‘In the multitude of counsellors, there is safety’. It is wise to learn from people who have travelled the road ahead of you. You can incorporate best practices they share into your own life and avoid the pitfalls they bring to your notice. A patron of the Chapel Choir in school shared one of such tips with us during a rehearsal. He was engaged to be married at that time and told us he started praying about his wife several years before. He sounded like the whole process was easier as a result so I decided to do the same.

I prayed about everything I could think of – from my future husband’s exams, to gaining admission into the university, to having healthy relationships, giving his life to Christ, and I remember asking God to help him not to make mistakes that would leave permanent scars capable of negatively impacting our life together.

Then one day I read in the Bible that ‘He who finds a wife finds a good thing…’ So I started asking God to give him all the ‘wife finding skills’ he needed so he could find me with ease. I was in the choir, I attended fellowship regularly and I studied engineering so I had a lot of guys around me. I made good friends and my mother told me one day that my husband would likely come from my group of friends. Sometime into my good friendships, it was clear that I enjoyed spending time with some more than others, so I subjected each of my preferred friends to my ‘love glasses’ test. That helped me narrow down my options.

After my first degree, I met another interesting person… He was fun to be with but I didn’t know him well enough. Some old family friend also showed up and was acting like he had clear intentions to marry me but didn’t quite say anything – time wasters. But he didn’t succeed in wasting my time. I tactfully interviewed him one evening and found out his intentions didn’t match his actions at all. I prayed for clarity and I remember asking God to keep all the wrong people from asking me out, just to eliminate confusion.

Those prayers paid off. Over the years, my desires became so refined and so clear. I knew exactly what I was looking for, like the specifications of a good car. I was also able to observe so many of those qualities in one particular friend of mine. Initially, I would pray, ‘God I want a man who is this and that, and looks like this or that…’ but one day, it became so clear, I said ‘God, I want Kingsley!’ and I told God why.

Time passed and we became even better friends and then one day, Kingsley asked me out. He thought I would ask him for two weeks or two months to pray about it as was often heard in our circles but I totally shocked him by saying ‘YES’ right there. I had been praying for years… I already knew the answer and was just waiting patiently for him to man up and take our relationship to the next level.

The rest, as they say, is history. It’s been eight years now and I’ve come to realize that prayer doesn’t just come in handy in finding the love of your life, you need it for your life as a whole. So we still pray and I’m ever so glad because God still hears and answers when we call.