The Most Important Yes

So a couple of days ago, it was our first  "engagement" anniversary - it was a whole year ago that Josias got down on one knee, on the equator, and asked me to marry him.
I shared the memory on my facebook page and commented that it was the "second most important yes of my life". However, after posting it I began to think and I realised that, even though Sunday the 16th of November 2014 was the day I officially said yes to spending the rest of my life with this man, it wasn't when my heart said yes.

My heart said yes 5 months before that.

5 months exactly before I had the ring on my finger, the 16th of June, Josias and I were sitting in Parque Carolina in Quito (the largest man-made park in South America apparently) and Josias told me that "he liked me a lot" and we began talking about the possibility of a future together. For some time before that, I had prayed and committed myself to not go out with anyone who wasn't my future husband, and so for me, saying yes now was saying yes to a whole lot more than just casual dating. As much as I was very much attracted to him (an attraction I began trying to ignore since we met, on my 21st birthday in May), and knew that he was the type of godly man that I wanted to marry, I was scared.

I had only been in Ecuador 4 months, I was here as a missionary with a lot of people to answer to and be held accountable to, I had consciously prepared myself for being single and not worrying about men for the 2 years I was going to be serving and had previously decided that communication in marriage was difficult enough without adding in cultural and linguistic barriers, so my preference was to marry somebody from my own country. That's what my brain was yelling at me anyway.

However, amidst all the doubt and fear (of which there were a lot), as I looked at this man who I'd only really known for less than two weeks, in my heart there was a quiet but persistant peace, and as the day went on, that quiet peace began to drown out all the panicky doubts running about in my conscious. I began to feel that, despite being on different continents and living in totally different worlds until 4 months ago, I knew this young man already; my heart recognised him from my many prayers and heartfelt longings from years before.

So the next day, on a bus to Latacunga to go and meet up with a missions team from the States, when Josias asked me for the second time if I would be his girlfriend, despite the continued presence of incertainty and fear, knowing that I would in reality be saying yes to much more than that, that persistant peace somehow fought its way quietly through to the surface and I said the second most important yes of my life.

When I look back at it now, knowing how stupidly in love I am with Josias and feeling absolutely certain that he is the best man for me, alongside whom to live this adventure of serving God together, I also see how easily I could have missed it all. If I'd let my common sense and doubts overtake that quiet peace and direction from the Lord, I would have missed out on the second biggest blessing of my life.

As I've been thinking about this "second most important yes", it has also reminded me of the most important yes of my life, a yes to God; a yes to repentance and humility in accepting that without Him I am a hopeless sinner in need of grace; a yes to Jesus and the life He has to offer me; a yes to a life lived only for Him (I'm still working on that some days!). As I've been thinking, I've realised that my two most important yeses actually have a lot more in common that I might have first believed.

In the same way I had to take a leap of faith in saying yes to Josias, saying yes to God also requires that same leap. In the same way I was bombarded with doubt and fear about what may happen if I potentially said yes, there are also doubts and fears that can try to grip our hearts as we contemplate a life with God. However, in the same way that there existed that small and almost silent peace in my heart that told me saying yes was the right decision, so also God softens our hearts to hear Him and His Holy Spirit quietly tells us that it is all true: that we really are hopeless sinners who one day will face eternal judgement for our bad decisions and that there really is a loving God who sent His Son to die in our place and who rose from the dead, forever defeating sin and death. And in the same way my heart recognised Josias as the man I had prayed for and longed to be with, so too our hearts recognise the loving Creator God who made and designed us to live in divine fellowship with Him.

However, just like I would have missed out on this wonderful marriage with Josias if I had given into those doubts, so we too miss out on the greatest relationship we could ever have if we allow our human thoughts and doubts to overcome that small, still voice of the Holy Spirit and cause us to reject what our hearts know to be the Truth.

But if we do take that leap of faith, and we say the Eternal Yes to God's proposal, we land on a small and narrow path on which we find love, intimacy, acceptance, forgiveness and the One whom our soul loves, and as we get to know Him more and more, as we see His faithfulness at work in our lives every day, the stronger that faith becomes and the doubts slowly fade away into nothingness. One day, when the church, His bride, is seated at the marriage feast of the lamb, we will be living no longer by faith but by sight.

Now that I'm married to Josias, I can't believe I ever doubted that he wasn't the one for me. Sure, the Ecua-Wife Life isn't always simple or easy, and I had to make a lot of difficult and some extreme decisions to get here but I would never, ever give up my marriage with Josias. One day, when Christ comes back or I'm taken to be with Him in glory, that's exactly what it will be like, only infintely more, and I'll be infintely thankful to God who helped me to say the most important yes.

*This is a double post of something I wrote for my other blog "The Ecua-Wife Life" which focuses on my life in Ecuador and my own personal thoughts and things that God is teaching me. If you would like to read more, you can access it via the tab at the top of the page.