Growing up with divorced parents, having a best friend going through a divorce right now, and being bombarded with statistics, I have found myself falling prey to the fear that I will become one of those numbers.
Honestly, when I think about my fears and insecurities with marriage, I feel ridiculous. My dream man recently asked me to marry him. I am living a dream (quite literally because I had many dreams about him before we even started dating).
But entering into a relationship hasn’t stopped my past experiences, fears, and insecurities from taking deep root in my thought-life. In fact, it’s brought my relationship fears to the surface.
The fears that rise to the surface are ending up as another statistic, or that my fiancé and I will have a marriage like my parents. I even fear that our “butterflies in your stomach” and “twinkle in your eyes” love will fade away and we will be left with nothing keeping us together. As I’ve realized many of my fears and insecurities, I’ve been learning that ultimately, I have to keep re-learning how to trust God with relationships.
How to Trust God with Relationships: Find Comfort Through Prayer
When my fiancé and I first met in Taiwan in a Bible school, our friendship grew over a year without a spark or romantic interest. But then something in me changed.
I began to admire his faithfulness to the students we taught. I saw his care for them as he would tease and joke with them. He became more handsome by the day. But things were complicated: he had a girlfriend, and I was still hoping that love for me would spark with someone back in America.
When my seemingly unrealistic feelings started developing, I remember asking God to take them away. A friend encouraged me to take it to the Lord and ask him. In prayer, I really felt that I should just wait. Wait before I say anything, wait and just get to know him more, wait and pray.
Prayer became my safe haven. Fear isolates. But prayer became a tool for me to verbalize my feelings and know that I wasn’t alone. I had a Father who wanted to listen. Prayer became my place of crying out to God with every fear and concern. Prayer gave me comfort knowing that I didn’t have to have everything figured out, but I have a God who listens and will respond. Fear would drag me into unhealthy thoughts where I felt trapped in the dark, but prayer exposed all things and put them in the light.
How to Trust God with Relationships: Reflect on His Character
After months of praying, waiting, evaluating my heart, and making mistakes, my now fiancé’s relationship with someone else ended, and he began to pursue me. It was unexpected, fun, and nothing like I imagined. But even in the midst of God starting to work things out in my relationship, I saw others struggle in prayer, and it seemed that God was distant from them. I quickly began to doubt God as I watched one of my closest friends beg him for a chance in her own marriage, only to see it spiral out of control.
In my doubt, I began to view God as someone who sometimes withholds good things from his children. With this mindset, the same fears about my relationship began to reappear.
Since I began to believe false things about God’s character, it was easy to trust my past experiences instead of trusting him. I trusted in the reality around me, where ones I love are divorced. When I don’t remember the character and nature of the One whom I serve, it’s so easy for me to begin to fear that my relationship will turn out just like my parents. But when I remember the gracious, loving, and merciful nature of God, the anxiety that so easily grabs at my heart begins to diminish. That anxiety is replaced by hope that there’s something better for me and my fiancé than my past experiences.
When it comes to trusting God with relationships, how we view the One we’re trying to trust truly matters. He is not a stingy Father who withholds good things, but he is a gracious God who lavishes his children with mercy. He is the One, “who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). I needed to believe that God was good and worthy of being trusted. I quickly realized that none of my fears came from God himself; he wanted me to live free from those things. Knowing that about him made it easier to trust him.
How to Trust God with Relationships: Remember He’s Working in the Other Person
One day, as I was sharing all these fears with my fiancé, he looked at me and just said, “you need to trust Jesus in me.” As a fellow follower of Christ, I know that he is filled with the Holy Spirit. I know that God is working in him. I know that he daily relies on Jesus.
So, when I looked at my fiancé, I looked at him through a new lens. My fear that he would leave me, or begin to view me the same way my dad viewed my mom subsided. I felt a relief wash over me knowing that Jesus was working in and through him.
As I trust that God is faithful and loving, I can trust that he’ll help guide me and my fiancé both towards what is best for us, and for our relationship. As I trust that God is faithful and loving, I can trust that he’ll help my fiancé to be loving and faithful, too.
Whether you are single, dating, or married, trusting God is for you. Trust that he hears your prayers. He is the One who patiently listens. He hears you as another year of singleness passes by and you still haven’t met anyone. He hears you as you wonder if the person you’re dating is the one you should marry. He hears you if your marriage is hard, and your expectations have been shattered.
As you cry out to him, really think about who you are praying to. What is he like? What has he done in the past? Do you believe he cares for you? Do you view him as a good Father? Finally, as you begin to see the truth of who God is, can you trust that he is also at work in the people around you?
Now all of this sure sounds good and nice on paper, but it takes time. My fears still lurk around the corners—I am still like a child scared of the monster in their closet. I still have friends struggling in their marriages. Trusting him is not a onetime thing; it takes a daily choice to look at our Father in heaven and believe that he is worthy of our trust.
So now as I daily choose to trust God, I am not left hopeless without something to cling to. Trusting him does not guarantee that my circumstances will change, but it does mean that fear no longer controls me.
Rather than being led by fear and insecurity, I am led by a good Father. Practically, this looks like bringing my fears to light in prayer and reflecting on the truth of God’s character. The more I know him, the more I am willing to trust him as a good Father. And this good Father hears my prayers, is perfect in nature, and is working in and through the people around me.
