Sorry, I should have given you a bit more warning of that, shouldn’t I? I hope you didn’t injure yourself when you fell over in shock!
Yes, having found contentment in my singleness after many years, and beginning to carve out a niche for myself as a writer and speaker on contentment (and often singleness), I fell head over heels in love with an old friend, and on 4 November we were married.
It has meant a lot of changes, as you can imagine. For one thing, I left my beloved London to move to a small town in Northamptonshire. I left a church where I felt known, loved and useful, and left many friends and the life I was extremely happy in.
And as I alluded to in my second paragraph, I also left an identity that had been mine for many years, and the role that went with it.
It has been surprisingly easy.
I joke that having Dave is some consolation for all those losses, but it is only a joke – no person could meet all those many and varied needs.
Rather, it has been a good test of what I have been talking about these past few years – is my security, my joy and my contentment really in God or in the gifts he has given me?
Counting the cost
I did have a day, early in my relationship with Dave, where the costs involved in moving ahead together really hit me. I had been ‘Miss Jennie’ or ‘Jennie P’ or some variation to so many people for so long – was I really ready to give up that identity and become ‘Mrs Jennie H’?! God was opening doors for me to speak on singleness and contentment, and enabling me to bring great encouragement to many people – would I lose that? I would be leaving all the networks I was part of, and where I felt seen and valued and my gifts were encouraged. And of course, I’d have someone else’s needs to consider all the time! Was I really willing to give up decades of pleasing no one but myself?
The way through these fears and worries was, of course, to look to God. His hand seemed very much in bringing me and Dave together (though I am very grateful to my church elders and a good friend for asking the awkward questions and making sure I wasn’t just being carried away by my emotions). If God was in this, then I knew I could trust him to provide for me and meet all my needs. He has always been faithful, so there was no reason to doubt his trustworthy-ness this time. The identity and opportunities I had had all been given to me by him in the first place, so if he was now closing those doors, well, that was his prerogative – and he could have closed them anyway, at any time, for any reason.
Clinging onto what I had was pointless and futile – I decided to move ahead and step through the door he had opened before me.
So here I am, married, living in not-London, freelancing again (and he has been miraculously bringing work again!), homemaking (which I love), building new friendships and finding out what God has in store for this season. And it is wonderful.
Possibly my favourite photo from the wedding is this one (you might need to click to enlarge it):
It’s taken from behind us, after we had walked through the confetti line. I just love all those smiling faces – no one was posing for the camera, these are genuine smiles of joy and delight for us and what God has done for us. The service had been emotional – Dave lost his first wife in 2022, and that pain and sadness was acknowledged – but the hymns we chose spoke loudly and clearly of God’s faithfulness and goodness to us, through all the storms.
So, in due course I will be renaming this blog ‘Jennie Hart’. I’m still trying to work out how best to do that, to not lose the history I already have here, but with that and with my author name, I want to find the path that is most honouring to God and my husband, rather than taking the ‘worldly wisdom’ route of trying to cling onto old things ‘for the sake of my name-recognition and platform’. (As I was thinking about this a while back, I was recording some teaching videos on the book of Ruth, and was reminded of this blog post that I wrote back in 2020 – time to put my own teaching into practice, I think!)
I’m also hoping that now I’m freelancing again, I’ll be starting to write again a bit more. There are a couple of book ideas on the go, and hopefully more blogs coming soon.
Thank you for your support and encouragement thus far. Let’s see where God takes us next, shall we?!