{ Repost: "When God writes your love story - A 16 year reflection" - Leslie Ludy }

Okay just to warn you – this blog is a bit longer than usual. That’s because this blog is kind of a “mini memoir” about one of our earliest books… When God Writes Your Love Story.

It’s hard for me to believe that this book has been floating around out there for nearly sixteen years! It makes me feel kind of old when I do the math. Some of our students at Ellerslie Training (and some young women reading this blog) were not even born yet when Eric and I were tapping away at our very first computer on the very first draft of this book! That’s a strange thought! Eric and I were actually quite young ourselves when we felt burdened to share a specific message with our generation…that God is willing and able to write beautiful love stories for those that leave the pen in His hands and follow His pattern.

Yep, that’s right – I did say that wanted to share this message with “our generation.” 

That’s because when we wrote this book, we were actually about the same age as the audience we were writing to! In our early twenties at the time of writing, we’d been married a little over three years. The amazing wonder of what God had done in our own love story was fresh in our hearts and minds. 

We were passionate about sharing the truths we’d learned with others who were struggling through the confusing journey of pre-marriage relationships. But never did we imagine that the young people who were reading the book back then would pass it along to their own kids someday. I guess we were a bit short sighted, because we didn’t envision the book being passed down through multiple generations! We simply saw a need for our generation to return to God’s amazing plan for relationship building, instead of following the warped and twisted pattern of the culture.

Among many of our fellow Christians, there seemed to be a general lack of hope that God-centered romance could truly be beautiful. 

Christian couples were divorcing at an even higher rate than non-Christians. Young people were becoming cynical toward marriage in general, because they’d seen their parents’ marriages crumble. A nationwide survey revealed that the number one desire of Christian young people was to be married to one person for a lifetime…but a follow up study revealed that a huge majority of them didn’t believe this was even possible.

Our desire in writing When God Writes Your Love Story was to infuse fresh vision into our generation; to show the beauty and fulfillment that is possible when we give God His rightful place in this important area of our lives. 

Knowing that God is a creative God and He doesn’t write the same story for everyone, we didn’t want to use our own story as “the template” that others were supposed to emulate. Rather, our goal in the book was to take the basic Biblical principles God taught us during our pre-marriage relationship, and make them applicable to anyone.

It’s truly been astounding for us to see the impact this book has had in the Christian culture. For the past sixteen years, young people searching for “a better way” in romance and relationships have been inspired to wait for God’s best instead of rushing into short term, temporary flings that lead only to heartache and disappointment. The letters, emails and testimonies we’ve received over the years have encouraged and blessed us beyond words.

Of course, through the years, there have been criticisms of the book’s message as well. Some have argued that When God Writes Your Love Story paints an idealistic and unrealistic view of marriage, similar to a Disney princess story, setting readers up for disappointment, since that’s not actually real life. And since the book uses terminology such as “happily ever after” and “fairy tale romances” I guess I can understand why this misconception has surfaced. 

However, Eric and I certainly don’t promote a “pie in the sky” vision of marriage or encourage readers to find their hope or fulfillment in an earthly relationship. Marriage is challenging. In fact, without God’s help, having a truly successful marriage is impossible! (See our book The First 90 Days of Marriage for more on this topic!)

As I’ve emphasized in my books for young women and in many magazine articles on this website, unless we find our fulfillment first and foremost in Jesus Christ, we will always be looking to a human love story to meet needs in our heart that only Jesus Christ can meet – and, yes, that approach will lead to disappointment! 

But when Jesus is our first love, and when we keep Christ at the center of our earthly love story, marriage truly can be a taste of Heaven on earth. 

This doesn’t mean that there are no real life challenges in a God-scripted love story. And yet, when Christ is at the center of a relationship, challenges and trials will strengthen the romance rather than weaken it. Our relationship with our spouse can only work when it is an outflow of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

From personal experience and in talking with countless couples who have chosen to honor God’s pattern for relationships, I can honestly say that choosing a God-written love story does lead to a real-life “happily ever after” romance that is far beyond any counterfeit version Hollywood or Disney could ever create! (And even if you remain single for the rest of your life, remember that the most important and fulfilling romance of all is the relationship you share with your Heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.)

When I thumb through a copy of When God Writes Your Love Story nowadays, I have to smile at how much our writing style has changed since then. Sixteen years ago our style was light-hearted, full of zany humor, and strongly story-based. We used short and simple Scriptures instead of lengthy Biblical exegesis because we were originally writing to teens in the modern “youth group culture” who often could only swallow “bite-sized” portions of Truth. 

Given how bold, thunderous, and Scripturally replete our newer books are, I have a feeling we’d write this book slightly differently if we were writing it today. But there is something very precious to me in the down-to-earth, childlike, friendly style of this book, even though it may be a bit less sophisticated than our newer works. Its simple, childlike approach to life-changing Biblical Truth has won its way into the hearts and souls of hundreds of thousands of young people who have a genuine desire to pursue God’s best in the area of romance and relationships, and I greatly treasure that fact.

I love reading testimonies from young people who were impacted by When God Writes Your Love Story in their teen years, surrendered this area of their lives to God, watched His faithfulness unfold in their love stories, and now are passing the book on to their own children who are entering their teen years. I’m humbled, blessed, and grateful beyond measure that God has used this simple book to impact so many lives. I never would have dreamed, sitting at that old clunky computer all those years ago, that the book we were creating would still be going strong sixteen years later! 

I’m happy to announce that not only is the book still going strong, but so is our marriage. Our life has not been easy – being in full time ministry can certainly take a toll on any relationship. But the principles we wrote about in the book are just as true for us today as they were back then – a relationship scripted by the Author of Romance truly does get more and more beautiful with time! As we said in the book, so I can say again with great confidence – our God is perfectly faithful with all that we entrust to Him!