Held. Not Withheld.

You’re in for a story today, folks.

Let me be honest—this post is really the story of my last year, and it starts at Easter 2025.

This is a story only a few people knew I was walking through until the last month or so. Honestly, part of that was because I was a little embarrassed. But part of it was also because... it just wasn’t really anyone’s business.

For some backstory, one of the deepest desires of my life has always been to get married and raise a family. Growing up in the South, it can feel a little like a rite of passage.

Somewhere between church potlucks and people asking, “So… anybody special?” before you’re legally old enough to rent a car, it just kind of gets in the air.

Maybe that’s why God moved me to the Midwest. Maybe He said, “Let’s get this girl some freshhh air.”

All I know is that my brother and his wife got married at 20 and 19, so by the time I was 25, I felt behind.

Not just a little behind. Like spiritually and emotionally standing in the checkout line while everyone else had already made it to the parking lot.

For years, I had been searching, wondering where my future husband might be and imagining the life I thought I was supposed to have by now.

Now hear me: the desire itself wasn’t bad. Wanting to find the man I get to serve Jesus with is a beautiful desire.

But somewhere along the way, it became the background music of my life.

No matter what was going on, there was always this underlying soundtrack of, When is it my turn?

The desire had slowly consumed more of my attention than I realized. What started as hope had, over time, become something much louder in my heart.

So last year, I truly wasn’t surprised when God asked me for a new step of obedience.

It was April, the Saturday night before Easter. We were getting ready for service, and before it began, our lead pastor, Ted, had us spread out around the auditorium to pray—for the people coming, for soft hearts, and that all attention would be undeniably on Jesus. Then he led us into a time of listening prayer.

As he prayed that God would reveal our distractions and remove them, I heard the Lord say, “Give dating a break until next Easter.”

Dude.

I was literally seeing someone.

So naturally, my first response was less “Yes, Lord” and more “Respectfully… what?”

I tucked those words away, focused on the services ahead, and revisited it Sunday night.

And yes, I absolutely did that deeply spiritual thing where I said, “God, if that was You, I’m going to need, like, billboard-level clarity.”

Well.

Monday morning I woke up to a text from the guy I was seeing.

It was over.

Okay.

Copy that.

Loud and clear.

No billboard needed.

I had no idea why He was asking this of me, but it didn’t take long for Him to bring clarity.

After spending that week praying, I realized something painful: whether I knew it or not, my attention had always been split—split between God, the Creator of the universe, and my desire to be married.

It was as if He was gently but firmly saying, “You’re so eager to be someone else’s bride, but you’re not wholeheartedly Mine.”

As someone who deeply loves Jesus, that stung. Because it was true.

I had put the idea of marriage on such a pedestal that it was threatening my wholehearted devotion to Him.

And so began a year of straightening things out.

What I’ve learned this year is that idols rarely show up looking evil. Sometimes they show up looking holy.

Sometimes they sound like prayers. Sometimes they even sound like promises.

For me, it looked like constantly wondering when it would finally be my turn—my turn for the relationship that lasts, for the wedding, for the family, for the life I had always pictured.

What began as hope slowly became fixation.

I didn’t even realize how much mental and emotional space it was taking up until it was gone.

And in that quiet, things started rising to the surface: comparison, fear, discontentment, and some deeply subconscious beliefs I had formed about God.

Friends, sometimes we begin to believe things about God that simply aren’t true, and the scary part is we often don’t even realize it. Sometimes it’s so subtle that it just settles into the way we think.

For me, watching so many people around me find their spouse, get engaged, get married, and start families slowly shifted my focus toward what I didn’t have instead of what I did.

And when you live there long enough, that focus can quietly become a belief.

A belief that says, “God is withholding from me.”

I never would have said that out loud. I would have never put that in a prayer journal. But underneath the disappointment, that’s what had started taking root.

If everyone else seems to be receiving the thing you desire and you aren’t, it’s easy for your heart to begin narrating a story about God that isn’t true.

Maybe He forgot me.

Maybe He’s saying no.

Maybe good things are for everyone else.

Maybe He’s holding out on me.

But friends, God is not the withholder of good things.

Let me say that again for the people in the back—and also for the version of me from last year: God is not the withholder of good things.

Sometimes He withholds timing.

Sometimes He withholds outcomes.

Sometimes He withholds what we think we need.

But He is never withholding His goodness.

In fact, Scripture reminds us that His plans and His power extend far beyond what we can currently see.

As Paul writes in Ephesians 3:20, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” 

That verse hit me differently this year.

Because I realized I had been limiting God’s goodness to one specific outcome.

I had quietly decided what “good” was supposed to look like.

Marriage.

A timeline.

A family beginning when I thought it should.

But God’s goodness is not confined to my expectations.

Sometimes His “immeasurably more” doesn’t look like getting exactly what we asked for in the moment.

Sometimes it looks like healing we didn’t know we needed.

Sometimes it looks like freedom from beliefs that were quietly shaping our hearts.

Sometimes it looks like intimacy with Him that we never would have found if life had gone according to our plan.

There is a massive difference between God withholding good and God working good.

Sometimes what feels like delay is actually protection.

Sometimes what feels like silence is actually formation.

Sometimes what feels like deprivation is actually God uprooting a lie before it grows any deeper.

Because if He had given me what I wanted while my heart was still believing that marriage would complete me, I would have built my security on something that was never meant to hold it.

That’s mercy.

Uncomfortable mercy, but mercy nonetheless.

Jesus began showing me that this current season was not some lesser version of life.

This is not filler.

This is not the waiting room.

This is formation.

This is the story.

Jesus, in His mercy, kept asking me a harder question:

Am I enough for you now?

That question has a way of exposing everything.

Because it forces you to look at whether your peace is rooted in God’s presence or in God’s provision.

For so long, I had attached peace to an outcome—peace when I meet the right person, peace when the relationship works, peace when life looks how I imagined.

But the Lord began teaching me that peace is not found in arrival. Peace is found in abiding. And wow, those are not the same thing.

Arrival says, I’ll rest when I get there.

Abiding says, I can rest because He is here.

That shift changed so much for me.

As I’ve reflected on this year, I keep coming back to the fact that this story isn’t really just about dating. That was simply the thing God chose to use in my life.

For you, it may be something entirely different.

Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s a career goal. Maybe it’s the dream you’ve built your timeline around. Maybe it’s approval, success, healing, control, or simply the need for life to look a certain way.

The question isn’t what the thing is.

The question is: what has been taking up the loudest space in your heart?

What is the thing you find yourself thinking about the most? The thing that seems to determine your peace? The thing that, if it happened, you believe would finally make everything feel okay?

Because sometimes the Lord, in His kindness, will lovingly put His finger on the very thing we’ve been gripping the hardest. Not because He wants to punish us, and not because the desire itself is wrong, but because He loves us too much to let anything else sit on the throne of our hearts.

So maybe the invitation in my story is also an invitation for you.

What might God be asking you to lay down?

Where has your attention been divided?

Is there something good that has slowly become ultimate?

I think all of us, in different ways, know what it feels like to place hope in something we can see, touch, or plan for. And I also think all of us know the ache of realizing that thing can’t carry the weight we gave it.

Maybe this season for you isn’t about surrendering dating.

Maybe it’s surrendering the timeline.

Maybe it’s releasing the comparison.

Maybe it’s letting go of the belief that life hasn’t started yet.

Maybe it’s simply allowing Jesus access to the places in your heart you’ve kept guarded.

Whatever it is, I want you to know this: the Lord’s invitation to surrender is never meant to shrink your life.

It is always meant to free it.

Sometimes what feels like loss is actually the beginning of healing.

Sometimes what feels like waiting is actually formation.

And sometimes the thing God is asking you to release is the very thing standing in the way of deeper intimacy with Him.

Now here we are. Another Easter. A full year later.

If you had told me last Easter that the thing Jesus was asking me to lay down would become one of the most healing seasons of my life, I’m not sure I would have believed you.

Because at the time, it felt like loss.

It felt like hard surrender.

It felt like God asking me to release something I had carried in my heart for years.

But standing here now, I can see that what felt like loss was actually love.

He was never taking something good from me.

He was freeing me from the weight of making that good thing everything.

This Easter, I’m not celebrating because every desire has been answered.

I’m celebrating because Jesus met me in the ache.

He taught me that His presence is not second best.

He taught me that I am not behind.

He taught me that resurrection doesn’t always look like circumstances changing.

Sometimes resurrection looks like a heart made new.

I still desire marriage. I still hope for the family I’ve dreamed of.

But now that desire sits in open hands instead of clenched fists.

And that, to me, feels like freedom.

Songs for reflection, prayer, & singing:

Wait On You - Elevation Worship, Maverick City Music

Morning By Morning - Pat Barrett

King of My Heart - Bethel Music

Good Plans - Red Rocks Worship

Promises - Maverick City Music