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Hey guys, hey.
It’s been forever since I've had the time to sit down and
type out some of my thoughts (…I should honestly be studying now, but hey, procrastination,
right?), so I’m hoping to spill out a bit of my heart tonight before I get back
to the books. I’m functioning on two hours of sleep today, so if anything seems
super jumbled or super spacey, well, hold my poor time management and my
ginormous pile of school work to blame.
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A question that has been burdening my heart lately and a
question I've been offering up in prayer these past few weeks is “Lord, in Your
heavenly plan, what are You teaching me and how long does it take?”
I think I've briefly mentioned this on the blog before, but
high school was a dark time for me – I had little to no self-esteem, I was
struggling with some dark stuff, and I didn't have any kind of leader or
friends pouring truth or encouragement into my life. My parents didn't allow me to date until I was
16 (at the time I hated them for that, but looking back I am so appreciative of
their wisdom in relationships and parenting), so while the people at school
were going on dates when they were 13,14,15…I was stuck hearing about their “love” stories between class
changes. I had assumed that once I turned 16, it would be like a fairy tale, a
guy would suddenly gain interest in me, and we would ride happily into the
sunset of oh-so-romantic high school love -- but that wasn't the case. No one
showed interest in me until I turned 17. And as soon as I was asked on that
first date, I didn't care about who was asking me, I didn't care about his lack
of faith or his friends or what others would think – all I cared about was a
guy finally being interested in me and not any of my other friends. I was being
chosen and I was being wanted. And that was all I chose to care about.
And, of course, choosing to turn a blind eye to the fact
that the relationship I was about to enter into was not a relationship that God
would have wanted me to enter into would eventually blow up in my face. Around
the end of my junior year, after the relationship had gone on for about seven
or eight months and we had already broken up and gotten back together twice, we
broke up for the third and final time…and then after that third breakup, I
found out that for almost half of the relationship, my ex and a friend I had
thought to be a very good friend, even best friend of mine, at the time had
been getting together behind my back…and that the majority of my classmates had
known about this fact but had chosen to not to tell me about it (talk about
hitting a girl with already low self esteem right where it hurts, right?). This
obviously created quite a bit of drama in my classes, especially since I had five
out seven classes with my ex, ex friend, and the same group of IB peers. Long
story short, I ended up being the target of a lot of undeserved mean words, a
lot of undeserved isolation from the rest of the class, and I felt even more
alone than I had before I entered the relationship about a year prior.
Since that relationship in my junior year of high school, I've
been in and out of two (not so healthy and not so long term) relationships;
instead of seeking out a relationship for partnership in servitude with Christ,
to be honest, I was reverting back to my high school insecurities and seeking out
relationships solely for acceptance and companionship. I was simply trying to
fill my desire to be wanted by a guy again. Against all logic and past
experience, I wasn't content in being accepted and loved by Love Himself, I
wanted imperfect and conditional humanly love, not the perfect and
unconditional love of a God.
For those of you who don’t know, for the past eight months, I've
been making it a point to remain single and grow and mature Spiritually in a
season of singleness for a year. And I never set out on this journey to prove a
point to myself; rather I set out on this journey simply because God told me one
night to abide in Him and in Him alone until I was completely content in having
only His attention and affections, no one else’s.
And I won’t lie, it’s been tough. When God originally spoke
to me, I distinctly remember thinking “oh, okay, easy peasy. I’ll stay single
like I was for my three years of middle school and first year of high school –
I've done that before, no big deal.” I laugh at myself for thinking that now
just because it was such an indicator of just how unaware I was of my own heart
problems at the time.
I've never thought of myself as “boy crazy” or as someone
who needs a man in her life to make her happy, and I still don’t consider
myself those things today. However, I've realized that a few months ago, I was
a girl who was starving for companionship, acceptance and love…and I was
looking for all of those things in all of the wrong places while trying to gain
them in all the wrong kinds of ways. I was so consumed with the idea of giving
myself over to someone emotionally, I was constantly looking for acceptance
from others -- especially boys. Quite honestly, I don’t even think I was
looking for a relationship with a guy; I was just desiring constant communication
with someone of the opposite sex so I’d know that someone was potentially
interested in me and I’d ride on that fact for my self-confidence and
self-worth. And when the guy I was talking to left the picture, I would experience
a sudden drop in confidence, quickly rebound to talk to any other guy that
seemed remotely interested in friendship or more, and then regain that
misplaced and fake confidence I was so desperately clinging to. …Are any of you
guys seeing the path (or rather cycle) of destruction I was unknowingly
travelling on??
This is the main thing I've learned over these past eight months: my will constantly crosses God’s will and my will must die.
Ephesians 4:22-24 (NLT): Throw off your evil nature and your
former way of life, which is rotten through and through, full of lust and
deception. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and
attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created
in God’s likeness – righteous, holy and true.
Ephesians 4:22-24 (MSG): “…everything – and I do mean
everything – connected with that old way of life has to go…take on an entirely
new way of life – a God-fashioned life, a life reserved from the inside and working
itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces His character in you.”
We must walk away from anything that hinders our love for God. To know if something is doing this, we must keep God involved in our lives. We must choose to give things up to Him and choose to tell Him everything.
A few months into my “man fast” (don’t laugh or judge -- that’s catchy and great and you know it), I
realized that I needed to give up a lot more than I initially realized and I
also realized that God had a lot of work to accomplish on my heart to make it
undivided for Him. I wrote this in my journal when I had this revelation:
“God, I think it’s so cool that you know how hard it is for us to cut things off, and that’s why you offer us the gift of an undivided heart. While you and I both know I’m not in a relationship right now, before I even get into one, if I ever do, God, I want an undivided heart. I realize that my Spiritual heart needs for my physical heart to be in tune to it, but I know I can’t make that happen alone. God, you know I’m consumed with the idea of love and being accepted and wanted by a guy who can lead me in a Godly relationship. And while I realize wanting a relationship is a healthy desire to have, I don’t want it to be more of a desire than me desiring You only. I just pray you’ll instill discernment in me as well as an undivided heart. I want to be Your servant and I know your plans are the best for me – replace any desires for finding myself in a guy with finding myself and my identity and confidence in You and You alone.”
And since writing that and really meditating on God’s word
and the truths and love He and He alone has to offer me, I can honestly say
that He’s made great strides with me in chiseling my heart into what He wants
it to look like. Now I find myself flipping over to Bible verses I have marked
in my Bible, or turning to God in prayer when I need encouragement or a
reminder of who I am as an individual in Christ -- not swiping over to the messages app on my phone
and texting a guy to try and gain empty confidence and worth through them.
However, I feel like the hardest part of my season of
singleness wasn’t willing myself to turn to God for attention when I really
wanted attention from a guy or memorizing verses of encouragement instead of
texts of sweet talk. Rather, I feel like I’m experiencing the hardest part of
it right now: abiding.
And this is where the question I mentioned at the beginning of this post comes into play: “Lord, in Your heavenly plan, what are You teaching me and how long does it take?”
It seems like I am being bombarded with sermons about
dating/marriage or seeing one of my friends either enter into a dating
relationship, enter into an engagement, or enter into a marriage. And my heart
is joyful for them – their seasons are all something to rejoice in, but my
heart is also a teeny tiny bit impatient for my own self to get to the seasons that they're currently experiencing already.
“Lord, I know I only desire finding my self-worth through
your truths now. Lord, I know that only You satisfy and I’m not actively
seeking out ways to try and fill that void anymore – You have filled me
up. Lord, I know that I would put Your
and Your visions and kingdom first in relationships now. Lord, I know what a
Godly relationship looks like now. But Lord, it’s only been eight months. What
in the world are you wanting to teach me in these next four months that I
simply must learn while remaining single? Why did you speak and tell me to
enter into a whole year of singlehood if we’re already seeing these results
only eight months in? ” Those are the kind of questions I've been wrestling with
God about lately.
For the first time in years, I feel like I feel confident enough
in my identity in Christ and confident enough in the strength of my
relationship with Christ to say that I could enter into a new season of dating
and continue to rely on God first in all things. But for the past weeks,
despite all the new relationships I've witnessed my friends enter into and all
the new engagements I've heard about, despite the cracks my family has been
making about my singleness, despite everything, God has been continuing to lay
one word on my heart: abide.
So all of this is to say that I don’t know what kind of
season you’re in or entering into this autumn – maybe you’re like me and you’re
single and planning on remaining in that season for a while, maybe you’re
actively seeking a partner to serve Christ with, or maybe you’re entering into
the exciting yet foreign life of a married couple – the possibilities are
endless. While I don’t know what kind of season you’re in and I don’t know what
you’re excited about or struggling with or intimidated by, I do know that in
whatever season we are in, as Christ followers, we are always called to be
praying for our “Lord, use me’s” to become “Lord, make me usable’s” in whatever
situations we are in.
Ephesians 2:10 NIV: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance for all of us to do.”
Despite the season you are in, right now, if you are
surrendering your will for God’s will your life is NOT off track. Every inch of
who we are has intentionally passed through the Maker’s hands when He wove us
together in our mother’s womb. Where we are in life right now and what we’re
learning (even if, like in my case, we’re struggling to see what exactly we’re
learning) is being learned for a purpose and has intention. ABIDE in that and
fully embrace whatever God is going to do in and through you to affect the
eternity of those directly around you.
Shepherd your flock where you are and abide in that – I’ll be doing it right along with you.
2 John 1:9: Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching
of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both
the Father and the Son.
John 15:4-5: "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you
abide in Me. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and
I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.
1 John 2:27-28: As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides
in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing
teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has
taught you, you abide in Him. Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when
He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His
coming.
John 15:10: "If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My
love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.
John 15:7: "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask
whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
