But The Greatest of These

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1Corinthians 13:13

Valentine's Day. The day to celebrate love. It's always been one of my favorite holidays. 

Valentine's Day generally brings to mind the thought of hearts and roses and chocolates. Of Cupid, of cute stuffed bears, of romantic dates. As young children, we make handmade valentines for our family and we pass out paper valentines to all of our friends at school. But then we grow up, we get older, and somehow our definition of Valentine's Day grows narrower. February 14th. It becomes a day of romance. 

For those who don't know or couldn't guess, I'm a romantic. I admit it. Difficult as it is for me to fall in love, I am a romantic. 

And I'm single. I don't talk much about my being single. Girls who talk of their singlehood often- even jokingly- are girls who I think must dwell on their status a lot. And I just don't anymore. 

But on today- Valentine's Day- I know a lot of single girls around the globe are feeling lonely and left-out. So I'm making an exception. With my heart for young women's ministry, I wanted to share my own journey of being single (or part of it anyways). One of my friends told me that there's something in my raw story every girl can relate to, and if she's right, I hope to encourage a beautiful girl somewhere whose heart is feeling alone today. 

You could say that my love story began when I was a little girl. Growing up with two sisters considerably older than I, by the time I was old enough to really remember anything- five, six, seven-years-old- they were teenagers and preteens already. I remember my dad teasing them about the boys they liked, their writing in their secret journals, and my watching chick-flicks with them and my mom before I was old enough to even fully understand the movie plots. I was introduced to romance fairly young, though not as young as many girls now. 

As you might expect though, I therefore turned into quite a romantic early on. In my make-believe world, there was always romance. Generally, romance was the main theme. When I played with Barbie, there was always Ken. When I played with my girl Fashion Polly doll, there was always a boy doll. In fact, my creative little imagination was dreaming up romantic themes so young that my mom wouldn't even let me play them out yet. My mom was always cautious, never wanting me to grow up being "boy crazy." At the time, I didn't understand, but looking back now, I'm thankful for her guarding my young heart for me and my future husband. 

While I was such a romantic though as a little girl, I never associated romance with myself. I played it out, I loved fairytales like most all girls do, I loved chick-flicks, but I never liked any boys then. And it just freaked me out to have them like me, like the little boy who always wanted to hold my hand in children's church when I was four-years-old. I would play house and take care of all of my babies (my stuffed animals), but even as I grew older through elementary school when many little girls experience their first "crush," the absence of a daddy in my playing house never once crossed my mind. It wasn't that I was the kind of girl turned off to boys. I never thought them nasty (with a few exceptions) or thought they had cooties. I just didn't like boys in that way. In fact, I remember even trying once to develop a crush on a boy. My big sisters liked boys, so shouldn't I? I reasoned. I chose one of the better-looking boys at our church at the time and fervently tried feeling butterflies for him. As you might expect, it didn't work. 

I was eleven-years-old when I liked a boy for the first time. I was completely and blindly infatuated. It was the worst. I look back now and I would hate that time were it not for the Lord using it for good through the lessons it taught me. But it left me with regret and wariness to work through. 

First boy I ever liked, I was super shy, awkward preteen age, and I've never been a flirt. Needless to say, it was a recipe for heartache. 

By the time I was thirteen, I had been overlooked and very hurt. Combined with rejection from cliques, I had no ounce of self-esteem left. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me for no boy to notice me. It had left me very bitter toward the boy I was infatuated with and it took me years to heal and forgive him, though the poor clueless kid had no idea how he had crushed his silent admirer. 

That had been the first and only infatuation I've ever had in my whole life. As a teenager, I would hear other girls- even my best friend then- moon over celebrities or talk about all the boys they thought were cute and had crushes on, and I would feel so abnormal and left-out. Like I didn't really fit in. Because I felt nothing. I never had another crush, another infatuation, on anyone. It made me feel like I was supposed to. 

In my early teens, it really used to bother me that I never received any attention from boys. I would watch other girls who I knew or who I would see who were noticed and flirted with by guys, and I would feel envious. I would feel like something was wrong with me. I would wonder what those girls had that I didn't, what was any different about me. By the time I was fifteen though, my perspective had begun changing. I still had my moments, but really, I no longer wanted male attention. I only wanted to be noticed and admired and catch the attention of one guy and one guy only: my future husband whoever he was. 

My romantic feelings became entirely focused on this one unknown individual. I stopped looking for boys to like and generally stopped trying to catch boys' attention. I didn't want infatuations anymore. They were so shallow and brought so much drama. I wanted something real and something beautiful. I wanted someone I could deeply love and care for and support with everything in me. I wanted a young man I could genuinely respect and admire, which my deep respect was (and is) rarely earned by my peers. I didn't long anymore to be old enough to date and have someone ask me out. Until it was the real thing, I was just no longer interested in relationships. 

I began writing letters to my future husband. I began praying for him. I would lay in bed in the mornings, staring at the ceiling and daydreaming about this unknown young man, whoever he was, wherever he was. And in those years, I began falling in love with him. How, I still don't completely understand. But I knew the heart for Jesus he would have. I knew the character and integrity he would have. And I knew the godly qualities and virtues he obviously would not have manifested to perfection in his life but that I knew the Lord would be cultivating in him. And I fell in love with that. With his heart and his love for my first Love, Jesus. I grew to love him deeply. And I couldn't wait to meet him. I kept it to myself mostly- I always felt awkward sharing romantic feelings with my family- but in those years, I dreamed so much of that day. 

I knew girls rarely ever ended up with a guy who matched their ideal of physical appearance and personality, but I was like most girls and dreamed up those details for my future husband nonetheless. (We've all done it, right?) Those ideals changed over the years, as did my ideal of his career (cowboy, military man, politician), but I had a few steady preferences. My imaginary future husband always had brown hair and he always had an acoustic guitar in hand. He was always pretty quiet to some degree, more on the introspective serious side. I remember always imagining myself, quiet as I was, to be the more outgoing, talkative, and youthful of us both. He always loved children. And in my imagination, he was always mature, very ambitious, very passionate, very driven. 

It was about this same time when I began writing inspirational novels. Being such a romantic, of course there was always a thread of romance woven into the plots. And though I wouldn't realize it until years later, the heroes of my stories in those books were all patterned after my idea of my future husband. As I grew older, I came to not care about his physical appearance anymore and I'm still trying to be a little more flexible in my ideals of his personality. As for the guitar... that's a hard one to let go of. I'm working on it. ;) Laugh, but in my late teens, I had decided I wanted a guy with what I called a "monk's heart." A guy so passionate and so focused on his relationship with the Lord and doing what the Lord had called him to do that as I entered the scene, a relationship would be the last thing on his mind. His feelings for me would always be secondary to his greater passion. And I was so sure that a young man with that heart and character was somewhere in the world, waiting just like me for the Lord to bring us together in His timing. 

By my eighteenth birthday though, I was pretty sure that young man didn't exist. As far as I knew, no guy had ever had any real romantic interest in me and in fact, no guys even talked me. I had never even had a guy friend. I watched girls in their early teens enter relationships. I was eighteen. According to my mental little timeline, I was supposed to have met my future husband by then. I was tired of waiting and through with romance. 

I grew very hardened and very calloused in that time. I had gotten to a point where I didn't even expect to ever be loved back, but I had so much love to give, I just wanted someone to let me love him. After rejection and disappointment through my teenage years beginning with my first and only infatuation, I was very hurt and very bitter. I blamed the Lord for the seemingly rotten way He was writing my love story. Consequently, I wasn't in the strongest place spiritually, walking the closest to the Lord. 

I wanted nothing more to do with relationships. I had liked a boy once before and if that was what love was, once was enough for me. It was fine for books and movies and other people's lives- I didn't mind it there- but I was done with it in my own. When it came to my own life, I was good just as I was. I was determined: I would stay single the rest of my life and confine my romantic inclinations completely to my novels. I would be an independent career woman, strutting around in a skirt suit with a leather portfolio in my arms. A woman who was fine on her own without any man. 

It just wasn't worth it. I decided that opening my heart was not worth the risk of getting disappointed and hurt again when a guy in my imagination never showed up in real life to love me back. I grew cold and I boarded up my heart. I built walls around it. Walls so high. My heart grew so calloused that eventually my once-tender and compassionate heart could feel nothing anymore. Not compassion, not sympathy, and certainly not love. I had thought I was just closing my heart off to romance, but it sealed my heart off to all capability of feeling real love for anything or anyone. It was numb. I couldn't cry; I never laughed anymore from mere happiness. 

I had turned eighteen in October. But by the close of that January, I was completely changed. The morning of January 24th, the walls of my heart came crashing down. For the first time, I fully surrendered my life to the Lord. I gave up all control of my own heart, my own life, my own future plans. And in that deciding moment of surrender, I can still remember the glowing warmth of joy again that had suddenly spread throughout my body as I had laid there in bed. I couldn't stop smiling from pure happiness that morning. I felt such a peace in my spirit that I hadn't felt in months. 

That morning, the Lord began using one of my friends to break apart every hardened layer of my heart. To teach me how to open my heart again. It still remains one of the scariest things I've ever done before. He used that friend more than any other one individual in my life to grow me spiritually and draw me closer to Himself, and likewise, He tasked me for a season to pray diligently for my friend and on a few occasions to even share some encouragement. I began growing more intimately with the Lord that spring than ever before. He began teaching how to love. How to really love others in a way I never had. He began teaching me how to love unconditionally like He loves me. And for the first time, I began really understanding His love. 

My life changed that year. I learned how to forgive and let go of my bitterness. I learned how to really love. And I surrendered to Jesus so much more than I had ever expected to that initial morning. The Lord called me that spring to give up every part of my future plans and dreams for myself. Everything I had held so tightly to and had turned to for comfort growing through my teenage years. I had to let go of my plans of becoming a professional horse trainer and of becoming a published Christian novelist. My lifelong best and only friendship fell apart. Even my ideal of my future husband was shattered from my imagination. 

As the year had progressed, many times I came near to slamming the door of my heart shut again. But at a still small voice inside of me, I never did. Last year, I was faced with the greatest temptation of all though to board up my heart again. The memory of hurt and rejection came flooding back to me in those two months and my instinct was to block out those feelings. I knew it wasn't God's will, I knew what it did to my heart, I remembered my experience building up walls just two years before. I knew how it isolated me and rendered me incapable of loving anyone the way God calls me to love, but I didn't want to go through those feelings again. And I came very close to growing calloused and cold and bitter once more. 

But I didn't. This time, it hurt me more to close off my heart. This time, the Lord had taught me how to truly love others now and I couldn't lock that up. With love that the Lord put in my heart, I pushed through the misinterpretation and the painful memories, forced to face them and deal with them for good, and I healed. No more band-aids. No more scabs. And certainly no regrets from that experience. I'll never regret the past two years. 

At the start of this new year, I've found myself in a place I've never been. My heart is still open and soft. I love more than ever now. I still get lonely sometimes and I still miss days past. But for the first time in my life, I'm watching the Lord unfold a far greater plan in my life than only romance. Is romance part of that plan? That isn't for me to know. But it's no longer on center-stage. 

I find myself happier and healthier as a single young woman than I ever have been. I'm still a romantic to the core but since two years ago, I can share the joy and excitement of others' new relationships without any pang of envy or even bittersweetness. Since this year, all of that focus and ambition I used to imagine finding in my future husband, I've found in myself instead. I have my own passions, my own dreams, my own interests now that are truly my own. That aren't tied to my family, my friends, or to any young man. That aren't dependent on anyone's opinion or anyone else's interest. New things the Lord has put on my heart that are part of who I am now. 

And I'm going to be busy and focused now off pursuing those things. I don't have time to dwell on loneliness anymore or to daydream much, and I've learned that life is too short to be sad and look back. All of that time and energy I'm now pouring into the things the Lord is calling me to do. It fuels me and motivates me. There's too much to do for the Lord's glory for me to wait around anymore. 

Rather than holding it back frustrated, I'm finding new outlets now for my over-abundance of love. I'm proud of myself and of how far I've come now. I'm trying to take better care of myself for me and to prepare my body for the things God has in store for me to do. 

I'm not embracing that independent feminist stance anymore like I've done in the past. I need men in my life and I feel no shame or weakness in admitting it. I need them. And I still hope someday to get married and have a family- I'm certainly not turned off to relationships anymore. But relationships are now more to me about genuinely loving someone and laying a godly foundation together for the future than they are about holding a status. It isn't a "relationship" I hope for. It's someone I can be free to love and serve in that way and who will love me. It's more to me about being someone's girlfriend than it is about having a boyfriend. (If that makes sense to anyone else.)

And the truth? For the first time, I'm not looking for romance anymore. I'm not looking for it and I don't want anyone looking for it for me. If the Lord orchestrates it, that's wonderful, but I don't have the time or focus to be looking for love anymore. To be playing the game of initial flirting, conveying interest but not letting too much of your feelings show, trying to impress, wondering if a guy likes you back. Maybe God has a future husband in mind for me; maybe He doesn't. But for the first time in nine years, I'm okay with either outcome. If it's His plan for me  to stay single, I'm okay with that. Not because I'm resigning to the idea of "forever singleness." Not because I've thrown in the towel and want nothing to do with men. And not because I'm discouraged and hopeless. But because I want the Lord's will and plan for my life more than anything else and I'm already loved by my Heavenly Bridegroom and first Love with a love that any young man can only strive to reflect to me. 

Single sisters. I don't know where you find yourself today, this Valentine's Day. I don't know what feelings are pressing on your heart. But to that one lonely girl who's reading this- be it on my FB, on my blog FB page, or on my actual blog- I want you to know that the young woman writing these words knows what it feels like. I know what it feels like to feel so alone, to be lonely. I know what it feels like to be discouraged, disappointed, frustrated. I know what it's like to feel rejection and humiliation. I know what it's like to feel unwanted and broken. But I also know what it's like to have both a bad experience AND a good experience. I know what it's like to be infatuated and I know what it's like to love. 

And to that one girl, I want to remind you: You Are Loved. 

Our society places so much emphasis on romance. On love, on relationships, and especially on lust. Through advertisements and entertainment, it makes us question our worth without romance. "Am I pretty enough? Am I smart enough? Am I sexy enough? Am I worthy enough?" And beautiful girl, you are. Stop asking the questions. Stop the self-deprecating thoughts and the doubts. Kick them to the curb. Because you are ENOUGH. 

To Jesus, you are more than enough. You are beautiful. You are clever and intelligent. You are gorgeous and perfectly formed. You are worthy of being loved. You are enough. His love is a love to conquer all earthly loves. No one can love you as much as Jesus does. Not your parents, not your friends, not a guy, not even yourself. All other forms of love are mere reflections of His love for you. Your parents' love reflects His love for you as your Heavenly Father. Your boyfriend's love for you should reflect His love for you as your Heavenly Bridegroom and your Lover. For us and anyone else to think ourselves or others undeserving of being loved is to place our standard of qualifications higher than those of the Lord. 

Valentine's Day is not a day of romance. It, and every other day, is a day to celebrate the virtue of love. Yes, the virtue. Because love is more than the "butterflies" feeling it's portrayed as and it's more than even a commitment. Love is a virtue. And every day, we should celebrate and demonstrate that love, lavishing it on those around us. Our love for the Lord, the love that He provides in our heart for others, and our love for ourselves as the Lord's masterpiece. 

Don't let disappointments or delays in romance make you cold, sweet girl. Romance is not a synonym for love. It is merely a branch of the virtue, only one of many outlets to express love. There is much more to life and to love than that one avenue. Don't worry about the people who don't return your love; there is so much joy to be found just in giving. So keep your heart open. Show the world your beautiful smile again. And allow the Lord to unpackage for you the immensity of His contagious love for you. Let it captivate your heart this Valentine's Day as you realize how fully and deeply you are already loved and let it flow from your heart to touch every heart around you. 

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control..." Galatians 5:22&23

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." 1Corinthians 13:4-8