I’ve been thinking about the singles lately. Maybe it’s because there have been several engagements and weddings in the church. Or maybe it’s because we prayed for all the single people during a Saturday night service a few weeks ago.

About that…

The pastor who was preaching that night said something along the lines of, “We need to pray that God brings your future spouses into the church!” Those words, they were so very familiar.

It has been over a decade now, since that sunny Sunday afternoon in June…

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“Ugh. It’s not fair.” My friend and I were sitting on the patio of a coffee shop lamenting our fate. “There are absolutely NO guys in the church! How are we ever supposed to get married?”

We were doomed to be single forever.

My chair was facing the street. Although normally busy, the road was closed off to traffic that day and a makeshift stage was set up in the middle. It was the first year of the Westdale Music Festival. A young couple was performing—he was playing guitar and she was singing.

As my friend and I sipped coffee and chatted, my attention was caught by a dark-haired, young man sitting near the stage.

What kind of a guy goes to something like this by himself? I wondered. That’s just weird.

I turned my attention back to my friend.

“We need to pray them in,” she was saying. “We need to pray that God brings our husbands into the church.”

The couple on stage finished their song and walked over to the young man who had been sitting alone. They smiled and chatted and then the three of them left together.

Huh. I guess he knows the performers. That explains it.

“You’re absolutely right,” I said to my friend. “We’re going to have to pray them in.”

I went home and began to ask God to bring my husband into the church. How I got impatient and almost messed everything up is another story for another day. It took time and a series of events that only God could orchestrate to bring me and my husband together, and a few years later, my prayers were answered.

It’s easy to tell the singles not to despair when you’re on the other side. But I know God hears those prayers. And, even if it takes years, God has a plan.

We were chatting one time, my husband and I. He started telling me a story…

It was a story about how he went to the Westdale Music Festival, the very first year it took place. Some high school friends were performing—a young couple who played guitar and sang. He sat by himself near the front until it was over and left with them afterwards.

Honestly, I don’t remember the point of his story. All I could think of was how, on that sunny Sunday afternoon in June—the day I started praying my future husband into the church—

I had unknowingly been staring right at him.