I'm not waiting for Prince Charming

I'm not waiting for Prince Charming.

I know some of you may be confused by that statement. I am, after all, fairly vocal in my support of "dating with a purpose," or courtship, if you want to call it that. I'm even the administrator (along with a staff of several wonderful young ladies) of I Don't Date. Have I suddenly changed my convictions? No, not really.

But I repeat: I am not waiting for Prince Charming.

I am waiting for my husband.

I am not waiting for that mythical someday when a perfect man, a knight-in-shining-armor, rides in on his horse and scoops me off and carries me off to his castle where we live happily ever after. I am not waiting for that day because it will never come and believing that it will is only harmful to myself and to my future relationship with my future husband. (This is not to say that I don't love Pre-Raphaelite art as much as anyone else, just that I don't believe it will happen or ever did in the way we tend to think of it.)

You see, my husband, while I hope and pray that he is a wonderful and Godly man, is just that: a man. He is not now nor ever will be perfect and to imagine that he will is only setting both of us up for heartbreak.

Because what happens when he fails me?

He will fail me, just as I will fail him. And if I cherish the dream of a perfect man only to find that he is not so perfect after all (and I am talking larger failings than leaving his socks on the floor here), what will that do to my trust in him? How much harder would it be to find forgiveness for him and his failings in my heart? Yet would I not hope for that forgiveness myself? I would. And God calls us to forgive our fellow strugglers.

So no, I am not waiting for my Prince Charming. I am waiting for the man that I hope to laugh with, to cry with, to sing with, to read with, to live with, and to worship God with. I know that there will be hard times to come, just as there are hard times now. I know that my own sinful tendencies will rear up their ugly heads just as his will. And you know? I can only pray that God will bring us through them, whatever they be. But I can also refuse to fall into the trap of idealized thinking that is implicated in that phrase, "Prince Charming."