My Beautiful Story By Sara Thomas

Apr 10

Apr 10 My Beautiful Story By Sara Thomas

"I have a podcast episode you need to listen to..."

It was late September 2018 when one of my best friends, Aneissa (the lovely owner of the Just Aneissa blog), texted me this message, followed by a link to a podcast episode. Coming from Aneissa, I knew it would be good, so I clicked the link, unaware that my life was about to be changed. Forever.

"This isn't a story on how to get a husband; this is a story about how to move in faith," I heard the lilting female Australian voice say. The speaker was singer/songwriter Mia Fieldes, Author and co-author of such famous works as 'I Am Not Alone' and 'Holy Ground,' and the podcast was entitled "A Beautiful Story." I listened, awestruck, and near tears, to her incredible retelling of how God custom made her a husband, fulfilling even the most minute detail. (I do not want to reveal too much because you really should listen to it for yourself, we will link it for you below). As a single, Christian girl in her mid-twenties who had never even been on a date and thought her ship in the love department had long sailed away. Mia's story of how unwavering, borderline crazy, faith literally helped manifest a husband for her resonated with me. If it could happen for Mia, it could happen for me! And I was determined it would happen for me.

The minute the calendar read January 1, 2019, I hit the ground running. This was going to be the year I would meet my husband. I refused to believe anything else. In the podcast, Mia talks about how to her, faith is "looking for evidence," meaning you may not see what you have prayed for yet, but you are preparing for it as it has already arrived. She even bought men's cologne long before she started dating anyone because it would be for someone someday! So I adopted the same mentality. I began my hunt for evidence. You can just ask my friends who had also heard the podcast and were in on my plans, who also probably got annoyed every time I would get a random email or Instagram ad about my "upcoming wedding" and would send them a screenshot and say "Evidence!" I even scheduled an open house viewing for a wedding venue, and I was not even talking to anyone yet! Every time I went to prayer, I thanked God for my custom made husband. Even the smallest things that I would not have paid attention to before I claimed as evidence and started penning time in a journal, the teal 'I heart Darcy' notebook shown above (I'm a big Jane Austen fan). I also began writing down my thank-yous to God about my future husband and what he would be like in the journal, which I affectionately dubbed my 'Book of Evidence.' Here are a few excerpts:

1/15/2019: God, I thank you for a marriage and love story that will bring glory to your name, that all who hear of it will know that only You could've designed it. I thank You that every detail is seen to. I'm thankful You are in control of it. I praise You that it is already done.

2/2/2019: I'm thankful that my man doesn't "play games" when it comes to dating. He's sincere and real and isn't interested in playing the field.

2/11/2019: Lord, I'm thankful that my husband and I will be able to be real with each other. We will find it easy to talk to each other. We will be able to communicate. I'm thankful that, besides You, he is going to be my best friend.

January, February, March, and most of April passed by, and nothing happened. But I kept on trusting, praying and believing. During this time, we'd been having an evangelist at our church who has the gift of knowledge or prophecy, and not like random, general stuff, you guys. He could come up to you and tell you, without talking to anybody beforehand, what specific body part was hurting and then pray for healing. Or "such and such is going to happen on your job in the next four weeks and here's what you need to do...". And his words were always spot on. He'd also been prophesying to several of the girls in our church about their husbands. And here I was, believing and wishing for that more than anything in the world, and he never said anything like that to me. Sometimes I felt skipped over or overlooked. Where was my word, Lord? Then I would get right back to trusting and believing. That is what faith is; knowing something is done even when you cannot see it.

The last Sunday in April was the final time this evangelist would be at our church for a while. I had been coming to every service with the expectation that I would receive a word about my husband, too, but had left every time empty-handed. If God were going to say something to me directly, it would have to be that Sunday. The morning service came and went with no word. That afternoon I remember praying, "Now, Lord, if You've got a word for me about my husband, You're going to have to say it tonight!" Then Sunday night came. It was one of those services where intense praise and worship broke out, and the Spirit of the Lord began to move and touch before any preaching. I was part of the praise team that night. We were all heading to walk off the platform when I heard someone trying to get my attention. I turned, and it was the evangelist! He asked me if I was married. I shook my head, no. He smiled and said, "I didn't think so...". He then began to tell me (on the platform, in front of God and everybody, mind you) that it would happen "sooner than you think." That I was not too old (a mentality I had been struggling with for the past few years), that he (my husband) would "love God and love the things of God" and therefore would be able to love me, and that it would be a "match made in Heaven" (remember those words). I came down off the platform weeping and rejoicing that God had heard my prayer and confirmed His promise with His word! You better believe the first thing I did when I got home that night was record what had happened in my evidence journal.

I wish I could tell you that I woke up the next day and my custom made match was standing on my doorstep, but that did not happen. May and most of June came and went uneventfully I still kept holding on to my promise. Let me pause and just say, it is so hard not to become impatient with God when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt your answer is on its way, but it is just taking a little longer to arrive in your mailbox. Think about Abraham and Sarah, who had to wait over twenty years for the child God promised them; praise The Lord it did not take twenty years for me! I only had to wait just a little longer to one Sunday in early June…

"Hey, I have a guy for you," said a friend as we were headed into the church for praise practice. Oh boy, here we go, I automatically thought, a "friend" somebody knows. I had been down this road way too many times before and was prepared to very politely refuse. I was tired of set-up attempts that, as had been my experience, only ended in failure.

"Don't you think?" she asked her husband.

"She probably already knows who he is!" was his response.

Oh? Interesting, I thought.

"Who is it?"

"Christopher Nichols".

That name sparked a memory. "Oh, yeah, I know who that is. We've been friends on Facebook for about ten years!"

As soon as church was over, I did what any single, ready-to-mingle, God' s-promised-me-my-husband' s-coming-soon girl would do...I looked him up on Facebook and Instagram! I saw a familiar face I'd seen around at a few local events growing up; he'd even been to our church a time or two in the past. But I'd never officially met him, just randomly friend requested him on Facebook, as one did in the early 2000s. I was instantly intrigued and interested in the extremely good looking guy I saw!

Fast forward to just a few weeks later, when Aneissa invited me to attend a camp meeting at a local church with her. Like the millennials we were, we'd spent the day chomping on delicious, Instagram-worthy snow-cones and taking cute pictures to post "just in case any guys saw us at camp meeting and wanted to follow us." We arrived early at the church to get a good seat. As we were sitting there, Aneissa turned around, looked at something, and then turned back to me. "Do you know Christopher Nichols?" My eyes widened. "You know," I said, "you're the second person to say something to me about him." The music started and we had church. The preaching was incredible. God moved. But in the romance department? Nothing happened. I saw Christopher out of the very corner of my eye as he was leaving. But there were no introductions made. No bright light from Heaven was shining down on me while an angel choir sang, "She's here; she's here." Although the seed of hope had was planted in my mind, maybe there could be something to this guy. How coincidental was it that he had been brought to my attention twice in one month?

The next day, I want you to know how incredibly difficult it was for me not to follow him on Instagram. I kept going to his page and hovering over the follow button. No, I told myself. I had made a promise at the beginning of the year that I was no longer going to follow guys first and have them A: not follow me back or B: follow me and then it not go anywhere, which had been my experience. I had written in my evidence book that my custom made husband was going to approach me first, in whatever form, because that is the only way I would know he was genuinely interested in me and was not just being nice. If this were of God, then He would work it out. So I put it to the back of my mind and went about my day.

Let me pause again to say that if you are waiting on a promise and know it is on the way, do not get in a hurry and try to make it arrive outside of God's timing. He is not only the Author of your story; He is the Finisher, too! And He will bring what He promised to completion.

About 10 o'clock that night, I had just settled down to bed when a notification popped up on my phone.

Christopher Nichols started following you.

At that exact moment, my phone buzzed. It was Aneissa calling.

"Hello?"

"Ok, you'll never guess what happened tonight!"

She went on to explain how she had attended the second night of camp meeting, and after the service was over, approached Christopher to ask him if he was single and show him my picture (we all need more friends like Aneissa, I'm just sayin'). You'd have to get the full story of their hilarious exchange from her or him, but from what she told me, his response when he saw my picture was "Okurrrrt!" Two days later, he messaged me on Instagram, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Over the next few days, I spent time getting to know this incredibly handsome, charming, witty, funny, passionate, dedicated, talented man who, I was delighted to discover, shared a lot of the same interests as me. Our conversations flowed smoothly; there was never any of the awkwardness that I had experienced from the (very) few conversations I'd had with guys before. And he knew how to use proper punctuation and spelling, which checked a significant box on the husband list for me; I even included it in my evidence journal! In fact, the more we talked, the more those boxes kept getting checked off. This was something different, something special. We just clicked! I knew he'd won me over when I told him during one of those early conversations that I was 5'3," but my attitude was 6'1" (yes, I flirt weird, I know). His immediate response was, "Well, I'm 6'3" and taller than your attitude." I was hooked from then on!

We met in person on the 4th of July to watch fireworks, and by the end of the night, the sparks were definitely flying, and I'm not just talking about the fireworks! I remember vividly how extremely nervous I was; when he first approached, all I could do was look down at my shoes and mumble a quick "Hi" when he introduced himself. In true Christopher fashion, though, he was able to put me completely at ease, and by the end of the night I was not only able to look him in the eye (yay!), but also smile, laugh, and be a little more like myself. And then, at the end of the evening, the words I had been waiting to hear for what felt like forever: "I'd like to take you out on a date." Needless to say, I don't think my feet touched the ground for the rest of the night!

We pretty much knew from the start of our ensuing relationship not only how much we liked and were attracted to each other, but how God-orchestrated our meeting was. I remember one instance where I told him about how God had promised "match made in Heaven." (I told you to remember that phrase) and in shock, he proceeded to tell me how a few years earlier, he had received a similar promise that whoever God had in mind for him would be his "perfect match in every way." Things began to unfold in our relationship that were too coincidental to be a coincidence, as God started opening doors for us. Those little details I had written in my evidence journal were being fulfilled right before my very eyes! We received confirmation from our spiritual leaders and families that this was right and individually felt such peace about our relationship. It did not take us long at all to discover how perfect we were for one other or recognize where things were ultimately headed. Mia talks about it in her podcast how, when God does something, He accelerates the timing of it, and we found that to be true in our journey—we often joke that we were ready to be engaged by September, we were just waiting for everyone else to catch up!

On December 23, 2019, at the very spot we had met five months before to watch fireworks, my perfect, wonderful, Mr. Darcy-esque custom made match very romantically got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I do not think you need three guesses as to what my answer was! My heart overflows with joy looking back over the past year and seeing what God has done in my life, in both of our lives...it has truly been a miracle! I am living proof, a first-hand witness, that He does answer prayer, and He cares about every detail of what is going on in your world, even the little things you tell him in secret that no one else may ever know. If you are a single lady who is currently waiting on her Prince Charming to come along and sweep her off her feet, I hope our story has encouraged and inspired you to allow your faith to grow radically and unconventionally, to keep believing and expecting when you do not have the physical evidence to prove it yet. God has got a custom made match out there for you. Keep walking and talking with Him, and He will direct your paths to cross in His perfect way and in His perfect timing.

There are four scriptures I want to leave with you to help build your faith. Memorize them and draw on them during those moments when it seems like your prayers are hitting the ceiling, and nothing is moving in your favor. Write them in your prayer/evidence journal and revisit it when you need encouragement.

Hebrews 11:1 King James Version

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"

Psalm 37:4 KJV

"Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart"

Psalm 27:14 KJV

"Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait I say on the Lord"

Jeremiah 29:11 KJV

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, switch the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end"

So lay down the pen and allow the great Author to pick it up and write out your own beautiful story!

I wish you all the best,

Sara (soon to be Mrs. Nichols)

P.S. be sure to check out our wedding website thenicholsmakecents.com.