That Time God Told Me the Name of the Guy I Would Marry

Image text says "Praying for your Future Husband" and has a bunch of cute hand-written notes stuck on a page. Image source.

Last week I posted I Still Wonder Why God Said the Wrong Name, which got me thinking of another little story about the whole "God speaks to you by making a weird thought randomly pop into your head."

Everyone, gather 'round for the story of That Time God Told Me the Name of the Guy I Would Marry.

Ah, wait, I want to spoil the ending right away though: I am married now, and my husband's name is very much not the name that "God told me." I'm telling you here, at the beginning, to let you know what kind of story this is- or rather, what kind of story this is not. It's not one of those "wow look at this very cool unlikely thing that happened, it's so clearly the hand of God, wow we should all have faith in this kind of thing" stories. There's not even going to be a "years after I forgot the whole thing and got married, my husband happened to mention that when he was younger, his friends used to call him [name] and OH MY GOODNESS, so it WAS TRUE! So God DID tell me my future husband's name, in a sense, all the way back then!" No, there's nothing like that; it's not that kind of story.

Here goes:

So, back when I was in college, I had much angst over the amount of romantic desire I had, and how I was forbidden from ever "acting on" that desire, for "purity" reasons or whatever. I believed that God had chosen 1 specific guy, that I was destined to marry, and I was supposed to have absolutely 0 romantic or sexual experience, over my entire lifetime, apart from this one specific guy. But wowwww I had so many FEELINGS and CRUSHES and I wanted SO BAD to have a boyfriend.

I prayed about this A LOT. If I had a crush on a guy, I would pray for God to help me know if he was "the one" or not, and if he wasn't "the one", then I prayed for God to take away my feelings of attraction.

So anyway, one day, I was praying, and doing this whole, "oh how I struggle with these desires, oh I wish so bad that I could just be with a guy, oh God help me" that whole thing. I prayed, "God, why did you make me a girl?"

And then I heard this thought, in my head: "So you can be with this guy Greg."

(Okay, I cringe as a I tell this story and realize how heteronormative this part is- my question "why did you make me a girl?" assumes that all girls have these same intense romantic feelings for boys, which is not true, and God's supposed reply seems to take for granted that me and "Greg" are straight. That's how I thought back then, though. I thought in God's perfect plan, everyone was straight and has exactly 1 perfect spouse that they are destined for.)

And I was like, "Wait. Did God just tell me the name of the guy I'm going to marry?"

Because, that would be a big deal! Wow! Holy crap! That would be amazing!

Like wow! Is this for real? Really? Was it God, or just a random thought I had???

At this point in the story, I want to give a little bit of background on the belief that God indicates who you're "supposed" to marry through little signs like this. See, in Christian "sexual purity" ideology, it's BAD to have sexual or romantic experience with anyone other than your "future husband". I cannot emphasize enough how BAD they said this is. Like, they literally had me believing that if someone is not a virgin on their wedding day, their marriage will forever be tainted by it, and they'll never be able to really 100% love each other and enjoy sex the way that "pure" virgins can. And also, even if you've never had sex and never kissed anyone, you still have to worry about your "emotional purity." If you ever fall in love with someone and don't end up marrying them, well, you can never have a good marriage after that either.

The result is that people in this ideology are extremely skittish about asking someone out on a date, because if they date a little bit and then break up, THEIR LIVES WILL BE RUINED! (See this post: In Purity Land, a First Date is a Bigger Decision Than Marriage.) I believed that I would have to basically be sure that I wanted to marry a guy, before I could even start dating him.

And so, in this ideology, you don't have the option of getting to know a potential partner through dating like a normal human being. You can't try it out, get some experience in being in a relationship with them, and see how it goes. No no no no no. What if, when you're dating and spending so much time together, you "fall into temptation" and have sex or something? Or what if you get so caught up in your romantic feelings for your partner, that you ignore God telling you that this person isn't right for you? The whole thing is way too dangerous for good "pure" Christian kids.

So then, how do you decide whether you'd be compatible with someone in marriage, if you're not allowed to actually get to know them? In my experience, this question can be answered in 2 different ways, depending on which subculture of purity culture you're in:

1. Your parents could do most of the vetting for you. You have some say in the process, but you don't get yourself "dirty" in doing the actual work of deeply getting to know the person, not til your parents okay it. For example, perhaps you have a crush on a boy, and then your dad investigates whether he would be a good husband for you. (You may have seen the Duggars doing this on TV.)
2. You pray, and God tells you if the person you're interested in is right for you or not. 

I believed in option 2- I was going to pray, and God was going to tell me yes or no. (Lol my parents certainly did not believe in this weird "emotional purity" stuff. They would not have been on board with option 1.)

And yes, I have heard Christians tell stories of couples who barely knew each other but somehow knew that "God told them" to get married, so they went and got married right away and lived happily ever after. And this is seen as such a cool miraculous thing- we all wished it would happen to us (but knew that realistically it was probably rare).

(At this point, a reasonable person might interrupt and say "wait, what about your own choice in all this?" I gotta tell you guys, I almost totally didn't realize that, for people not familiar with this subculture, it must be totally shocking and weird that I'm discussing "how to figure out who you should marry" and at no point does the concept of "you can choose someone because you like them" come into it at all. No, back then I certainly did not believe my own choice had a role to play in it. It was either I figure out who God picked for me, and live happily ever after, OR I sinfully refuse to listen to God and end up with the wrong person and my life goes all downhill from there.)

And here are ways that God could "speak to me" about if a certain guy is right for me:

1. Weird codes that have no connection to the reality of what makes a healthy marriage. For example, maybe I happened to run into this guy 5 different times in a week- oooh, is it a coincidence, or is God trying to tell me he's the one? Or maybe this guy's favorite bible verse is the same as mine! OOH, what does it MEAN? Maybe I open the bible to a random page and point to a random verse and it says something that is related to the guy I like- OOOH, it's a SIGN from GOD!
2. Logical things with a connection to reality- for example, maybe I see that a guy has some good character traits- he's kind, responsible, etc. Maybe I ask some Christian friends for advice, and they tell me what they see in us that means we are good together.

Whenever we talked about "God speaking to us", we basically meant the first way. This was true not just for making decisions about romantic relationships, but for any big life decision. We believed God had a "correct answer" for questions like "where should I go to school? what should I major in? which church should I join? should I go on a mission trip?" And figuring out that "correct answer" was partly about using common sense to see if something sounded like a good idea, and partly an exercise in decoding random little occurrences in your life to figure out if they are "signs from God." Or, what I'm trying to say is, in reality it was based on both, but we talked about it as if it was only based on the "random signs" aspect.

This whole "how does God speak to us" thing was a really really big deal to me when I was considering coming to China on a short-term mission trip, way way way long ago. I didn't have an experience like "I'm just living my happy life and then out of nowhere God says 'GOOO TO CHINAAAAA' and I'm like 'NOOOO I don't want to' but then I have to because God said." That was what I always thought it meant when Christians said "God called" them to do something, but that wasn't what happened to me at all. I just really really wanted to go on an international mission trip, and I had a bunch of reasons, like learning about other cultures and experiencing the image of God as it lives in people who are different from me. It was all stuff that really made sense to me and I really wanted, and therefore I believed it wasn't valid. That's not what "God calls me to go to China" means, right? It has to be out of nowhere, and it has to be something you don't want to do, right?

I struggled with it, and started to think maybe God "called" me by giving me these desires, not by being a random voice in my head that makes no sense. Maybe, if God is trying to strategize about the most effective way to get me to move to China, God realizes that "me really really wanting it" is a much better plan than "God forces me to do something I don't want."

And I eventually went on that mission trip, just because I wanted to. Not because "God called me." And I eventually moved to China just because I wanted to, not because "God called me."

But yes, my point is, when Christians (in my experience as a white American evangelical) talk about "God tells you to do something", it's the "random idea pops up from nowhere and doesn't really make sense" sort of way. The "think about if something is a good idea in reality" way is sort of an afterthought.

(At this point, I realize that I have read many many Christian blog posts on how to know if your random idea is really from God or not, and I could write some opinions here about why so many such posts exist and what advice they typically give and how that backs up what I've written here- but this is already a very long post and I have barely even started my story. Maybe I'll blog about that some other time.)

ANYWAY. Where were we? "So you can be with this guy Greg," my brain and/or God told me.

I was excited about the idea that maybe God had literally just told me the name of the guy I was going to marry. If it was true, that would be HUGE! But I decided I couldn't just have this weird uncertainty of "Maybe I literally know that my future husband's name is Greg. Or, alternatively, maybe not." Like how was I going to do anything with that? It's not the kind of thing you can just like... half-believe.

Was it really God speaking to me? Or just a random meaningless thought in my head?

I decided I needed to know. I decided I wasn't going to take it seriously unless I really had a good reason to believe it was from God.

So the next day, I prayed that if God was really telling me this, then God would need to give me a sign that day to confirm it. Otherwise, I would conclude it was just a random thought, and disregard it.

Perhaps this shows that I was more skeptical and literal than other evangelical Christians. I'm not sure if others would respond in the same way- "God, you give me a sign today to confirm it, or else I'll just conclude that it wasn't from you at all." Somehow, I feel that other people would have been more okay with having this... having this idea that they kind of half-believe. (Though I guess I shouldn't speculate and generalize about how "other people" think- but if I see a specific example, maybe I'll blog about it.) Not me. I felt like this is the kind of thing where it makes A HUGE DIFFERENCE if it's literally true or not. It's VERY IMPORTANT to know.

So I prayed for God to give me a sign the next day. And, there was no sign. So I said, okay, then, God is NOT telling me that I'm going to marry a guy named Greg. False alarm everyone.

But I REALLY REALLY liked the idea, so I decided to refer to my "future husband" as Greg, in my head. When I prayed about him- because of course I prayed a lot about my future husband. ("God, I want to be with Greg so bad" and all that.) I started referring to him as "Greg" in my own thoughts, but I didn't actually believe that was going to be his name in reality.

And also, after God did NOT give me a sign to confirm it, I realized that there had been some celebrity in the news recently named Greg, so maybe that's where my brain got the idea from. So, yes, only a day or so after it happened, I concluded it wasn't from God, and I did not believe it.

And that would be the end of the story, except a while later I met a guy named Gregory and I had a HUGE crush on him.

He was a Chinese international student at the same college as me. Gregory was his English name. (This was in the US, btw.) I met him because I was studying Chinese and planning to move to China eventually, and so I used to go to all kinds of events for international students so I could meet Chinese people.

I invited him to lots of events with the campus Christian group I was part of. Back then I was always meeting Chinese people and bringing them to Christian events. Thinking about it now- now that I'm an immigrant in China- I realize that is a really good example of how you should use your privilege for good. A lot of international students wish they had American friends, but they have no idea how to even go about meeting them. It's much easier to make friends with other immigrants from their own culture- and yes, it makes sense that generally your closest friends are from your same culture- but they do want to experience American culture, and inevitably they will find themselves in situations where they have no idea how to navigate the cultural norms and could really use advice from someone in that culture. I would bring international students to these Christian events and introduce them to my American friends, and it was a good way for them to meet Americans in a friendly environment. 

So yeah, I had no idea at the time, but I was using my privilege to help them. Like for me, as an American it's easy to show up at events on my college campus and talk to my friends and whatever, but international students often don't know how to really go about doing that, so it's extremely helpful if they have someone go along with them and introduce them to people. So yeah, there's a little tip for you- if you know any international people, be a friendly face so they know they can ask you for help if there's some cultural thing they don't understand. Like don't treat them like "you probably have no idea what's going on, because you're an immigrant" but, you know, there's a *possibility* they might want your help some time.

So yes, Gregory got to know several of my friends, and that was really good for him. He also used to go to events at a Chinese church, and I went with him.

Wow, I really liked him A LOT. I'm trying to remember why, exactly... it was a long time ago. He was super cute. He was Chinese. This was back when I first started being attracted to Chinese guys, and I didn't know what to think about it- it felt sinful, somehow... and it would probably require a whole separate blog post to unpack how. Maybe because I was concerned it was racist, to specifically be attracted to a certain race. Maybe because it was so exciting and made me so happy, those feelings of attraction, and evangelicals are always suspicious that if you like something too much, it's probably a sin. Maybe because I believed in a god who was as sheltered and, uh, white as I was, a god who would never have planned for me to marry a Chinese guy, and therefore I was going against God's plan.

(Please note that my actual husband that I am now married to in reality is Chinese.)

Gregory also had that "new Christian energy," and I liked that. At one of the Christian events I brought him to, he went forward during the altar call. (For those unfamiliar with the jargon: an "altar call" is when the speaker has created an emotionally-intense environment and is telling the crowd that anyone who wants to officially become a Christian should come up to the front, and then you can "go forward" and pray the specific prayer that evangelicals believe makes you *officially* a Christian.) Later, Gregory tearfully told our group of friends his whole testimony. I remember when he was so excited about buying a new bible- it was a study bible (this means it has a lot of notes to help you understand what things mean) in English. Before that, I think he had a bilingual Chinese/English bible that was just the bible without any extra notes written by modern pastors.

I think I also liked his enthusiasm for trying new things and experiencing American culture. He was always going out to interesting places and events. He had a friend- let's call her Candy- who was extremely good at finding local "hidden gems"- places that were really interesting and worth visiting, but they weren't the typical tourist attractions. I have no idea how she even found these places, but wow she was good at it. She took Gregory and me to a really cool zoo that I had never even heard of, and some other places like that. She was a grad student from Singapore; Mandarin Chinese is one of the languages that people speak in Singapore, so in the US she would go to the same sorts of Chinese-culture events that the Chinese students did.

And Gregory and Candy were always going places together. I was concerned that they were dating- but actually, Candy was married. Her husband was still in Singapore, and her plan was to move back there after she finished grad school. That was shocking to me- I had never heard of a long-distance marriage like that. The Christian marriage advice books I read said it could never work. But that's the reality for a lot of immigrants in this world. (There's another whole discussion on privilege to be had there.)

Ah, and here's another observation about privilege: I didn't realize it at the time, but when I went places with Gregory and Candy, they spoke English specifically because I was there. If I hadn't been there, of course they would have talked to each other in Mandarin Chinese. I was like, changing the whole dynamic, and I had no idea.

All right, so. This guy's English name was Gregory, and I had had this experience where a random thought that may or may not be from God says I am going to be with a guy named Greg. Surely I had thoughts about it. Let's talk about that.

Well, like I said, I didn't really believe that random thought was from God. I thought it would certainly be cool, if I ended up marrying him and then I could tell him the story of this random thought that had said his name before I had even met him... but I didn't really take it too seriously. I do remember also being attracted to other guys around that same time, and sort of trying to get my attractions under control by telling myself there is literally a guy named Greg right here, so why would I need to go chasing any other guy... but it wasn't like... a serious factor in deciding whether to date him or whatever.

What I mean is, again I would like to clarify what kind of story this is not. This is not a story about "I had this random idea that I thought was from God, and so I got stuck on his guy named Gregory for SO LONG, when I really should have just realized he wasn't right for me, and moved on, oh it's so unhealthy to believe in an ideology where God speaks to you in random thoughts." This isn't that kind of story. I'm not trying to make a big point; I'm just saying, this was my experience back when I was an evangelical. These are the ways I used to think. These are the beliefs I held about dating, which felt completely normal to me back then.

I liked him A LOT, and of course as a purity-culture girl, I considered whether I would marry him, because that's what it means when you like someone a lot. But I wasn't anywhere close to deciding "yes God is saying I should marry him." And his name didn't push me any closer, I don't think. I felt like, "wow that would be really cool, if it works out that way, but I don't think that random thought really was from God, so we can't really put any stock in it."

I remember making a list of the pros and cons of dating him, and I decided yes, I should ask him out. I never made an actual plan on how to do it though. But it's interesting to me, looking back on it now, wow I guess back then I was starting to get out of purity culture a little bit, because evidently I did not believe "the guy has to make the first move." And evidently I did not believe "the husband has to be the wife's spiritual leader"- oh I was a way stronger Christian than him, and I remember thinking that we seemed incompatible in that aspect, but it was because I thought we should be at about the same level spiritually [lol whatever that means], not because I believed a guy could be my spiritual leader.

So yeah, ooh how scandalous and shocking, that I didn't hold those 2 purity culture beliefs. I must have been slowly working my way out of purity culture at that point.

ALL RIGHT let's talk about the problems though. Here's where it starts to fall apart.

Gregory sometimes did things that I felt were really irresponsible and immature. The biggest issue was about drinking alcohol. 

I had never drunk alcohol at all back then. Even now, I don't drink- I've tried it and I don't like the taste, and I'm generally just not interested. I believed it wasn't a sin to drink occasionally, but it's a sin to get drunk. (And you'll find some variation among evangelicals on this- some think it's a sin to drink any alcohol at all.) But I didn't have any firsthand experience, so I didn't really have a sense of what the problems were or why these things were sins or not sins, and where it would make sense to draw the line.

Sometimes Gregory would post dumb things on Facebook about how he really liked beer. Or, one time he posted that he liked to drive while tipsy. Uhhhh... okay... that seems... not good... But I didn't think it was technically a sin, so I felt that I couldn't really, like, judge it as being a bad thing.

I felt that it's okay for Christians to drink alcohol. Like, that's a totally valid way to be a Christian. And I felt super uncomfortable with it, but I felt like I wasn't allowed to not be okay with it, because it wasn't a sin.

I used to imagine, if I was dating him, we would have a long discussion about alcohol, and I would tell him my whole "I don't think it's a sin, but it's a sin to get drunk, but I don't drink at all" and he would tell me whatever nuanced perspective he had on it, and ... we would understand each other and it would be fine, I guess?

(There were some other immature things he did, but the drinking was the main one.)

And one time, when I was thinking about it, thinking about how embarrassed I would be if I was dating him and he posted some dumb thing on Facebook about how he wants beer so much, and all my friends would see it, and I just feel really uncomfortable about how immature he is sometimes... and I realized, even if it's not a sin, my feelings matter. If it stresses me out this much, that matters, and God has picked a guy for me who is going to be right for me and isn't going to cause me this much distress.

Even though it's not a sin, I'm not okay with it emotionally, and that matters. Like we're not going to judge him and say he's doing anything wrong, but it does mean that he's not the right one for me.

I believed God had a plan, God had picked one perfect guy who was right for me, and if Gregory was making me feel this bad, then it wasn't him. I realized, God has picked someone better than that for me.

And at that point, my mind was made up. I wasn't going to date him, and I felt good about it, because I didn't want to put myself in a situation where I have to deal with his immature behavior. I felt like it was the right decision, and I was confident that God had picked some better guy for me.

Yes, I felt like God was telling me this- that even though drinking isn't a sin, the fact that I'm so uncomfortable with it matters. Huh, interesting that we started out this story with a "message from God" that I pretty quickly decided wasn't from God, and now here we are with a whole different "message from God." Notice, though, that this one makes sense- sort of like when you have a realization that you already had all the pieces for, and you just hadn't put them together yet. Not like the "you're gonna be with Greg" which just comes out of nowhere and you have no way to objectively evaluate it.

This one, because it made sense, I didn't have to cast about for evidence and "signs" to try to figure out if it was from God or not. It just made sense. I believed that God had planned a perfect husband for me, I believed that God cared about how I felt, and I recognized that I often felt very negatively about the idea of being in a relationship with Gregory (even though I had a huge crush on him and he was super cute). Each of those pieces, I fully believed, so when it all clicked together, there was nothing to be confused about.

And actually, I remember back then I had that sort of experience a bunch of times- where I believed "God spoke to me" by bringing me realizations that very deeply made sense. I liked that; it was wayyyy better than "God speaks to me through weird thoughts that pop into my head" because that was so impractical, trying to analyze your random thoughts and figure out if they're "from God" or not. You can never really be sure, because the answer isn't something that's connected to reality at all.

So, okay, I decided not to ask out Gregory, and life moved on. I kept slowly getting out of purity culture and changing my beliefs on dating and sex and God and choice and being allowed to want things.

Years later, when Hendrix and I started dating, there were a lot of things that I did with him just because I wanted to. Like the first time we kissed. It wasn't some big huge decision that I spent tons of time analyzing and praying over, trying to figure out the "right answer"- like it was with other guys I had dated. I just wanted to, so I did.

(Okay but I still had A LOT of shame about being "impure", when I started dating Hendrix. It wasn't like totally smooth sailing.)

And when we got engaged, and married, it meant a lot to me that it was a choice. It wasn't just "here I am, following God's plan for my life, and apparently the next step is getting married." No, it was a really major, life-changing decision. That I made. God didn't pick him for me, or lead me to him, or anything like that. I chose him. Because I wanted to.

And this whole thing about God giving you a prophecy about who you're going to marry- it doesn't make sense, because don't we get to choose who we marry? Why would that be something that's so firmly decided before I've even met the guy, so much so that God might let slip the name, and that would be something I was excited about, maybe a cool story to tell the kids in youth group some day...?

But back then, as a good evangelical girl, of course I believed that God had picked exactly 1 husband for me, and it was totally possible that God might give me a "sign" like telling me his name. When it popped into my head, I concluded it wasn't really from God, but hey, according to the ideology I believed, it totally could have been. But I don't think it had any significant effect on me- good or bad- when I actually did meet a guy named Gregory. I liked him, for a while I really wanted to date him, but eventually concluded I was better off without him. And none of it was based on his name.

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Related:

What If I Dated In High School

"How Far Is Too Far?" My Story, And What I Wish I'd Known

The Checklist: Purity Culture's Alternative to Actually Getting to Know Someone 

I Still Wonder Why God Said the Wrong Name