His words hung on me like an over-sized suit that was being handed down from an older brother to his younger sibling. I was not big enough to fit this suit, nor was I mature enough to understand the value of what I was being given. Wisdom is earned through experience and maturity, and I felt as if I were being asked to grow up too soon. The choice really was no longer mine. Despite my personal feelings on the matter reality was cold and very harsh. She was gone and never coming back.
My journey to disappointment began on a Sunday morning while in a worship service. I picked up my two year old son and kneel at the altar for prayer. To sum up the prayer it went something like this, “Father God, I am tired of being alone. Please send my wife. And please send her now. Amen.” I returned to my seat with immediate expectations of meeting my future wife, so I started looking at the women that sat around us. As I now reflect, it must have made a few of them nervous or uncomfortable as I have been accused of having an intense stare.
The Singles Ministry had setup an information table on the outside of the sanctuary exit on the same morning. I approached the table out of curiosity as I had recently applied for the leader of the ministry, without knowing anything about the post or any of its members. My purpose was to gather material on the ministry, so I was looking at the handouts on table as I walked up. I did not notice any of the persons hosting the table, but when I finally looked up I was greeted by a beautiful woman with a delightful smile.
Frankly, my mind was still on a lady in saw in the sanctuary that I thought had gotten away. Since I was distracted I only asked a few questions about the ministry, which the lady helping me was unable to answer at the time. How ironic, she served at an information table but could not answer any of the questions I had? It turns out that she had only agreed to serve in the place of an acquaintance and was not suppose to be at the table.
It appeared to me as only an act of kindness when she offered to take my phone number and follow up with me when she discovered the answers to my questions. Needless to say this was a ploy on her part that I completely missed. Weeks later she confessed that I had been one of her targets at the church for months but the opportunity for us to meet had not materialized until that morning.
She did call and had answers for each of my questions. The initial phone call lasted for hours and lead to a lunch meeting, which progressed to a dinner date. From that first date we spent the next eight months together and were nearly inseparable. The morning after our first date she asked excitedly, “will you marry me?”, and I accepted. It all happened so fast that I attributed the whole encounter to an answer from my prayer. How else could the chance encounter on the same morning as my prayer lead to one date that resulted in her proposing? She was incredibly attractive, very intelligent, successful in her career, and rooted in Jesus Christ as exhibited best by a vow of celibacy. In that moment I thought for sure she was my destiny.
A short nine months later I found myself heartbroken and perplexed by an abrupt separation. The same woman that had proposed marriage to me; said that she loved me with her whole heart, first; then, introduced me to every meaningful person in her life as the man she would marry; stated that she had made a mistake and could no longer be in my life in the manner that we dreamed. My recourse was to seek counsel from a man that served as a spiritual adviser and that I had adopted as a big brother.
As I replayed all of the wonderful moments and how everything just seemed to fall into place I was absolutely lost for reasoning over the outcome. Certainly we both had faults. Yet, this woman presented everything that I thought I wanted in a wife. She indulged me in every way and never hinted that she was not satisfied with our relationship. I was the one that asked God over again could this be real. I was far from perfect and presented a host of challenges, but she accepted each blemish and still seemed to want me the way that I wanted us. Our life together read like a fairy tale for nearly eight months. But God shared something that would take me months to embrace. She was only a decoy.
My friend and mentor stated, “When we reveal our desires the enemy will attempt to destroy them, and one of the tactics is to send a decoy.” How does anyone contextualize being swayed by a decoy? I did not want to accept that reality. What I wanted was to hear a plan of action of how I could win her back, rescue her heart from whoever kidnapped it from my embrace. I needed reassurance that this was only a test, and all that was required was faith in order to pass. However, what I gained was the beginning of a new perspective on this journey called life.
I was able to take the possibility of decoy blessings and measure other disappointments in my life against its truth. Quite a few of the negative circumstances that I had faced in professional and social situations begin to resemble the present encounter with a decoy blessing. The new awareness gained through connecting the points of intersection in these disappointments helped me to see a weakness in my approach to life. As a result, I became more attentive to the substance of opportunities.
Decoys lack real substance, and thus cannot be sustained. To add insult to my injuries, I was able to see a pattern where I fought hard to keep decoy relationships with people, places, and things alive, even after realizing that I was the only reason those relationships were surviving. As desperate as I was to develop a test for decoys I needed to be careful. The wrong assumption includes thinking it is as easy as taking my hands off a situation and seeing if it survives. What worked in my favor in nearly all of my encounters with decoys is that no matter how hard I tried to keep things alive the relationships falter on their own. Even when we are unable to discern a decoy, its weak nature will reveal itself.
In the end, the response that I chose, which I advise others to repeat is see each encounter with a decoy as a blessing. These are the moments that prepare us for our future and give us wisdom. We can choose to live in what we believe was supposed to be, or accept what clearly is. Besides, moving away from a decoy creates space for our destiny.
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