Before We Got Married

In the winter of 2002, I had a dream. I was wearing a tuxedo and pacing in front of an altar. There were people present, and the groomsmen were looking on. It was my wedding, but I was pacing because it was happening too fast. I kept asking myself how I got here so soon, and what am I going to do. Then the scene panned to Kara, my wife, walking, pensively, up the isle to the altar. She had an expectant smile, one that showed hope, but one that seemed to share the same concerns of getting married too soon. Were we ready; was I ready? The dream didn't seem to tell us not to get married, but, rather, to move a little more slowly. You see, our circle of friends, at that time in our lives, were very adamant that not only do you not date without the intention to get married, but that you do not date very long at all. Any delay in the process of marriage was to delay the fulfillment of the will of God -- and who would want the will of God to be delayed? But there we were, in the dream at least, feeling the need to slow down, but feeling the pressure from friends to speed up.

Shortly after that dream, anxiety began to crept into my life. It seemed to pervade my heart and almost burn me up inside. I did many poustinias and I had a spiritual director because I needed to find out why this anxiety was happening during our engagement. Was God trying to tell me something? I continued to ask Him for some light and reprieve from the pain, but I heard nothing. His silence was deafening. There was nothing out there for me to hold onto, but I had to let go. One desire that grew during that time was that God would unite my will to His. In fact, it seemed that all I could do was pray, "I give you my will."

I did receive some consolation, though. I usually experienced it during my meetings with my spiritual director and after my poustinias. I felt that marrying Kara was the right thing to do. After all, I didn't hear any other word from God, but I did experience peace when I thought about moving forward with our plans to marry. But the desolation never stopped. It seemed like all I could do was to go forward, because it was the only thing that I knew I should be doing. We kept asking the Lord to cease our relationship if it wouldn't glorify Him, and we kept surrendering our wills to Him, but we both felt that we should continue to move forward. In fact, I should mention here that Kara's experience was completely different. She was convinced that we were following God's plan. She received visions, consolations, and confirmations that God was leading us in this direction. So we kept moving. I knew I had to move, and the only way that I could go was forward--until the Lord said otherwise.

During all this another thing that continued to grow was my desire to marry Christ. I wanted to seek Him out as my husband. I know that this may sound odd to some of you, but my heart yearned to marry Jesus Christ. I still don't understand all the implications of such a relationship, only that I wanted to become united with Christ.

Nonetheless, on our wedding day, the anxiety persisted, but it couldn't take away the fact that our wedding day was also very exciting. It was such a fun day, and it was great to see so many old friends, and meet my wife's family -- which is extremely HUGE (I still don't remember all their names)! But aside from all that, I was very aware that in marrying Kara, I was marrying Christ. That He would be my spouse, and from my spousal relationship with Him, my relationship with Kara would continue to blossom.