Flannery Was Right--A Good Man is Hard to Find

This month, Ann Voskamp has invited readers to share on the topic of spiritual practices of holy matrimony:



There is a group of beautiful, godly young women in my church who takes seriously the words from Titus 2 and seeks out wisdom from older women in the congregation. Perhaps they’ve mistaken for wisdom my full head of gray hair and the fact that I’ve been married for twenty-five years to the beloved Swede, and they invited me to meet with them. They wanted to know about male/female relationships and about marriage. Their questions were honest and simple and sweet; they were holy. But I think the unstated question most wanted to ask was this, “How do I find a godly man to marry?”

Were I to have answered that question honestly, I’d have had to have said, “I haven’t got the foggiest idea.”

I certainly couldn’t point them to my own experience because, according to most popular Christian authors writing authoritatively on the subject, I had clearly gone about it all wrong. As a young girl, I knew my King James told me not to be unequally yoked, but I took one look at the young men in my church’s youth group and knew there was nothing for me there. Not that any were interested, mind you. So I dated a few guys in high school about whom, if I stood back far enough and squinted my eyes, I could tell myself that although some may not have actually been Christians, I could see how someday they might be and thus convince myself that I wasn’t truly backslidden.

Then there were the blind dates. I’ve lost count of the times well-intentioned friends tried to fix me up with acquaintances using this description, “You’ll like him. He’s tall.” Having reached the Amazonian height of five-eleven by the sixth grade, it became important to me to find a young man I could look up to. Literally. Even if he had disgusting personal habits or was an axe murder. Just so long as he was tall.

There is a prominent voice in the homeschooling community who articulates a very convincing argument that courtship is God’s only way of finding a spouse. Normally, whenever I hear a speaker or author advocating anything he or she has written as being God’s way of doing anything, I clap my hands over my ears and run screaming from the room. This writer, however, put forward a cleverly devised argument using heady-sounding words and impeccable grammar and syntax, and I was seduced into thinking he was smarter than I was. So the first time a young man expressed interest in spending time with our baby girl, the Swede and I resolved to follow this author’s advice as neatly detailed on two pages of his book, including ample white space and margins.

Problem was, the young man and his parents hadn’t read the book. They thought we were nuts. And, real life and especially male/female relationships tend to be messy and not easily defined by words on two pages of a book, especially with white space and margins. Trust me, the experience wasn’t pretty.

My in-laws will celebrate fifty years of marriage this December, having told their parents they wanted to marry during Dad’s graduate school vacation, two days before Christmas. My grandparents eloped across the Pennsylvania state line. Other godly, intelligent, hard-working, faithful couples I know married while still students and without a job in sight.

So how did I find the beloved Swede? I like to say that he blindsided me. While I was busy scanning the horizon for tall men who weren’t axe murders, he emerged from a group of mutual friends and asked me out. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that God threw him at me, as if to say, “Here. You obviously don’t know what you’re doing. Here is a good, good man--better than you deserve.  My gift to you.”

And I think that really is my answer to those young ladies who were gracious enough to listen to my ramblings about life and relationships and marriage. You don’t find a good man. Sometimes God throws one at you.  Sometimes you trip over him.  Sometimes like Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe, he's been there all along.  However you find the love of your life, remember--he’s a gift. And I treasure mine.*

The secret to a lasting marriage? As Ann would say, “All’s grace.”   From beginning to end.

*And he really, really likes my gray hair.