Like almost all of my single lady friends living as global workers, I thought surely I would be married before I launched onto the field. After all, God wouldn’t send a young, naive single girl out into Asia without someone to protect her, would He?

Apparently He would and He often does. It wasn’t so bad being single on a large team, however, it got a lot harder when I relocated to a place where I had to start from ground zero building community around me and settling in a new land with most of my support system cheering me on from a distance. 

I felt alone. My desire for team to co-labor alongside me, for leaders to come and make decisions for me, for friends to have fun with, all culminated in my desire for marriage. A lie snuck into my heart, “If only I were married, my husband could fulfill these desires and I wouldn’t be alone.” This lie only left me more unsatisfied and disappointed. If a husband was really the answer, why did God send me here without one?

In this time, before I even expressed the wrestling in my heart, a wise mentor told me, “Shawna, in this season, God wants to show Himself to you as your husband. He wants to be everything to you and fill every need that you expect to be filled by a husband.”

So I made a list. I made a list of all the areas in my life where I felt relational lack. I then invited God to come and be my leader, my friend, my teammate, my husband. I invited Him to fill all the needs and desires that I felt were not being met in the same way they had in the past. 

And He did. In four months, He brought me into a greater intimacy with Him than I had ever experienced in the past. It was one of the hardest but most beautiful seasons I have ever experienced with the Lord. 

It wasn’t long before God gifted me with amazing community in my location and used them to fill in my relational desires). And now I’m engaged to be married to a dreamy man who is not what I expected but exactly what God knew I needed. But I realized, that even now that I’m blessed with abundant relationships, I still need to look to God as the source of my safety, companionship, purpose, intimacy, affirmation, and joy. He still needs to be my first love and my source. I’m so glad I experienced the stripping away so He could establish Himself in that position before adding all the other beautiful people in my life.