Two weeks ago, my husband walked our second daughter, Charlotte, down the aisle of our little church to give her to her new husband. Although he had done this once before with our oldest daughter, I could see that he was choked up. This was his little girl whom he had fed at 2 AM, run marathons beside, and prayed for fervently when she lived in Indonesia for 18 months. Was this tall handsome gentleman greeting her at the front of the church going to care for her as her dad had for 27 years?

My husband was confident that he would because he had asked him. When our son-in-law Brandon asked my husband for our daughter’s hand in marriage, my husband had a few questions he wanted answered first. I sat, listened, and then asked a few of my own. Our son-in-law answered them graciously and assured us that he would love our daughter very well.

But Charlotte had done her own work before Brandon even came to us that night eight months ago. She made sure that he met her own list of “non-negotiable” attributes. During her years in college, we talked about dating and marriage and helped her…