After this weekend, my desire to have a husband and family has not left, but my picture of what that looks like has changed dramatically. I realized that my image of love came from this world. It came from movies that I have seen and books that I have read.
I imagined a white, picket fence with a wrap around porch. I imagined waking up and cooking breakfast for my husband. I imagined what he would be wearing (sweater vest with a bow tie and keds). But what I realized this past weekend is I am caught up in the romance of it all. I am caught up with this fictitious image of a perfect marriage with a cardboard cutout of the guy that every movie about love has. I have a very worldly view on dating and marriage so much so that I was actually going to leave God out of it. I have never physically said or thought that, but the way I view relationships and dating screams it. I recognize whether the guy I'm interested in is a Christian or not, but I don't examine his true relationship with God. I don't examine his true nature. I imagine what it would be like to go out on dates with him. I imagine what our dates would consist of and I imagine what it would be like to cuddle with him.
The Bible, however, does not mention cuddling. It does not mention going on dates and it hardly even mentions any type of romance. That's because when you think about it, romance is a very small part of life, but every movie created for love-stricken girls magnifies it and turns it into something that is necessary for survival. I'm not saying romance is useless because it definitely needs to be in a relationship, but not at the magnitude that we might think.
When we think about dating, we always say "Put yourself out there. Go date around to see what kind of guy you really want. Just follow your heart, you'll know when you have found the right one."
But the Bible contradicts that.
Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure."
-The heart is deceitful, evil, wicked. Why would we follow it? Instead we need to guard it.
Proverbs 4:23 "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."
Chris James was the speaker this weekend. He made a very good point about "go date around and see what kind of guy you really want." By doing this, we are creating an unhealthy habit for ourselves. We get into this mindset of "well if I don't like him, I can just dump him" and for some reason we think that it will magically go away whenever we say "I do." It won't. That unhealthy habit will go away for the time being, but once your hubby does something unattractive or annoying, your habit of searching for another guy will come in- consciously or subconsciously.
We see that a common statement concerning our dating life is full of lies and bad habits. It shook me up that my motto to find the person that I would spend the rest of my life with was based on me. I had myself doing all the work. I put so much emphasis on my emotions- my own feelings and desires. Yikes.
Love stories do paint a beautiful picture of marriage and relationships, but if you look, the Bible paints a picture even more beautiful. One of the great things about that is, it is actually obtainable. It is the relationship that God has designed for us to be in because it was written by Him through His people.
Proverbs 31:28-29 "Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: 'Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all."
That literally gives me butterflies, not because it talks about cuddling or holding hands or a romantic date but because the husband is looking at her true nature and is in awe of the person that she is.
I want to be that woman for my husband and I'm not that person right now. That's why Chris also spoke on how to be a satisfied single. While you are single, become the person you want to be so you can marry the person you want to marry.
"While you are single, the best thing you could do is to pursue [the] qualities [you want in a man] in your own life."
God does not want us to settle. He designed marriage (Genesis 2:18-24) so that when we say "I do" the beautiful picture He lays out in the Bible will be our reality. Be actively single. Be patiently single. Start becoming the person you want to marry while you are single so that on your wedding day you can look into your husband's eyes and say "You were worth the wait."
