I was in my sewing room last week, wrapping gifts and listening to a podcast. Two men were talking about friends of their wives—brilliant, admired, accomplished women with beautiful homes and extraordinary careers, yet no husband to share life with.
Then one of them said something that hit with uncomfortable precision: “They say they want a husband, but when you talk about marrying someone shorter than them or someone who makes less money, they refuse those compromises.”
I stopped what I was doing, because I suddenly realized: I was those women.
Twelve years ago, at 36, I had a moment of weakness in a loud, greasy, stainless-steel restaurant kitchen: a kitchen I managed, a kitchen filled with ambition, noise, late nights, service rushes, and the emotional debris of a marriage that was already collapsing. A young kitchen manager who worked for me drove me home one night after a heated confrontation with my ex-husband that spilled out publicly in front of my staff. I was vulnerable, emotional, and not thinking clearly.
I asked him to swear to secrecy.
Two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant.
This man I was about to make my husband was 23 years old.
It sounded crazy to my circle, my staff, and me. A 23-year-old employee, speaking no English, undocumented in this country, and a restaurant owner, 13 years older, suddenly choosing marriage because of a promise I had made to God years earlier—that I would never choose abortion again.
So I married my now-husband—not because it began as romance but because I chose life and felt carried by a conviction that felt divine in its clarity. It was radical faith, born not from perfection but from honesty about the loneliness that existed in my heart.
Twelve years later, I don’t look at our beginning as a story of compromise. I look at it as the moment I let go of the belief that love must arrive in a certain shape to be legitimate. We built a life together, a family together, and a business together. We are true partners—day in and day out. The people around us don’t define him by how we met, what he once earned, or what language he spoke. What remains is the truth: We share a life, a family, and a business that we are both fiercely committed to building every day.
After hearing that podcast last week, I felt moved to invite women not to repeat the mistake I almost made. To encourage them not to become accidentally childless because a checklist stole their window before a calling found its voice. So I made a short video on Instagram sharing my story, my marriage, and my choice to build a family, even when the beginning didn’t look like a fairy tale.
The responses perfectly revealed the deeper tension.
Women messaged me saying:
“We want to hear your love story.”
“We want to hear how you feel like a goddess here on Earth.”
“We want to feel chosen and adored.”
“We don’t want to feel like you settled.”
“We don’t want to hear about practicality—that sounds like settling.”
They wanted sparks, butterflies, and effortless romance as the gatekeeper to devotion.
But again, the irony was undeniable:
Not one of those women was married.
Some had never married.
Some were divorced, still hoping the sparks would return.
All were rejecting the very work that might actually build the thing they said they wanted.
And here’s the truth I wish someone had said to me earlier: Passion is powerful, but passion is not partnership. And partnership is the part that actually lasts.
We have been sold a myth that instant sparks equal extraordinary love. Yet historically, passion has been a spark-window, not a life-structure. For most of human existence, love was something built on shared responsibility, shared labor, shared protection, shared commitment, shared vision.
And love built slowly, honestly, and through grit and daily choosing can still make you feel cherished, chosen, and lifted up—not because it was effortless but because it was real enough to hold the weight of a life built together.
Thousands of people had to farm, fight, survive, and persevere so that you could exist. Your lineage didn’t carry forward because conditions were perfect. It carried forward because someone chose family even when the conditions were uncertain. Don’t let that story end with you because you’re afraid of judgment or because someone doesn’t match the criteria you were trained to think you deserved.
Measure different things: commitment, integrity, partnership, protection, and the ability to stay steady when life gets loud and unpredictable.
Because the greatest gift you will ever hold is not power you control alone—it is life you co-create with God, built beside a partner who chooses the same family, the same purpose, the same work, and the same commitment as you.
I don’t share this story to diminish romance. I share it because it’s honest, and honesty reaches places fantasy never does.
I’m putting this into the world for the women who still feel that God-and-family-sized longing in their hearts but worry culture will call it settling if love doesn’t arrive with fireworks on day one.
So I’m inviting you—truly inviting you—to make a different decision than the one culture keeps selling.
A decision that values life over a checklist.
A decision that trusts God’s design over glossy fantasy.
A decision that prioritizes family over the fear of judgment.
A decision that believes love can be grown, built, strengthened, chosen, and shared—not only discovered.
Share this with your daughters, your granddaughters, your sisters, your cousins, your friends—any woman in your life who still believes love must look perfect on day one or it doesn’t count.
Tell them this instead: There is no greater gift than returning to what God calls you to do—bringing life forth, building family, and walking into your calling with radical faith in His design.
Measuring a man not by height but by heart.
Not by income but by integrity.
Not by optics but by partnership.
Not by sparks but by the ability to commit to something real and stay steady in it.
The world can call it whatever it wants.
But God calls it purpose.
And that purpose leads to the kind of love that makes you feel lucky, held, seen, and cherished, even when the beginning looked nothing like the fairy tale.
Because what we’ve lost is not love.
It’s trust that love can grow inside commitment.
I didn’t mistake settling for surrender.
I surrendered to God and was handed a life I once thought was impossible for me.
And that is the love story I want more women to believe is available to them, too.
