The Bride and the “Broom”

Linda Maynard is without power from the storm that ravaged the East Coast.  Being a trooper, she got her blog to us.  As you read it, pray for her and all those on the East Coast without power and dealing with the aftermaths of this storm.

Sometimes, when people have said to me…”I always knew I wanted to be…” OR when asked “ What dreams did you always have?”, I have sometimes been stumped.

Not having a lot of stability growing up, it was hard to dream when I was just trying to survive.
As this topic was presented for the Kingdom Bloggers, faint and almost hidden hopes and dreams came back to me.

I remembered a very little girl who attended summer camp.  Rainy day activities centered around a box of crayons. Year after year, I drew and colored the same picture…a Bride and a “Broom”. Yep, that’s what I called him in those days. I was sure that is what people were saying.

This couple was always happy, that I remember. I wanted to get married…but I wanted more assurance that the marriage would be a happier one than the ones that I saw.

As I got a little older, say 6th grade or so,  I started to get stirrings of becoming a nun. I told my mother I wanted to become a nun. I felt that I had the “calling”. I could have joined the convent in 8th grade and finished my high school there. My mother, in her wisdom said “ Let’s wait until you graduate from High School and we will cross that bridge when we come to it” I even had a name picked out…Sister Mary Catherine.

The fact that these two desires focused on being a Bride is not lost to me today. A desire to be a Bride spoke to me of happiness and fulfillment.

Years later, in my adulthood, I kind of made fun of my desire to be a nun. I sensed the Lord did not share the “put down” that I experienced when I thought of it. At that moment, I realized that my true desire was to be as close to God as I could. He knew what was behind my longing. I viewed nuns that way. Also, they even wore a ring symbolizing that they were married to Christ.

I have lived out the dream to be a Happy Bride with my husband of 41 years. Never the perfect life in marriage and yet nothing could ever separate us, except death. We both realize that we are truly a blessed couple.

As far as being a nun, I have since realized that I can be as close to God as I want to be. Scripture tells me that I AM the Bride of Christ.

My capacity for ministry was not lost because I didn‘t chose the convent. I truly love the Lord. I minister in so many ways, that I couldn’t even imagine back then. He is my Bridegroom and I am His Bride.

This remembering and revelation brought front and center that the Lord gives me the desires of my heart…not give me the things I randomly want, as some think…but HE is the one who puts the life giving desires in my heart in the first place.