How many girls have written out their list of what makes the "perfect" man? I know that I wrote that list. It's extensive. At least eight pages.
It seemed like a great idea when I was writing it, but now that I think about it, all it did was cause me to have an unmeetable standard. There is no way that any man in the world can ever meet every single criterion that I have on my list. Sure, I had some things that were just preferences, but my "demands" took up about seven and a half of those eight pages.
So when I got into a relationship, what did I do? I looked at my list and realized he didn't meet this thing, he didn't meet that thing, or this or that or this or that, but I had idealized the perfect man so much in my head, that basically, I fell in love with the man's personality and just decided I would change his values to meet my own.
Now, I never ever had any desire to change his personality or change the way he truly was I loved his personality. It's why I started liking him. Just certain little things that would make him match up to my list better than he did on his own.
Was that appropriate? Absolutely not.
I realized that it was inappropriate early on in our relationship, but certain things happened around the same time that caused me not to trust this guy at all... so I sort of shut down my conscience and decided that, "well, I love him and the only way that I can stay with him is if these things change... so I'm gonna have to just make him change them."
So essentially, we ended up putting each other through ten months of hell because we loved each other dearly, but we didn't love enough about each other to be satisfied with exactly how we were. I didn't love that he lied to me and betrayed my trust, he didn't love that I got angry at him for it and couldn't forgive him. But no matter what, those qualities just couldn't change.
I thought that maybe if we made our relationship more God centered, things would be different. Perhaps if "he became more godly, then he wouldn't lie to me so much!" But there's a problem with that logic, my primary focus spiritually should be whether I am living in a godly manner. Which I wasn't. I was so consumed with trying to change his relationship with God that I completely neglected my own. Which essentially destroyed both of our relationships with God because he had it in his head that I was some great Christian, but I wasn't even able to forgive him. How's that for hypocrisy? I know I wouldn't feel encouraged to be more Christlike if the person I thought was most Christlike acted like I did to him. So he didn't strive to change, and when he wasn't changing, I got angry at God and blamed Him for everything that was going wrong. That's a huge red flag that your relationship is going downhill, very very quickly. Just so you know.
But anyway, we began to meet with Ron Kopicko, and he said to me, "I believe that love is the complete absence of expectations." Which didn't sound good to me, because I was so wound up and stressed over all of the times that this certain guy had betrayed my trust that I had turned into a sort of psycho that I never ever ever wanted to be and is completely out of my character to be... but I was so scared of losing him that I couldn't see any other way. My way pushed him even further away from me, of course.
But it's true. If you enter a relationship knowing what you want out of it, and just enjoying the person that you're with and not asking anything of them, you are much more able to see their true character. If you can be around a person and never ask anything of them, and you find that you respect them for their honesty, you respect them for their purity, their thoughtfulness, their kindness, their relationships and all of that, you can truly love that person for who they are. The best part is, you haven't caused them to put on a mask for you to fall in love with, only to find that it wasn't real to begin with.
If I had entered that relationship and just let that person be exactly who they were and show me their true character without me trying to burry it away because I just didn't want to admit that I didn't like it, I wouldn't have gotten so attached to someone so wrong for me. Don't get me wrong, I love his personality. He made me laugh more than any person on the planet, he made me feel beautiful when I looked disgusting, he made me feel special, he found beauty in the strangest things, and he had a heart for people that I've never seen in anyone else. I love all those things. But there were bad things that I would've been able to see much sooner if I had just let him be exactly who he was and never asked anything of him. Things that are deal breakers. Why would I want to be with someone who betrayed my trust all the time and made me feel like I wasn't worth being honest with? Rather than just ending it and guarding my heart, I tried to change him. I put expectations on him that he just couldn't meet. We both got horribly, horribly hurt because of it.
So why don't we, as ladies, get rid of our lists? Why don't we just say, "God. I want a man who loves you and serves you with all his heart and who will love me like Christ loves the church," and truly trust God to bring that man into our lives? We can't change the men that we date. So it's best to see them for who they really are early on in the relationship. Having expectations not only puts stress on them, but it also forces them to put up a front. And who really wants to fall in love with a fake version of someone? And who really wants to be so stressed out about whether someone will leave you or not that you become that absolute worst version of yourself that you never thought you could ever be? I know I don't... I've been there, dated that. I want to fall in love with someone who I can grow spiritually with. Not someone who's entire character I want to change because I don't like the one he's got. That's not fair to either of us.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
True Love
Think about the person that you love most. More than any other person on the planet and more than yourself. The person that if given the choice between saving your life and saving theirs, you'd choose them. Every single time. The person who, now matter what they do to hurt you, you love them too much to hold a grudge. The person who is so important to you that you will forgive them for everything they've ever done to hurt you and so much more. The person who you know inside and out, their darkest secrets and their most disgusting struggles or temptations, yet you still have so much love for that person that to you, they are worth so much more than that. To you, their aspirations and the goodness they have in their heart shines through so brightly that you want to be their strength when they're weak, you want to encourage them to embrace their potential for godliness and encourage them to resist temptation in the most loving and gentle manner possible, because you love them and know that they're so much more than their past or their struggles. That person that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one else on this planet can ever love them as much as you love them, especially if anyone else knew as much about them as you did. The one who you just want to be in their life because their happiness means so much to you that you know their life will just be better with you in it.
You have the person in your head? Now, the person you may be thinking of may not be a romantic sort of love. That's fine. Just imagine that amount of love that you have for that person.
Now imagine if that person rejected you. Hurt you. Ripped your heart out of your chest and stomped all over it. They talk badly about you to the people they hang out with but still manage to ignore you. Imagine that this person scorns you, disrespects you, makes you out to be a joke, blames you for all of their problems and refuses to accept responsibility for the choices that they have made that have put them where they are because it's easier to let you take the fall for their life not being what they want.
Now, imagine how that would make you feel.
Worst pain imaginable right? To love someone that much and have them treat you that way, but to still have so much love and forgiveness in your heart for them that all you want them to do is come back to you and apologize for their behavior and actually be sincere about it so that you can demonstrate your love and forgiveness and have the life together because you know it will worth all the pain.
That is literally the exact thing I'm going through right now. The rejection of this one person is killing me but it got me thinking...
How must God feel when the majority of the world, that He loves more than I would ever be able to love this one person, treats Him in that exact same way?
Really puts things into perspective, no? I can't imagine ever making another person feel this way, but the thought of making God feel this way? So much worse. Not only does He say he'd die for us, but He already has. He loves us more completely than any man or woman would ever be able to. Yet we treat Him horribly and take that love for granted and throw it back in His face and tell Him He's not worth giving up a few earthly things that won't matter in the long run.
I don't know about you, but I would rather experience that love in it's fullness, and love Him back. Certain things just don't seem important when put into their proper perspective.
You have the person in your head? Now, the person you may be thinking of may not be a romantic sort of love. That's fine. Just imagine that amount of love that you have for that person.
Now imagine if that person rejected you. Hurt you. Ripped your heart out of your chest and stomped all over it. They talk badly about you to the people they hang out with but still manage to ignore you. Imagine that this person scorns you, disrespects you, makes you out to be a joke, blames you for all of their problems and refuses to accept responsibility for the choices that they have made that have put them where they are because it's easier to let you take the fall for their life not being what they want.
Now, imagine how that would make you feel.
Worst pain imaginable right? To love someone that much and have them treat you that way, but to still have so much love and forgiveness in your heart for them that all you want them to do is come back to you and apologize for their behavior and actually be sincere about it so that you can demonstrate your love and forgiveness and have the life together because you know it will worth all the pain.
That is literally the exact thing I'm going through right now. The rejection of this one person is killing me but it got me thinking...
How must God feel when the majority of the world, that He loves more than I would ever be able to love this one person, treats Him in that exact same way?
Really puts things into perspective, no? I can't imagine ever making another person feel this way, but the thought of making God feel this way? So much worse. Not only does He say he'd die for us, but He already has. He loves us more completely than any man or woman would ever be able to. Yet we treat Him horribly and take that love for granted and throw it back in His face and tell Him He's not worth giving up a few earthly things that won't matter in the long run.
I don't know about you, but I would rather experience that love in it's fullness, and love Him back. Certain things just don't seem important when put into their proper perspective.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
A New Kind of Gratitude
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me."
Things have been going pretty sucky lately, so my mom sent me this podcast that she thought would "encourage" me. It was on just these four verses. Now, the first part where He's talking about the Father cutting off every branch that bears no fruit broke my heart for reasons that I won't go into, and my heart sort of got turned off to the second part that honestly was very encouraging for me. But throughout the day, God has been bringing it back to my head over and over, so now that I don't feel so wounded, I am able to consider it the way I ought to.
How often do you thank God for a broken heart? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no one really thanks Him for that. I have a heart that has been ripped apart, torn up, thrown on the ground, stomped and spat on. So basically, I'm able to sympathize with people in that situation. No, we aren't running around saying, "Oh thank you God for this awful thing that has happened to me and this gut wrenching heart ache! PLEASE, send me more of this!" It just doesn't happen.
But maybe we should be a little more grateful. The bible says that God chastens the ones he loves. He "prunes" the good branches so that they will bear "even more fruit." There are many ways to prune a branch. When the bible was written, there was a process called pinching. How this was done was the vine dresser would take his thumb and finger and remove just the growing tip of the vigorous end of an unwanted shoot. By doing this, it wouldn't grow so rapidly and wouldn't be broken off in its weakness by the wind. Another way was a process called topping. This was when the vine dresser would remove a foot or two of a large branch which prevented its loss in the wind or its dissipation of strength as it became too large. Another process was called thinning which was when they would remove the flower or grape clusters from the branch. All these processes were so the branch was made clean and nothing was lost. Causing there to be much more fruit.
So putting this into spiritual and human terms, what does this mean? It means that every person who is saved, will receive spiritual pruning by the Father. God wants us to always be operating at a maximum "fruit-bearing" capacity. In order for this to happen, He must remove ANYTHING that would hinder our fruit bearing. He has to remove things from our lives every now and then, whether they're sins or other hindrances or just little things that attach themselves to us that prevent us from bearing spiritual fruit.
But pruning hurts. It has to be done with a knife. And sometimes that knife is really really REALLY painful. Sometimes God's pruning hurts so bad that we just can't imagine that God really knows what he's doing. Sometimes he prunes so much off of us all at once that it makes us feel like He's never going to get to anyone else. And it hurts. Good Lord, does it hurt. He can "prune" us in many different ways, whether it be sickness, loss of a job, gossip, the loss of loved ones, the end of a relationship that you never thought would end and you had placed all your hope in. But all of this is done in God's goodness. He does this because He cares whether we bear fruit or not. Hebrews 12:10 says, "For they verily for a few days, that is human fathers, chasten us after their own pleasure, but He for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness."
Do you understand what that means? God chastens us, purges us, so that we can partake in His holiness. God adopts us into His family and treats us as sons or daughters and because of that love for us, He does what He knows is best for us and what will make us the best possible versions of ourselves that we could never be on our own.
So whenever things are going terribly, and all you want to do is throw in the towel and give up. Don't. If you are saved and you know you are, look at it and see it for what it is. It is the hand of the Father, working in your life because of His great love for you. He wants you to bear much fruit and to remain in Him. But you don't have to do it on your own. See? That's what this is all about. We are incapable of bearing fruit on our own, but God doesn't leave us to our own devices. He comes along and He "prunes" us and prepares us for the weight of all that we have to bear. He removes the things from our lives that hinder us from serving Him to our greatest ability. And for that we should be continually thankful.
So all of that was actually just the intro to this:
God has been purging my life. Big time. Basically, one thing has gone wrong after another after another after another. It's as if God was walking around "the True Vine" and realized that He had been missing my branch for years and had to make up for it by purging absolutely everything out of my life. Holy crap. It hurts.
But I noticed something yesterday. I had a super awesome day where I got to spend the entire day hanging out with a friend that I hadn't seen in a year, I got to help out in their store, got offered a job for the rest of the semester, and just got to talk to someone about everything that was going on and I knew that she actually cared. If things had been going amazingly, I would've just been like, "well that was nice!" and went along with my day. But things have been going horribly lately and I have never felt so alone. So when I got back from that day, I was so overwhelmed with thanksgiving that I was brought to my knees in tears just thanking God for the relief that He had given me from my misery. All because I spent the entire day with a friend.
That made me realize something. When things are going well, we grow complacent. We take friendships, conversations, jobs, productivity, and basically everything for granted. But when we are in the midst of the darkest hours of our lives and even getting out of bed feels like the most daunting task we've ever faced, spending a day feeling productive and with a friend is the most amazing relief.
I want to always be so grateful for a day like yesterday. Even if things are going amazingly and I'm happy and surrounded by friends and people who love me, I want to be so overwhelmed with gratitude. Every single time. I never want to take friendship or good conversations or just a day out with friends for granted again. Or during the summer when I'm working, I want to come home every day and realize, "Hey, it may not be my favorite thing in the world, but there are people out there looking for a job so they can make ends meet, and God gave me this job so that I can afford to go to Cambodia to serve Him," and be overwhelmed with love for Him and gratitude. If everything was good, nothing would be significant.
We take God's love for granted when we can feel the love of everyone else. But when we feel lonely, abandoned, and rejected by earthly men or even just friends, we can feel God's arms around us hugging us to Him. The best part is, God never really leaves us wondering why He removed something from our lives. He is always gracious enough to show us what we're, "missing out" on. Seeing as what we're missing out on was completely not God's will for us, we're not missing out on much because God's will is always significantly better.
So even though my heart is not in the place where I am able to say, "thank you God for removing that person from my life!" I know that because this person loved himself more than the Lord or me, they were not pursuing God's will at all, but their own, I would have been miserable if they continued to be in my life. Which sucks. I love this person with everything I've got. So that's not really a realization you want to have about someone you love that much. But God knows best, and He knew that since this person was not genuinely pursuing His will with all of their heart and they were trying to conform God's will into their own so that they wouldn't have to give up anything their earthly self enjoyed, my spiritual growth would be hindered if God hadn't removed this person from my life.
And it sucks. I don't want it to be that way. And I think God knew that I wouldn't be able to remove that person from my life on my own, so He allowed things to happen that broke my heart even more than the initial removal. But God is good and He knows what He's doing. So even though my heart is in a million pieces and I spend around 75% of my day in tears, I am able to look up to heaven and thank God for His chastening because it assures me of my place in the Family of God.
Also, my mind is a jumbled crazy mess so I think that's why God has shown me so many things in one fell swoop. 'cause He knows that's how my mind processes things.
Anyway, this is a picture from the awesome day I had yesterday. : )
That's Maycee, she's a Shiba Inu. I want one so bad.
Things have been going pretty sucky lately, so my mom sent me this podcast that she thought would "encourage" me. It was on just these four verses. Now, the first part where He's talking about the Father cutting off every branch that bears no fruit broke my heart for reasons that I won't go into, and my heart sort of got turned off to the second part that honestly was very encouraging for me. But throughout the day, God has been bringing it back to my head over and over, so now that I don't feel so wounded, I am able to consider it the way I ought to.
How often do you thank God for a broken heart? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no one really thanks Him for that. I have a heart that has been ripped apart, torn up, thrown on the ground, stomped and spat on. So basically, I'm able to sympathize with people in that situation. No, we aren't running around saying, "Oh thank you God for this awful thing that has happened to me and this gut wrenching heart ache! PLEASE, send me more of this!" It just doesn't happen.
But maybe we should be a little more grateful. The bible says that God chastens the ones he loves. He "prunes" the good branches so that they will bear "even more fruit." There are many ways to prune a branch. When the bible was written, there was a process called pinching. How this was done was the vine dresser would take his thumb and finger and remove just the growing tip of the vigorous end of an unwanted shoot. By doing this, it wouldn't grow so rapidly and wouldn't be broken off in its weakness by the wind. Another way was a process called topping. This was when the vine dresser would remove a foot or two of a large branch which prevented its loss in the wind or its dissipation of strength as it became too large. Another process was called thinning which was when they would remove the flower or grape clusters from the branch. All these processes were so the branch was made clean and nothing was lost. Causing there to be much more fruit.
So putting this into spiritual and human terms, what does this mean? It means that every person who is saved, will receive spiritual pruning by the Father. God wants us to always be operating at a maximum "fruit-bearing" capacity. In order for this to happen, He must remove ANYTHING that would hinder our fruit bearing. He has to remove things from our lives every now and then, whether they're sins or other hindrances or just little things that attach themselves to us that prevent us from bearing spiritual fruit.
But pruning hurts. It has to be done with a knife. And sometimes that knife is really really REALLY painful. Sometimes God's pruning hurts so bad that we just can't imagine that God really knows what he's doing. Sometimes he prunes so much off of us all at once that it makes us feel like He's never going to get to anyone else. And it hurts. Good Lord, does it hurt. He can "prune" us in many different ways, whether it be sickness, loss of a job, gossip, the loss of loved ones, the end of a relationship that you never thought would end and you had placed all your hope in. But all of this is done in God's goodness. He does this because He cares whether we bear fruit or not. Hebrews 12:10 says, "For they verily for a few days, that is human fathers, chasten us after their own pleasure, but He for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness."
Do you understand what that means? God chastens us, purges us, so that we can partake in His holiness. God adopts us into His family and treats us as sons or daughters and because of that love for us, He does what He knows is best for us and what will make us the best possible versions of ourselves that we could never be on our own.
So whenever things are going terribly, and all you want to do is throw in the towel and give up. Don't. If you are saved and you know you are, look at it and see it for what it is. It is the hand of the Father, working in your life because of His great love for you. He wants you to bear much fruit and to remain in Him. But you don't have to do it on your own. See? That's what this is all about. We are incapable of bearing fruit on our own, but God doesn't leave us to our own devices. He comes along and He "prunes" us and prepares us for the weight of all that we have to bear. He removes the things from our lives that hinder us from serving Him to our greatest ability. And for that we should be continually thankful.
So all of that was actually just the intro to this:
God has been purging my life. Big time. Basically, one thing has gone wrong after another after another after another. It's as if God was walking around "the True Vine" and realized that He had been missing my branch for years and had to make up for it by purging absolutely everything out of my life. Holy crap. It hurts.
But I noticed something yesterday. I had a super awesome day where I got to spend the entire day hanging out with a friend that I hadn't seen in a year, I got to help out in their store, got offered a job for the rest of the semester, and just got to talk to someone about everything that was going on and I knew that she actually cared. If things had been going amazingly, I would've just been like, "well that was nice!" and went along with my day. But things have been going horribly lately and I have never felt so alone. So when I got back from that day, I was so overwhelmed with thanksgiving that I was brought to my knees in tears just thanking God for the relief that He had given me from my misery. All because I spent the entire day with a friend.
That made me realize something. When things are going well, we grow complacent. We take friendships, conversations, jobs, productivity, and basically everything for granted. But when we are in the midst of the darkest hours of our lives and even getting out of bed feels like the most daunting task we've ever faced, spending a day feeling productive and with a friend is the most amazing relief.
I want to always be so grateful for a day like yesterday. Even if things are going amazingly and I'm happy and surrounded by friends and people who love me, I want to be so overwhelmed with gratitude. Every single time. I never want to take friendship or good conversations or just a day out with friends for granted again. Or during the summer when I'm working, I want to come home every day and realize, "Hey, it may not be my favorite thing in the world, but there are people out there looking for a job so they can make ends meet, and God gave me this job so that I can afford to go to Cambodia to serve Him," and be overwhelmed with love for Him and gratitude. If everything was good, nothing would be significant.
We take God's love for granted when we can feel the love of everyone else. But when we feel lonely, abandoned, and rejected by earthly men or even just friends, we can feel God's arms around us hugging us to Him. The best part is, God never really leaves us wondering why He removed something from our lives. He is always gracious enough to show us what we're, "missing out" on. Seeing as what we're missing out on was completely not God's will for us, we're not missing out on much because God's will is always significantly better.
So even though my heart is not in the place where I am able to say, "thank you God for removing that person from my life!" I know that because this person loved himself more than the Lord or me, they were not pursuing God's will at all, but their own, I would have been miserable if they continued to be in my life. Which sucks. I love this person with everything I've got. So that's not really a realization you want to have about someone you love that much. But God knows best, and He knew that since this person was not genuinely pursuing His will with all of their heart and they were trying to conform God's will into their own so that they wouldn't have to give up anything their earthly self enjoyed, my spiritual growth would be hindered if God hadn't removed this person from my life.
And it sucks. I don't want it to be that way. And I think God knew that I wouldn't be able to remove that person from my life on my own, so He allowed things to happen that broke my heart even more than the initial removal. But God is good and He knows what He's doing. So even though my heart is in a million pieces and I spend around 75% of my day in tears, I am able to look up to heaven and thank God for His chastening because it assures me of my place in the Family of God.
Also, my mind is a jumbled crazy mess so I think that's why God has shown me so many things in one fell swoop. 'cause He knows that's how my mind processes things.
Anyway, this is a picture from the awesome day I had yesterday. : )
The beginning.
So, I've officially decided to start a blog!
I don't know whether people will read it or not, but it's okay if no one ever does because I just want to be able to write about how God has been working in my life, but I will probably also write about things that I just happen to think are funny. We shall see!
I don't know whether people will read it or not, but it's okay if no one ever does because I just want to be able to write about how God has been working in my life, but I will probably also write about things that I just happen to think are funny. We shall see!
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