TV Anchor Left at the Altar Gives Advice on Dating
At the height of her career as a TV anchor and madly in love with a man she expected to soon call husband, Kimberley Kennedy lost everything – her career, love, health, and money. In her wrestle with God and life, she learned about the Father's love and emerged with a new motto in life – "man's rejection, God's protection."
Kennedy was wearing a cream-colored halter dress, flanked by bridesmaids in a "lovely" Episcopal church with organ music playing on that fateful day when the "perfect" man said he "just can't do it" – one day before the wedding.
After the devastating and humiliating break-up with her fiancé, which became gossip fodder because she was a public figure in Atlanta, Kennedy blamed God for being dumped by the love of her life, she writes in her new book Left at the Altar: My Story of Hope and Healing for Every Woman Who has Felt the Heartbreak of Rejection.
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"But this is not a love story about a woman and a man," Kennedy clarifies in the book's introduction. "This is a story about a woman and her God, a God who loved her so much that he allowed a terrible thing to happen to her."
"He had invaluable life lessons for her to learn, lessons that not only would bring her closer to him but also show her in the end that his love is the only love that will never disappoint," the Emmy award-winning journalist writes.
In the book, Kennedy speaks candidly about her own faults that contributed to the failed relationship. Many of the problems she identifies are related to her faith life, which was sidelined during the relationship as well as throughout her life up until the time of the break-up.
As an overachiever and de facto head of the household after her father left, Kennedy admits she was a "control freak" that tried to force her former fiancé to the altar. Even when there were blatant signs that he did not want to get married, Kennedy now admits in retrospect that she ignored them and plowed ahead with the relationship setting goals and striving to achieve them.
Her controlling nature manifested itself in her spiritual life as well. Instead of praying to God for the right husband, she took control of the relationship and ignored what God thought about it. She admits in the book that she did not pray even once for the relationship even though she at the time considered herself a "good person" and "faithful churchgoer."
"This is why I say in the book that I was mostly responsible for getting to the altar that day and being left at the altar that day because I never turned this relationship over to God," Kennedy told The Christian Post in an interview. "If I had done that in the beginning, and in prayerful, prayerful consideration about this relationship, then I'm sure God would have taken it away. But I didn't do that because I was afraid He would."
"If women could do that in the beginning they would save themselves so much heartache," she added.
Kennedy believes that many women today have "so embraced the whole being-in-control thing" that it has become an effective and modern way for Satan to separate them from God.
Many women also deceive themselves, as Kennedy had, that their man will suddenly change after marriage and start to attend church with them.
"When we think we can control things better and have a better plan, I think it grieves Him," said Kennedy in the interview. "The abundant life that He talks about over and over doesn't mean you'll have lots of things and plenty of money, it means, to me, when you can live abundantly without all that fear and anxiety when you know your creator has got the wheel."
"That's the way he wants us to live but so often we just don't choose it," she said.
For many women, their value and self-worth is seen through the eyes of their man. So when the man rejects her, it is a "double blow" because he left and took along with him "her whole validation for existence," she writes.
"For a lot of women, we think our worth comes when a man has chosen us. If a man chooses you and says he wants to marry you, that means you're valuable and worthy. But that is not what God wants us to believe," Kennedy stated.
Instead, women need to tell themselves and believe that first and foremost they are a child of God and that the Lord is a loving parent who only wants what is best for them.
"The truth is, while God created us to be in relationship with others, he did not intend for one person to become our whole reason for being," Kennedy writes in her book. "You see, God knows that people are fallible and will almost never live up to who we want them to be. … And that is why He gives us mates to complement our lives, not to make us whole."
After being left at the altar, Kennedy went through a series of other tribulations including losing her job, falling ill to Graves Disease, and finding out that People magazine had declared her ex as one of America's Most Eligible Bachelors!
But she endured through the storm and as a result now has the healthiest relationship with God in her life. She is also the producer, writer, and anchor of WSB-TV's weekly news and entertainment show, Hot Topics, which she excitedly raved to The Christian Post that she "loves." The show airs in Atlanta, Orlando, and Charlotte.
"When you fall in love with God, you can be assured of one very special thing: you will never be left at the altar. Instead, you will live with him happily ever after. And the honeymoon will never end," she promises in the book's conclusion.
