved me a lot of heartache.
I think the answer is this: because the missionary needed to be part of my story.
Marrying the missionary wasn’t the story I needed to live, but waiting for him and falling in love with him was. And God told me that. If God had said Well, actually, I don’t think you should marry him, but it’s important that you write him a bunch of letters and date him for a little while, I would have gone into the whole thing halfheartedly. And that would have ruined my story. I needed to believe in that happy ending, at least for a season.
Why? There are lots of possible reasons.
1. So I could meet my husband (did I mention that he was one of the missionary’s companions in that far-off land, and that there’s next-to-no chance I would have met him in any other way?).
2. So I wouldn’t get too attached to the other guys I dated in college and end up marrying someone totally awful for me.
3. So I would take my studies seriously without the distraction of a serious boyfriend who lived in the same town.
4. So the missionary would have someone to want to come home for.
5. So we could each have a bunch of sappy letters to look back on in our old age.
6. So we wouldn’t have to wonder what might have been.
7. So we could have the short-lived, beautiful joy of being in love with each other.
And a dozen or more other reasons that I have no idea about, including some that are known only to the missionary himself.
We each have our own story.
I think this is the personal in personal revelation. The answers God gives me are not the ultimate, be-all end-all answers for everyone. They’re not even the answers that will be right for me ten years from now. They are the answers that will lead me through this chapter in my own story.
To me, this is the answer to why some people get the answer Yes, join this church and other people get the answer No, this isn’t it. They have different stories. It’s why some people get the answer Yes, the Book of Mormon is true and others get the answer No, don’t believe it and others get no answer at all.
It’s why two people who pray to know if women should have the priesthood can get wildly different answers. It’s why two people who pray for healing end up with different prognoses. It’s why believers in every religion out there have had spiritual experiences confirming their own religion’s truth, cementing their commitment. It’s about the uniqueness of our stories.
God tells us the things we need to believe for our stories to unfold. That idea is what’s working for my testimony right now. Does this make God a liar? Call it that if you’d like. To me, it’s more that God is sharing the portion of truth that is most suited to our individual needs.