True Love

I know I already wrote on this subject but it was so vague and boring, so I thought I would write about it again.  So here we go...

Love.  It is something that we are in love with.  Most of us like the idea, we even love the fantasy of it, but I am finding myself thinking about it every day.  I ask myself, what is true love, and do we experience it even when we don’t know it? Do we see it in our everyday life and just not know it’s there?  Do we look for it and can’t seem to find it.  Do we long for that one person in our lives to hold us when we are sad, do we long for the words of a lover to entice our feelings?  

I can say that I have never had a person that I have fallen in love with, nor do I honestly think that anyone has ever been in love with me.  Yes, I have had crushes and I know what it feels like to have someone to be interested in, but I have never been in true love with someone.  Sometimes I think that we have these ideas that we make up in our head, the way we want love to look like, its perfect and we begin to think that it’s the way it’s really supposed to be.  I call this fantasy love.  Hollywood makes love look accidental, even foolish sometimes.  Young girls are beginning to think that all they need is a guy and their life is complete.  How are we supposed to have a healthy relationship with someone when we are between the ages of lets say 12 and 18?  How do we understand the meaning of true love?  How do we keep our hearts and minds pure until we get married?  

Well lets start from the beginning, after all its the very best place to start. (I know, I am cheesy)  For me, true love is someone dying to save another.  Jesus died to save all of mind kind from sin, no from Hell...  NO from God's wrath.  God sent his only son down to earth, born of a virgin, to save his people from his deathly wrath.  Jesus followed him till his death, he lived a sinless life.  The death wasn't just dying.  It was pain, suffering, and, agony.  This is what true love looks like to me.  It isn't all flowers and chocolates, its putting yourself before others, true greatness=true love.   

Even though I have my own personal fairytale about what I want my true love to be like, I have to remind myself that God is the one who has it all planned out.  You see, ever since I read "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" by Joshua Harris, my mind has been changed forever about dating, relationships, and even boys.  It really changed my heart as well.  I read the book when I was 12, before that I really wanted a boyfriend, yes...  At the age of 12.  Its crazy to think about now, that I wanted to have a boyfriend, I know now it was for all the wrong reasons too.  I just wanted to be cool and fit in but, I realized, that fitting in was not the most important thing.  I can honestly say that to this day I still struggle with wanting to be in a relationship.  I do!  But I think that we all will at one point.  Not all the time are we going to be content.  

When my friends ask why I don't date I simply tell them this:  I don't date because I want the man I marry to have ALL of my heart.  I don't want stand at the altar and say "here, you can have this half, but the other parts belong to Bob and Joe."  No, I want my heart to be free from all thoughts of past boyfriends, and past regrets.  I want to give him a clean and pure heart, that has no pieces missing.  Please don't feel that if you have had relationships in the past that I am condemning you because I am not, I am just trying to make you see my point of view.   

I realize that there are a lot of Christians out there who do date, and I do not judge you for it at all!  This is just how I want to live my life, and how I feel God is leading me.  I know someday my prince will come for me, and you know what...  He is going to have all of me, no pieces missing!  

Mark 12:9 "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good."

Till next time,

-Lauren Eddy-