“How old are you?” she asked me.

“22. Why?”

“Are you engaged?”

I instantly knew what exactly she was asking me, and I panicked.

A few weeks ago, I was wearing a promise ring during group tutoring. Five eyes were watching me, waiting to hear my answer.

I shouldn’t have been intimidated by these 17/18-year-olds. I should’ve said, “No, it’s a symbol that, to me, means I’m waiting to give my heart to the person God chose for me.”

But I didn’t say that.

Earlier that week, I had asked God to challenge me by having my faith questioned or asked about. And this was the moment. I let it go, just saying, “No I’m not engaged.”

About a week after that, I was at dinner with my volunteer group after cleaning the local rivers (I only mention this because I was wearing a Fireball shirt that I didn’t mind getting dirty). Someone asked me if I like Fireball, a spiced whisky.

I said, “I don’t really drink anymore.” I immediately knew that my friends in the group would question why because they knew up until about two months before that, I drank with them.

I had to explain to them why I wasn’t drinking. Personally, I choose not to drink much because of the health implications but also because when I drink to get drunk, I give up control over my speech, emotions, and physical abilities.

It isn’t someone who shows God’s love. It isn’t a servant of our King.

And no matter how much fun I might have momentarily, I still end up feeling empty. Craving something more. Something else.

In that moment, when my entire volunteer group was looking at me, I had to make a choice. God had presented me with an opportunity that I ASKED FOR! I could choose to defend my beliefs or shrug it off, lie, walk away.

I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I think I decided on something like, “I just don’t like myself when I drink.”

Funny enough, it actually sparked another Christian in the group to chime in with her similar beliefs.

So as the title of this blog says, be careful what you pray for because God will answer your prayer in a way that might make you at odds with worldly beliefs.

In a good way.

He does it to help us grow. He loves us.

I struggled in my faith the days following these incidents because I felt I had failed. But as Ezra Taft Benson said, “The Lord is pleased with every effort, even the tiny, daily ones in which we strive to be more like Him.”

Maybe I wasn’t the one who shared my faith, (because to be honest, I asked to be challenged because I was pretty arrogant) but the other Christian in the group did. And in God’s eyes, wasn’t that the point? For non-Christians to hear from a friend our standpoint on drinking and to teach me a lesson?

“You can make many plans,
    but the Lord’s purpose (the end result) will prevail.” -Proverbs 19:21 (NLT)