When Your One Wasn't Actually The One
By Sarah Kozak
Growing up, I have so many memories of sitting with my Mom listening countless times to her tell the story of how she met and fell in love with my Dad. After multiple previous relationships, when she met my Dad, it only took a few months from the moment they met for him to place an engagement ring on her finger. I would ask her, “But what made you sure that he was the one?” And she would always smile and respond with, “Sarah, when you’re with the right person, you just know.”
Now as a girl who has largely based her life decisions off of gut feelings, this answer made complete sense to me. Not only in regards to relationships, but with any big decision in my life. Whether it be a job, where I was supposed to live, or the man I was meant to fall in love with, I firmly believed that this deep interior “knowing,” the type that overwhelms your soul and makes you feel you could wager your life on it, was the way in which the Holy Spirit moves in our lives and reveals God’s will.
Eventually out of nowhere, a certain man came into my life which would take this deep conviction that I had in one’s ability “to know” to a whole new level. As time went on, the more our relationship deepened, the more I felt that God was confirming over and over again that, “Yes, he was the one!” I began to take everything as a sign... Every Bible passage, song lyric, and observation from the friends who knew us best seemed to confirm it. The overwhelming peace I experienced while being with him was undeniable. It was this feeling of “coming home” and everything seemed to fall right in line with what my mom had told me all along. When he eventually asked me out, I was over the moon and overjoyed to realize that the deep, interior “knowing” that God had placed on my heart had been right all along.
So on the day when we eventually had a conversation in which it was determined that we would go back to being “just friends,” I came back to my dorm room, sunk to the floor, and sobbed. Not only over the loss of that relationship, but also from the very real fear in my realization that the sense of “knowing” I experienced had been wrong. It felt as though every part of my heart had been lying to me for years; leading me down a path that was, it turned out, not God’s plan for me.
Fast forward years later, and the one question that still reared its ugly, menacing head every time I was inclined to feel melancholic on a lonely Saturday night was still the unanswered question of “why?”
Why would God place so much conviction in my heart for something that was not meant to be?
We hear so often about “letting go” because we know how toxic it is to hold onto these types of things, but I think there is an equally dangerous trap that we can fall into that’s not mentioned as often- our incessant asking of “why?” This is the question we spend hours journaling over. Pages and pages of trying to reconcile our understanding of God’s promises with the reality that is currently in front of us. When the strong gut feeling of “knowing” seemed to be entirely shattered, I began to doubt the wisdom my mom had been sharing with me all of those years. Maybe that was how it happened for her, but clearly that was not how it would be for me. It began to rock my faith as well... because I began to wonder if those deep seated gut feelings which I had believed to be God speaking to me had not actually been Him at all. Had I actually not been able to hear His voice? Had I merely been imposing my own will on the Lord’s and fabricating what I had believed was Him speaking to me through all of the confirmations I had experienced?
I recently shared this fear with a friend and said, “ I can’t seem to understand why He would have placed such strong desires on my heart when He had no intention of fulfilling them.” And she, in her usual patience and wisdom responded with, “I think you hear His voice more clearly than you realize. And maybe He needed you to be that convicted about these things that strongly because pursuing them wholeheartedly is what led you to where He wanted you to be right now.”
There’s a book I read of a girl in a similar situation who was struggling to understand why God had taken away the man whom she was absolutely convinced was the one. But there’s a moment when it says that while speaking to a priest she had to admit that perhaps, she had not understood. That phrase leapt off the page at me and I began to repeat it over and over...
“Perhaps, I did not understand.”
This phrase, for the first time in years, delivered God’s gentle but straightforward answer to the question of “why?” that I had been asking Him over and over again. The reality was, I had been asking Him to explain why the outcome was not the same as the promises that He had made to me. I was asking God to admit His mistake, but it wasn’t until I began to admit my mistake that the story began to make sense to me. It was this realization of, “Lord, perhaps my interpretation of Your promise is different from what You’ve actually intended for me.”
It takes humility for us to admit that the outcome of God’s plan for our lives is not what we believed it to be. That He might just in fact know best. But isn’t that the very essence of God? A loving Father who knows every aspect of our hearts and lives so well that He is able to see the full story in a way that is far beyond our own understanding?
I think that the wise old sage known as the Prophet Isaiah summed it up best when he wrote, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” -Isaiah 55:8-9
This childlike simplicity in recognizing our own human nature takes away our compulsive need to know “why” as it shifts our focus on to allowing God to work in whatever way He sees best.
Admitting that we maybe did not understand is not saying that God’s promises to us will not be fulfilled. Rather, it’s a whole hearted embrace in the trust and belief that the desires and convictions of our hearts are always leading us towards something which is far greater than what we could imagine. Because Isaiah does not stop there. He goes onto say...
“For as the rain and the snow come down from Heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me Empty, but it shall accomplish that which I intend, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” -Isaiah 55:10-11
God is working, sisters, even in the moments when it seems like every part of your life is contradicting His promise. And if there is one thing we know to be true about our Heavenly Father, it is that He is far more invested in our true happiness than we could ever be. So rather than exhausting your heart by asking “why?” become a child again and allow yourself to fall into His arms. And while safely sitting there, look out in hopeful anticipation as the beautiful story He has written begins to unfold before you.
