50 Questions for My Future Husband

When I was a young teen, it was popular in my circle of friends to write lists of characteristics we hoped for in a husband someday. Some of our criteria was reasonable, much of it silly. After that time, I began to greatly dislike writing such lists, and I threw all mine away. I didn't like the "grocery shopping" feeling that list-writing gave me. I had experienced the uncomfortable feeling of being likened to a piece of feminine merchandise, up on the shelf next to all the other pretty church girls, so perhaps my intense dislike for petty checklists was more reactionary than it should have been. Even so, I threw out all lists, criteria, and qualifications, and thought no more about it for several years.

In the last year, I realized the practicality of having some clearly defined criteria of what things can or cannot be negotiated when finding a mate. This new appreciation came chiefly out of my dismay as I saw some friends of mine fall for and marry men that were, to put it nicely, losers. These were scrupulous, Christian girls who thought they would be strong and sensible, but had failed to plan ahead and as a result, made the biggest error of their lives.

I'm still not a fan of lists. I hate putting people into a box. I've never liked applications or surveys. But, after many weeks of thinking, praying, and revising, I came up with a list that contained only six simple, non-negotiable items, and two negotiable ones. I'm not posting it here for obvious reasons; it is customized to who I am and what things I value most in this life. It is a list meant to flag non-compatibility in life's biggest issues right from the get-go, thus averting future disaster.

Along the same line, I began thinking about what questions I would want to have answered from my future husband. Here is a list of 50 questions I came up with. I realize many are sober in nature, but wouldn't it be awful to commit your life to someone with some of these things unanswered? There are also some glaring omissions that one might consider essential--questions about salvation, etc. Those fundamental issues are covered in my first list, so are not repeated here. Write your own list of questions that would weigh on your heart until answered. I may not ever use these, but the writing of them helped me shape in my heart and mind the issues that are most important to me as I consider the rest of my life spent in service to the Lord, fully aware that the choices I make in life's biggest arenas will determine a future of either delight or disaster.

50 Questions for My Future Husband

1) If I developed a debilitating mental illness (example: schizophrenia) and became a threat to you or our children, what would you do?

2) If I was in an unresponsive coma, most likely for life, what would you do?

3) Under what circumstances would you seek to divorce me?

4) If I was unable to have children, how would you feel? What would you do?

5) If I died suddenly, what are your plans for taking care of yourself and raising our children? Would you consider remarrying?

6) What do you believe about spanking?

7) If another person was making inappropriate or flirtatious advances on me, how would you want me to go about including you and ending it?

8) What are your expectations for me to keep healthy and beautiful for you, even as my body changes with childbearing? (Weight gain/loss, stretch marks, etc)

9) How important is it to you that I wear makeup, style my hair, and dress attractively?

10) How do you feel about adoption, raising children of different ethnicities, and interracial marriage?

11) If I became disfigured through illness or injury, how would you feel and what would you do?

12) Because of my work history in the medical field, how would you feel if I was ever included in a court case or lawsuit, even years from now?

13) How would we handle the death of one of our children?

14) How will you keep yourself guarded from pornography and other sexual sins, and hold yourself accountable to me (and anyone else)?

15) How important is it to you to pray for your spouse? To pray with your spouse?

16) How important is it to you that we regularly do fun things together that we both enjoy?

17) How do you plan to fulfill your role as provider without sacrificing important time spent with your wife and family?

18) How interested or receptive will you be to making any lifestyle or dietary changes in an effort to make ourselves healthier?

19) What constitutes a “major purchase,” and at what amount of money should both spouses be consulted before a purchase is made?

20) What are your views on credit cards? How do you feel about debt? How much debt are you willing to carry, and for what reasons?

21) What are your views on contraception? Under what circumstances would you consider preventing conception for a time?

22) How important is it to you to have money to spend on your hobbies and interests?

23) How important is it to you that I keep a clean, organized home?

24) Under what circumstances would you be willing to be apart from me and our children for an extended period of time (mission trip, etc.)?

25) How do you plan to implement spiritual leadership in our home, and what can I do to help set up a family discipleship plan that works for us?

26) What do you think about spouses having separate email or social networking accounts?

27) When was a time I’ve ever embarrassed you by my speech, dress, behavior, or other conduct?

28) Have I ever made you feel uncomfortable by how I interact with other men?

29) How should we manage holidays and birthdays with both sides of our family?

30) What is the thing that I might do that would hurt or damage you the most?

31) What kind of secret is justified in being withheld from a spouse?

32) What should I do if I think you’re irritated or angry at something I’ve said or done?

33) How should we use and manage electronic devices and media consumption in our home?

34) How are we going to manage the internet in our home?

35) What will we do if you and I hold differing viewpoints on some Bible doctrines?

36) What would make me unattractive or undesirable to you?

37) What will we do for our parents in their older years when they need care and can no longer live alone?

38) What would you change about me, if you could?

39) What attracted you to me the most?

40) What are you most afraid of?

41) How do you feel about displays of physical affection in public? How much is too much?

42) How do you feel about women speaking up and contributing in church?

43) How would we help if one of our siblings fell on hard financial times?

44) What makes you angry?

45) What gives you the most joy?

46) How do you plan to be involved in the home-schooling of our children?

47) How do you feel about the use of slang, popular catch-phrases, sarcasm, and other irreverent or casual speech in our home?

48) What are your thoughts on owning pets or livestock?

49) How do you understand your role in carrying out the Great Commission with your God-given gifts and 

personality? 

50) What is your love language (the best way for me to communicate my love for you)?

Winds of Change

Since my last blog post, I have indeed been accepted at the three-and-a-half-hour away little hospital, and if all goes as planned, I will start a few weeks after graduation, as soon as I've obtained my RN license. I mustn't complain--how good and gracious of the Lord to provide me with a job so soon! And not too far away; I can still come home often enough. Some folks are looking across the country for work. I am grateful. Really.

But I am a little afraid. Humans weren't designed to live alone, least of all women, and least of those, young women. How will I be safe? Will there be a good church? Who will be my new friends and influences? How can I let go of everything I love here? It's icy there in the winter--will my car be able to handle it? What if I get mugged leaving a noc shift? This is, of course, the point where some begin to snicker at me, and as one lady made all too plain by her scissor-snipping hand motions and a tawdry joke, I am apparently far too attached and dependent on the people I love. "Time to cut the apron strings, sweetie."

Nonsense. I have deliberately rejected that senseless, thoughtless custom of our deluded culture: that kicking-them-out-of-the-nest at eighteen, out-of-their-parents'-hair-and-into-the-world-alone ideology that is hopelessly flawed when examined against Scripture. I've seen it fail--miserably so--and have no desire to become a lonely, selfish, unhelpful person, who is not accountable to anyone for anything and has no good reason to do anything other than whatever I darn well please whenever I have the fancy to do it. Such begins the spiraling descent into apathy, sin, folly, and a host of other spiritual maladies. Granted, I'm not eighteen anymore. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."

I desire to be a useful woman, integrated into a community of people, relied upon, held accountable for my life and my choices, needed, remembered, cared for, not forgotten, watched out for, missed, loved . . . everything that I have here in my home, my family, my church and my small-town community. And yet, He leads me away from it all, and I trust Him, but there is mingled with it a dose of fear.

I had, of course, always planned on leaving home someday. But I hadn't envisioned it quite like this--to a place where I know not one soul, by myself. Other people do it all the time, but the pure commonality of it hardly qualifies it as the best scenario--unless it is God who ordains such a situation to be mine to live, for this time.

So, like the boy Samuel, I wake in the night, surrounded by the comforts of a familiar life, but I sense a change in the air. And, not knowing for certain what it is, I can only speak the same words as he: "Speak, LORD, for your servant hears."

Standing in the Sun

Today was one of those quintessentially spring-ish days. Every year I fall in love with spring more and more, and it is a bit of a sorrow to me that the last five years--including this one--have found me mired in school work and unable to run outside, fling open my arms to the sun, smell the damp dirt and kiss my little goats' furry faces at every chance. But, in a way, the obligatory leash of The Nursing Program (yes, capitalized) has made me behold with a fresh wonder the glory of this time of year, particularly today, as I strain against the cord of annotated bibliography assignments. I lean out my second story window, take out the screen, and close my eyes as the bamboo wind chimes sing in the garden and the shaggy orchard grass glows in the last slanting rays of the sun. And I think, in this life, this quick, spinning, brief life, what more could there be than to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God? (Micah 6:8)

I woke up this morning from a deep, good, sweet sleep, and I awoke with the startling realization that my life is magnificently blessed. Who am I to be the receiver of a life so charmed? My parents are still married, and actually love each other (29 years and counting!). My one sister (of whom I am jealously protective) is six years into one of the most blessed marriages I've had the privilege of watching. My four younger brothers (whom I love with dreadful fierceness) are rising up, growing into the kinds of men who cast off the shabby farce of weak-minded manhood, instead asking hard questions and seeking true answers--a search that is changing them from boys to warriors before my eyes. My niece (2 years old) and nephew (4 weeks old) thrive and grow in a pure, earnest home with a mama and a papa who fear God and love his commandments.

And then there is me.

Somewhere in the middle of this bustling mini-universe that is our family, there is a 22 year old woman standing in the light of the Son, and it blinds me sometimes, when I turn my face into His glory. I'm walking, as we all are walking, and I see the junction just ahead. It's fast approaching, and when I get there, this road ends where a thousand others begin, and I'll have to pick one or stand forever on the sidewalk, watching the traffic rush by. But, it's so hard to choose. In two months I'll be done with nursing school. The pursuit that ate up the end of my teen years and launched me solidly into my twenties, forever out of childhood and into adulthood, will be over, and I'll have to move on--maybe literally.

You see, in my hometown, which is rather small and out-of-the-way, there aren't many (if any) jobs for new nurses. Quite frankly, it's just a bad time to be graduating from nursing school. Five years ago would have been a lot better. Five years from now it may be again--but I'm in the slump years, and I know it was meant to be so. I know He has not forgotten me. I know the joy of the LORD is my strength, and that I am doing this not for a good job or a paycheck or to impress anybody by having the "RN" letters behind my name, but I am doing this so that I may be of greater service to my Lord, wherever and whenever and however He should choose to use me. And if he never uses this profession, this skill set that is "nursing" which I have learned (though the thought is hard to swallow at the moment), I will not insist on using it. If He closes every door that I have knocked upon, I know it is because He knows better than I. Doors have already closed to me; even this afternoon I could scratch out another possibility on my list of hopefuls. And, for the first time, there is the possibility that I might have to leave all that I love and move away to find a job as a nurse, which brings me to some serious introspection: is it worth it? What is the point of what I'm doing? How much will I shell out in the name of Nursing? And, more importantly, it drives me into the Living Word to see what God is telling me to do, especially when each plan and sub-plan of mine are gently and firmly shut down.

But here is something surprising: as much as I hope for such-and-such opportunity to work out, and as much as I pursue it diligently, fill out the necessary applications and present myself as best I can, I have found an abiding equilibrium in knowing that it is He who ordains the future, and it is He who will orchestrate my life into a pleasing symphony of praise. When I get the letter, or answer the phone and receive the message of rejection (and I have, several times), it gets easier with each one--which is ironic, considering that rejection is generally depressing. But I am standing in the sun today; it warms and cheers my body, and I stand in the Son every day; He warms and cheers my soul. Being rejected has become almost exciting; I get to say, "Well, that wasn't it, was it, Lord?" And I smile, both in trust and bewilderment.

In the meantime, not knowing what the remaining year holds, and not even knowing where I will be in eight weeks, I'm surprised by His peace that allows me to notice and delight in the piano's muted arpeggios as the boys practice their music downstairs, the winter pear tree by the garden gate that just burst into a snowy froth of blossoms, and the delectable smell of the waffles some good soul is making for dinner. All is well when one walks humbly, trustingly, and quietly before the LORD of heaven and earth.