To All The Single Ladies

This is just a word for the single ladies out there from someone who simply had no clue on how to live a christian life being single and how to do it with class and grace.  I wish someone would have told me then what I know now.  I know how the journey of singleness feels...endless.  Now that I am on the other side and finally married I look back at all of the stupid mistakes I made and I simply want to put out there some things I learned and things I wish I would have known or done differently.

I fell in love with being in love probably before I was in the 4th grade.  I remember being in Kindergarten and having five boyfriends at one time.  Also, throughout my teenage years and adulthood, I use to dream up every possible scenario with every guy I met that vaguely met the profile I had "chosen" for my future husband.  (My so called "profiled man").  Just in case you aren't sure, that is on the list of things you shouldn't do.  It is so easy for our minds to wander and scenarios to unfold as we imagine being with the potential candidate in front of us but often times we end up disappointed and confused as to why nothing panned out the way we imagined.  "I thought I was going to marry him".  A statement I made way too many times following a breakup. 

If you haven't read the book Captivating you should totally go and buy it right now.  To terribly summarize, the book states that we are born to fall in love.  We are created to fall in love with God our father and creator.  However, because the world is messed up with sin we try to fall in love with everything but God.  God finds us captivating while we find everything else captivating.  We go about searching and trying to fill our void with anything that we can grasp; even if it is an imagined scenario.  (e.g. Wedding bells ringing in our mind's ears before the end of the first date).

Many people bash romance movies and novels but I'm not going to do that.  The passion and emotion in those movies and novels is and can be real in the right context.  The world distorts the context and the verb of love.  The book Redeeming Love is an amazing depiction of a romance that can resemble our relationship with Christ and with a man who loves Christ.  The Bible states it ever so clearly here:  "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church.  He is the Savior of the body.  Now as the church submits to Christ, so wives are to submit to their husbands in everything.  Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.  He did this to present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless".  Ephesians 5:22-27.  Our relationships are to resemble Christ's relationship with the church.  Just remember, your savior is Jesus, not your boyfriend. 

The main advice I have is this:  wait.  Wait and don't pursue some man or strive to make yourself into something that you think is lovable.  While you wait however, pursue the Lord.  Seek the Lord wholeheartedly with the passion and desires that you could so easily channel towards finding the "one".  If you wait you will be amazed at what God does in you and for you.  His blessings and love are far more romantic and thrilling than what any man can provide you. 

I didn't figure this all out the easy way.  I experienced way too many broken hearts and tear filled nights including so much lost time and effort, so much striving, so many mistakes and regrets.  However, I did learn a lot through it and I'm hoping that I can pass those lessons on.  God finally got my attention and when I finally submitted everything to him and sought his love alone he brought about so much change in my heart.  He changed my desires.  He changed my perspective of love and marriage.  He changed my "profiled man" into the man who sacrificed it all for me, Jesus.  Then suddenly I started noticing characteristics in men who followed the Lord that I had never listed as a priority in my profiled man.  I specifically noticed the man who is now my husband.  Wow, he was and is beautiful inside and out.  God led me straight to him right when I wasn't looking for my "profiled man" but when I was looking for Jesus. 

Get busy waiting.   :)

2012

This blogging thing just doesn't work out well for me apparently.  My most recent post was last January!  Well, I tried.  I guess I will just post when I really have something intriguing or important to say.  By the looks of it this doesn't occur often.  So I guess this is what this is. 

I really wanted to post some goals for myself for 2012.  Maybe this way I will be held more accountable for them since I'm "putting them out there" in a way.   This weekend and today in church I prayed that God would reveal to me some areas in my life that I needed to give over to Him and goals I needed to set.  So here is what God spoke to me and what I wrote down:

• Less of me, more of God.
• It's not about comfort, it is about being obedient.
• Read through the bible.
• Memorize more scripture.
• Intentional journaling and prayer.
• Listen. More.
• Esteem Christ more than I esteem anything else in my life.
• Don't wrap yourself up in things that have no eternal significance.
• Have a teachable spirit.
• Slow down.  Make everything intentional.  Don't be careless, thoughtless, or hurried.   Be intentional.

The Lord wants to work in our lives.  He wants to speak to us.  We (I) are so busy and wrapped up in things that do not matter.  I often wonder why I get into such a tizzy about things.  Then I realize how silly and trivial the matters really are.  Then I forget and fall into another tizzy.  

Following Christ is bold.  It takes a bold move where you are deemed separate, different, not of the world.  In the world, not of the world.  This is one of the hardest things for me.  Please pray for me and these goals and that I will simply be a servant of Christ concerned with his kingdom and nothing more.  Oh and I need a lot of prayer.  Thanks :)