few days after Nate’s proposal, I heard a voice telling me clearly in my spirit “Nate is your husband.”

“What?!” I screamed from the recesses of my mind. I didn’t even really like Nate! Certainly not enough to want to marry him! I’d only decided to pray about his proposal to fulfill all righteousness. How could this be?

Well, I kept on praying that day and kept hearing the same thing in my spirit: “Nate is your husband.”

Physically, Nate was perfect. We’re both of African descent, and he had a cute smile and a glorious set of dimples. While he wasn’t so tall, he was still three inches taller than my 5 ft 7’ – which meant I didn’t need to crane my neck so much to look into his eyes. And don’t even get me started on his sixpack…

I just so happened to catch him shirtless in the apartment he shared with his brother when I dropped by from an outing, so we could go grab dinner together. As soon as I got there, he quickly put on his shirt and we left. I do remember feeling disappointed about him covering up (hey, I’m a believer, not blind!).

But here’s the thing: my relationship with Nate was so rocky that, within the first couple of months, I found myself crying over some of the issues I was having with him. Nate had a jealous streak a mile wide – maybe because of his rather sexually-liberal lifestyle as a teenager and young adult. He hated meeting my male friends, despite the fact that I openly introduced him to them as my boyfriend. He would say again and again that he didn’t believe in platonic relationships between men and women.

Something else Nate used to do that I found rather worrisome was his insistence on my submission. He would quote Ephesians 5:22 to me saying “Kaye, I am your husband; you have to submit to me.”

“Dude, you’re not my husband yet,” I thought as I rolled my eyes, internally.

Beyond these though, was his anger. Within the first three months of our relationship, it was clear to me that he had serious anger management issues. Hey, I’m a quick-tempered person myself, but I was a whole lot better at not allowing the anger to get the better of me than he was.

One day, after having just returned home for a brief visit after three months working out of town, I excused myself from him and my friend who had come to see me with her fiancé. I wanted to go say hi to my dad who had just come home from work. Certainly, it wasn’t going to be a one-minute “Hello, Dad.” I honored my father by spending a couple of minutes with him, enquiring about his health and whether my mom had been treating him right!

I returned only to find that Nate had left. In fact, my friend explained that he had muttered angrily that I’d been out of town for three months, yet apparently hadn’t missed him enough to spare any time for him. He had stormed off to his car without another word, said my friend. Her fiancé confirmed that he had driven off with a screech of his tires.

I was due to travel back to my duty station two days later. I went to his place hoping we could talk about what had happened, but he wasn’t in. I didn’t see him again until I was about to set out to return to work out of town.