Wuv, Twu Wuv...
 | Current mood:  thankful Category: Romance and Relationships I've had an abundance of blog topics swimming around in the turbulent sea that has been my mind for the past few weeks. For reasons known and unknown, however, I have been unable to transfer those thoughts into words. Today I have seemingly found a spicket that can release at least one of those topics and will do my best to meet the needs of those of you who have been waiting patiently for my latest blog. This blog is about love. Now before you go, "Oh no, not again," hear me out (well, read me out). This blog isn't about my heart breaking or being twitter-pated; it's not even about my love affair with chocolate. This blog is about true love, and I hope you'll read on. Over the years I've slung around the words, "I love you" quite a bit. In my defense I can say that I've never said those words without some sort of genuine feelings behind them. What I haven't always had to back up that phrase were the actions that proved my love. When I was younger I would often hear the old saying, "If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you it is yours. If it does not come back it was never meant to be." I used to comfort myself with this thought whenever a boy I liked didn't like me back. I would "set him free" and tell myself that I was loving him in the purest way possible. Of course as the weeks passed and he didn't "come back" to me I would abandon the idea of loving him and just settle for being ticked off long enough to get me to the next instance of teenage infatuation. It was a wonderful roller coaster ride of emotion and it kept me feeling satisfied and alive enough to write in my journal every day and pray for the eventual understanding of the masculine half of the world. Fast forward twenty or so years to today and I have yet to receive the understanding that I prayed so faithfully for. I still feel that same flutter in my heart when I meet an attractive man who is sweet and attentive. To some extent I still play the martyr when he doesn't return my feelings, and I even allow myself to get temporarily ticked when he doesn't "come back." What has changed, however, is that I have finally come to grips with that last part of the old saying… "it wasn't meant to be." This is where true love comes into play. Up until recently I had myself fooled into thinking that my love was true. I thought it was pure and selfless and all that is sweet and innocent in the world. Guess what? It's not. I am as selfish and greedy and needy as the next guy, sadly enough, I'm probably more selfish and greedy and needy than the next guy. There is nothing pure nor sweet nor innocent about me. Just as a baby can only act out of its need for food, its desire to be held, its need to be cared for, I have only acted and thought with regard to what I needed in love and relationships. Sure, I have my moments of selflessness and caring but they are few and far between and do not come from anything that I am. They come from a Source that is truly pure, truly selfless and wholly true. True love comes into play when I look back on all of my failed relationships and realize that it was God's true love for me that kept those relationships from blossoming. For whatever reason those boys and those men were not what God wanted for me and I was not what God wanted for them. Y'see He has true love for them as well. In a very real way all of my failed relationships were not "matches made in Heaven." God didn't want them to happen and somewhere along the way allowed me to be just crazy enough to scare them away or allowed them to be just intolerable enough for me to want to walk away. God didn't just say the words, "I love you" and stop there. He proved it by acting on those words. So, what does this mean for me today? It means that I can really and truly be over the summer (because I really and truly wasn't). It means that I can look back on my summer of love and actually be thankful that nothing worked out. It means I can be certain that, romantically speaking, I am where I need to be and that the time I spent getting to know the "boys of summer" was not wasted but simply time invested in getting to know lovely people. My prayer is that over time I will be able to form some kind of acquaintance with them again, but if it doesn't happen it means it wasn't meant to be…nothing more, nothing less. In the mean time, I am once again setting my sights on true Love. This time, however, I am focused on the One who not only epitomizes the very idea of love, but also created it and proved it through His actions. "For God so loved the word that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life." John 3:16. My prayer for you is that if you have not found True Love, that you will seek Him out and accept His free gift. If you have found True Love, my prayer is that you will not allow twenty or so years to go by before you realize just how blessed you are. In Him, Stephanie |
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