Jesus took me out to dinner, dressed me up in sparkles, put a ring on my finger, gave me His heart, and didn’t give me a choice of saying no. I was His bride and He was my groom. At the end of the night, He even gave me a new journal to write about it all.
How did this all happen? Well, our last day of ministry in Myanmar, we decided not to do a program for the night, but asked to have a bonfire and a fun night with the kids instead. But little did we know that our host’s daughter Sophie and her aunt (think 10 years older best friend) Caesar decided to surprise us and take us out to dinner instead. All we had known on the way there was that they asked to pick us up at 6pm and to not eat dinner beforehand. I had assumed that they were planning to cook one last meal for us. But my assumption was wrong, and they surprised us by taking us out to dinner instead!
So when we got to our ministry site later that night, the bonfire had already started and was actually closer to embers than to a fire. But the kids were super excited to see us for our last night with them, so one by one they took us aside to put sparkles on our faces (think Burmese make-up) and a little girl that I hadn’t seen much before put a plastic heart-shaped ring on my finger (I’m surprised it fit!) before they started dragging us inside to do our Bible program for the night.
After the little girl put that ring on my finger, I couldn’t help but think of how Jesus pursues us like that. It reminded me of how I had gotten a purity ring a few years ago as an outward sign of my commitment to God to wait for marriage. I had worn it on my ring finger and told anyone who asked that I was engaged to Jesus. I had since lost the ring, but kept the promise in my heart. Now, several years later, Jesus came full circle to that promise and put a ring on my finger to signify that we were married now.
You see, Jesus has been talking a lot to me lately about being a husband to me. He first brought it up in Nepal, where I had a sweet season with Him after being baptized there, where He seemed to lead me gently to where He asked me and show me things gently in a season of rest and joy with Him. India was a hard season of learning how to stay in love with the mission field after the magic was gone, and sharing my love story with Jesus publicly in church for the first time. In Cambodia, God reminded me of my commitment to Him and asked me to abandon some things that were holding me back in my relationship with Him. And now finally on our last day in Myanmar, Jesus had this little girl (who didn’t speak a word of English) put a ring on my finger as a reminder to stop dragging my feet in my hesitancy of “what does it mean to be married to Jesus?” and to just start treating Him as my husband.
What does that mean to me?
Seeing Jesus as my husband means that I am letting Him completely pursue me and myself being open to completely pursuing Him. It’s a reminder to put my hopes and dreams of someday being married to an earthly man on the back-burner while I’m in this unique period of singleness in my life, and to pursue Jesus with all my heart. This is not an easy thing for me, but I know my earthly marriage will be so much sweeter after falling in love with Jesus even deeper than I have before in this season of my life, and after forgetting about things that hold me back and tie me to other parts of my life back home.
Not that I’m not looking forward to going back home, starting my career, and eventually getting married and starting a family of my own. Because I do look forward to those things. But right now, Jesus wants me to focus on what does it look like to not focus on or worry about those things that I hope for when I get back to America, but to keep my eyes fixed on Him, the Author and Perfecter of my faith, and everything else will fall into place.
So in the next part of my story, Jesus gave me His heart. It came in the form of a carefully formed paper origami heart that one of the kids made for me and gave to me on our last day. I could see how God was pursuing me in a very beautiful way, by showing me how much these kids loved our team and would miss us when we were gone.
In the last part of my story, God gave me a new journal to write about everything that happened. That night, my favorite staff member Kaung Htet Paing gave me a new journal as we were about to leave in the truck to go back to our hotel. He’s still learning English, but he told me in perfect English as he hugged me goodbye that he didn’t want me to go and gave me the journal.
It was such a testament to how much God loves me and knows my heart, because I love to write and had probably mentioned that only once to Kaung Htet Paing as we practiced English together, and here he was with a new journal for me, that I am now using for Month 7 in Thailand. (As an example of how much I love to write, this journal is actually #6 of the journals I’ve started specifically about the World Race from Training Camp to right now!)
Jesus had given me so many gifts that night, and he didn’t have to bless me so specifically with such a practical and sweet gift as a journal, but He knew I would need one, and he knew how much it meant to me to get a gift like that from one of my new friends at Living Waters.
In one day, Jesus showed me what I meant to Him and how much and how intimately He wanted to be my husband. And that’s not even revealing to you everything more He told me about Him being my husband in Thailand…
