Susan's Story

Susan and Garrett

Even though Susan grew up in a loving Christian home with her parents, two sisters, and brother, she was not exempt from lies that torment the mind.  Her biggest desires were to get married and be a mom.  In her late twenties, it seemed like all of her friends were getting married and moving away, and Susan felt like she was being left behind. She thought, “My biological clock is ticking.  I’m getting older.  This is not going the way I want it to.  It’s probably not going to happen.”

Sure, she had dated once before.  Susan was brought up not to date until adulthood and was 21 before she experienced it for the first time.  She approached it the wrong way because she didn’t understand how relationships worked.  She had never been in one before.  She thought, “Oh, this person likes me, so he must be the one”.  She didn’t understand the difference between a committed loving relationship and infatuation, so it didn’t go well.  It lasted about six months, and she knew he was not the man she was to marry.

As Susan got older, she always thought, “Well, maybe I’ll meet somebody this year.”  And then when it wasn’t happening, she stopped telling herself that.  Susan was frustrated because she didn’t have a boyfriend and had not been in a relationship since the first one.  She could have given in to all the emotions stirring inside of her and tried to make it happen on her own, but she chose not to.  She fell into depression and remembers waking up lots of mornings thinking she was sinking into a black hole, and it was so much work just to try to pull herself out of bed.  Her biggest fear in life was being alone and not having a close personal relationship with a husband to share her life with, not having children, and that was what she really wanted most out of her life.  Susan feared she would be alone for the rest of her life or that she’d have to settle for someone that she didn’t love.  She believed the lies in her mind that God was just going to give her the leftovers and that He did not have someone for her and lies that her friends didn’t want to be around her.  Because she believed these lies, she ended up in a very dark place.  Two of the biggest lies were that she was unwanted and that she was unlovable.  Those were some of the biggest contributors to what she was feeling at that time.

But thankfully Susan had friends that knew the Word of God.  She had one friend specifically who was praying with her, praying for her, and at one point they were on a phone call together because they lived in different states.  Her friend helped expose a lot of those lies.  She helped replace those lies with scripture and the truth of God’s Word. 

Susan had talked to God a lot about relationships by that time.  She prayed, “God, I need to just be good friends with someone else before I get married to him.” After that she didn’t think about it much anymore.  She honestly didn’t think there would be time to do it that way because she had always made friends pretty slowly.

Susan met Garrett through school.  They were both enrolled in an online program.  They were good friends for about 1 ½ years.  They lived in different states and met in person once, and she thought he was a cool person but thought he was way out of her league and probably has someone else that he likes.  When he met her, he too thought she was a cool person, and it stayed that way for a long time.  They had a lot of interaction between mutual friends and a lot of interaction with each other, mostly online – texting or an online forum through school.

Garrett decided he was interested in Susan and was trying to get to know her a little more.  They texted a little.  They’d talk on the video calls.  She thought, “He’s just being nice.”  She didn’t want to read into it and have her heart broken.  Then he finally expressed that he was interested.  Just the day before, she was praying and said she did not want a relationship with Garrett to go the way the last relationship went.  “I don’t know why he’s talking to me so much.  If he says he’s interested, is this something I should go forward with?”  And then she heard the most enthusiastic go-ahead she had ever heard from God.  It was the following day that Garret expressed his deeper interest in Susan.  The idea of the two of them marrying blindsided her.  After all, they were just good friends.  But this was turning into an answered prayer.

So how did Susan and Garret build their relationship from there?  Still long-distance, they started having video calls between just the two of them instead of the group forums they were accustomed to.  They got to know each other more on a deeper level, talking about their beliefs.  They discussed things like: When we have differences, how will we reconcile?  Can we get married and not betray our belief system? 

Garrett also grew up going to a non-denominational church like she did.  He was homeschooled, as was Susan, her brother, and her two sisters.  Garrett comes from a big family, with 13 brothers and sisters, and his parents raised them all to follow God.  While they are all in different stages of their walk with God, they are not going to stray from the faith.

Once Susan and Garrett decided that the relationship was going to work, they planned an in-person date.  They lived about four hours apart, so they planned a date in the middle and spent the day together.  Then after that, they’d spend weekends at each other’s family’s houses when they were able to.

Susan had always been impressed with the way Garrett seeks to follow God and what God wants to do.  For him, this was a big part of his life.  She would periodically say, “It would be fun to live here” or “It would be neat to do this,” and he would say, “We do what God tells us to do.”  He says, “If God calls us to a certain place to live, then that’s what we’ll do.”  Susan finds this a rare quality to find these days.  It is something that is very important to him.  It is a very visible thing stemming from his upbringing.

Susan had a strong Christian background, and from a young age, she recalls her parents instilling within her ideals concerning morality and intimacy.  They addressed intimacy within a marriage when each of their children were at an age to understand it.  Susan always knew growing up that intimacy was something that God created to happen within a marriage relationship.  Whenever she was exposed to someone who was being intimate outside of marriage, Susan’s mother would tell her that there are things that God made to happen between a husband and a wife, and those people are not saving that for marriage.  This is not how their family was called to live.

Garrett didn’t have any dating experience before meeting Susan.  After the first in-person date in July, Susan moved to yet another state in August, even further away, for a semester of schooling.  Garrett flew to pick her up when the semester was over; she packed up all her belongings, and they drove back to his home state together, and then she continued on to her home state.  They spent two weeks together and really got to know each other during that time.  Also during that time, they were already talking about getting married.  Garrett proposed the next month, January.  They got married in June, five months later.

There was never a big conversation between them about intimacy before marriage.  Because of the way they both were raised, it was understood they would wait to have a sexual relationship until marriage.  Susan told him that her boundary was that she would like to wait to kiss until they were engaged.  Garrett was fine with that. 

During the times when Susan feared she wouldn’t marry, she could have chosen to make things happen herself, but she knew that wouldn’t have been God’s best for her.  She knew that when you wait until marriage to be intimate with someone, that is the way God designed it, and it is a safe way to build a marriage relationship because you’re not bringing baggage from previous experiences with you to one of the most intimate parts of the marriage relationship.  She and Garrett both believed that sexual intimacy is about relationship and not performance.  It’s not about how good you can look to your spouse or how good you can act.  It’s about a loving relationship with that spouse.  When you save yourself for marriage, it’s a lot easier to be focused on the relationship rather than the performance because you’re not comparing in your mind all these different experiences you’ve had with different partners. 

Susan said that while growing up and still single, she knew several women who had children and were not married.  She would get questions from the children asking her why she didn’t have any kids.  She told them because she was not married.  She would tell them she was waiting to be married to have children, and they didn’t know how to comprehend that.  Growing up without a father in the home was something that was normal to these children.  None of these women ever told Susan she was “old fashioned,” waiting to get married before being intimate with a man.  On the contrary, it gave her the opportunity to share with them about how God can heal them and make them whole again so that they can present themselves someday to a future spouse with a whole heart and not with shattered pieces.  She told them they’re not ruined forever.  They are not a permanently damaged product if they’ve given pieces of themselves away before. 

For Susan, she endured the waiting period and ended up with the man that God had chosen for her.  And now she and Garrett are bringing up their son, another answered prayer, with the same ideals that they both brought into their marriage.