Spiritual Wellness

Ask Angie:  Did God Tell Me Who My Daughter Would Marry?

I received a lengthy, heartfelt note from a mother who wants to help her daughter find love.  While reading, I was quickly caught up in the drama with its various twists and turns.  It seemed straight out of a Twilight saga, a teen girl torn between two young men.  Yet, this saga had a common thread that you don’t often find in fairy tales.  This story revolves around hearing God.

The mother, Mindy, tells how her daughter Leslie started dating a boy in ninth grade.  Meanwhile, she was forming a friendship with another young man, Travis, who was in her class.  After three years of dating the same boy, she broke it off her senior year of high school.  This is when she learned that Travis had loved her all along.  She started dating Travis, but had a rocky relationship that was always on and off.  His primary concern is that he loved her for three years while she dated another boy.  Today, they are no longer dating, but she still loves Travis.

When Leslie initially started dating Travis, her mother had a spiritual experience in which she believes God revealed that the young couple would eventually marry.  After some prodding from her daughter, Mindy shared her revelation with Leslie.  Leslie said that she too thought that Travis was her “future husband.”  She said that as a young child, she had a dream in which she married a man, and the man in the dream was Travis.  It’s unclear from the mother’s note whether Leslie knew Travis as a young child, or if she means to say that the person in the dream greatly resembles Travis in appearance.

The mother writes:

Could it be possible that God had plans for Leslie and Travis before Leslie was ever even born? Leslie and I have talked and I believe that all the times that God spoke to me about Leslie were leading up to this so that I would have faith in what he revealed to me about her and Travis now. I also believe that my purpose in all this is to be her encourager. She discusses her relationship with Travis and problems with me a lot. Sometimes she asks for my advice, other times she just wants me to listen. Her faith goes from strong to weak depending on how her most recent conversation or encounter with Travis has gone. All the while she says that she wants to listen to God and do what he wants her to do. She doesn’t know that she should even try to date anyone else, because she believes that you shouldn’t date anyone you wouldn’t marry and she really does want to believe in what God told her as a child and me later- that she will marry him one day. She also doesn’t want to do anything to push him farther away, but she is very emotionally distraught. I should also mention that during this whole past year, Travis has not dated any other girls. At one point, he deleted Leslie as a friend on facebook . So in typical Leslie form, she requested him 3 times before he finally texted her and asked her why she was doing it. He told her he was “talking” to someone else. Later on they became friends on facebook again and he told Leslie that “he was trying to move on, but she kept requesting him on facebook and wouldn’t let him.  Can you please give me your thoughts?

Angie Answers:

To answer your first question, yes it’s possible that God makes plans for our relationships before we’re even born.  Bible verses such as “I know the plans I have for you” and “I knew you before you were in your mother’s womb” indicate the possibility of certain predestined events.  The details are left out, but certainly there’s room to suggest romance might be included.  Also, I think it’s evident throughout the Bible that God wants to speak to us about His plan for us.  That was certainly the case for me when I met my husband!  It’s our job is to discern what God is saying, which seems to be what lies at the heart of your question . . .

What is God really saying about this story, and through this story?  It’s a story about the hope of young love, but also a story about a mother’s love for her daughter.

In reading your story, I love your dedication to hearing God and following Him.  I passionately believe that we should all live in this way.  That being said, I have a few concerns:  1.Leslie is young, and she was even younger when her relationship with Travis began.  2.Travis isn’t consistently returning her affections.  3. What does this mean for your relationship with Leslie?

Anytime we experience hearing God, we must exercise discernment. This requires patience with His timing (as you mention), as well as an ability to consider things from various angles.  What did God mean?  How do I apply what I heard from God?  And most importantly, could I be wrong?  Is it possible that I didn’t hear God, or that I misunderstood what God said?

What does this mean for your relationship with Leslie? There are huge implications if you are fully committed to the idea that Travis is Leslie’s “future husband.”  While it’s possible that you correctly heard God and correctly interpreted His meaning, it’s also possible that you didn’t.  At this juncture, I think you should be open to either possibility.  Let go of what God said.  Let it fly in the wind and if it’s meant to be, it will fly right back to you.  Because if you don’t, you risk not giving your daughter the mothering that she needs.

Leslie has been focused on romantic relationships since she was in the ninth grade.  Now, she is in college and it’s distracting her from her studies.  Meanwhile, she’s not dating other men because she’s waiting for a man who is either confused about his feelings for her, or else “just not that into her.”  Leslie is so much more that a statistic… but, statistically, she will graduate college as a single woman and remain so until she’s nearly 30 years old.  This means that she needs to learn how to be a focused, autonomous, purposeful young woman. And… women who are purposeful don’t Facebook request the same boy three times.

You said that you want to encourage your daughter.  I love that!  So, its time to encourage her to learn that she doesn’t need you to hear from God about who she’s going to marry.  She needs to hear that all on her own.  You mentioned that she had a dream at age nine, but I think there are too many variables there to hold onto until adulthood.   She also needs to start thinking about her career and her purpose in life.  This is where you can encourage her.  Tell her that she’s strong enough to be alone and happy.  Tell her that she has opportunities the world-over.  Tell her to dream big.  Then, if Travis ends up back in the story… so be it.  Only time will tell, however time should never be the determining factor.

It could be, that as her mother, your greatest step of faith is letting go of what you heard from God. You can’t have faith for something you control.  If you let go, and focus on helping Leslie in other ways, God will eventually reveal His true intent for your daughter’s life.

hearing God, husband, marriage, mother, romance