Crazy Love.

It's been repetitive,

this conversation about love & marriage.

"Don't girls just date boys so they can be married?"

I'm going take a risk & say,

at least from my heart,
and the hearts of girls I've been talking to,

no way.

No. 

I don't date to be married.

The emphasis is on so many other places.

I want more than marriage.

Sure.

There are girls out there who are preoccupied

a pretty dress,

having a family
finding Security

that they marry someone they have learned to love.

Yes.

I've had my chance.

I've dated guys who wanted marriage.

But what I really want, 

more than marriage,

is love, lasting love.

Great love.

The kind others can't make sense of.

The kind that connects me to someone else 

in a way I've never experience before.

The kind that doesn't exist without selflessness.

The kind that endures life's tendency to grow cold.
The kind that is only upstaged by Divine love.

Maybe.

This sounds crazy.

I sound like a romantic.

I need a dose of reality.

I've read to many love stories.

But I want to believe in a fit.

I want to be someone's other half.

The reality is there are heights and depths. 

Good times and bad times.

No.
I'm not waiting on the ideal Prince Charming.
I'm waiting on real life love.

I'm not married because I haven't found great love.
 ...because my heart won't let me give up on it.

(If you need some help believing
in human love & Divine Love again,

read this book)

To be in love, as to see beauty, is a kind of adoring that turns the lover away from self. Just seeing Davy asleep, defenceless and trusting and innocent, could tear my heart, then in that first spring or a dozen years later. When we first fell in love in dead of winter, we said, ‘If we aren’t more in love in lilactime, we shall be finished.’ But we were more in love: for love must grow or die. Every year on our anniversary we said, ‘If we’re not more deeply in love next year, we shall have failed.'

Learning

I am learning to stop looking around.

at the way others treat me,

at my circumstances,

at my relationship status.

I'm learning to look inside,

at my heart,

my fears,

my prejudices,

& evaluate exactly how they affect me.

I'm seeing some things I don't like.

My lack of vulnerability,

my half-heart,

my fears.

I'm also seeing that we all are,

we are all wounded.

And yes, I'm learning to be a counselor.

I hope to affect change in other's lives,

in my community,

in my world.

But I need to make sure that I'm not afraid to be the one sharing.

I can't be a listener forever.

Sometimes, oftentimes, I am going to need to speak.

Remind Me.

"With a strong affirmation of our goodness
and a gentle understanding of our weakness,
God is loving us
--you & me--
this moment,
just as we are and not as we should be"
-Brennan Manning

I am a perfectionist.

I have super high standards for myself.

I have goals that I strain towards everyday.

It's a fight not to look back 

at my conversations,

my daily tasks,

my homework,

and not think of ways I could have done better,

said more,

been kinder,

tried harder.

It's such a good reminder that God isn't...

He isn't measuring me.

"There is nothing any of us can do to increase his love for us
and nothing we can do to diminish it."
-Brennan Manning.

That's the kind of freedom
I need to be reminded of every day.

Picture it.

My Perfect Life.

A book I am reading asked me to 

close my eyes & picture

my perfect life.

And I couldn't do it.

It's so blurred.

It sometimes hurts to dream.

I would like to share life with others,

I want adventure, a daring life.

I would like to be a helper to the helpless.

A friend to the lonely.

I would like to live life to it's fullest.

I want freedom.

 I don't have a picture of what that looks like.

But he is slowly painting in the spaces.

"And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.
We don't know what God wants us to pray for.
But the Holy Spirit prays for us
with groaning that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father who knows all hearts
knows what the Spirit is saying,
for the Spirit pleads for us believers
in harmony with God's own will.
And we know that God causes
everything to work together
for the good of those who love God
& are called according to His purpose for them."
Romans 8:26-28

Because He is the God of every day.

He knows my heart.

And I am in harmony with His will.

Nothing.

A near stranger asked me a question the other day.

One that I haven't been able to shake.

"Why haven't you found the right guy yet?"

He went on to presume 

That either there's something wrong with the kind of guys I date...

Or there must be something wrong with me.

He asked if I was a hoarder or something equally secretly weird.

(And just so you know, the only thing I have tendencies to hoard is books).

But what if it is neither?

What if there's nothing wrong?

What if this is how it is supposed to be?

Why can't it be okay this way?

I've heard a lot of similar statements lately.

Ones that aren't meant to be hurtful.

But sting, nevertheless.

"I'll have a friend that I would just love to set you up with."

"Wait, weren't you just dating someone? What went wrong?"

And I just want to say,

There's nothing wrong with me because I'm single.

I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.

I'm growing in my knowledge of God,

of the things I'm passionate about.

I'm making use of the talents God has given me,

and I'm exactly where he wants me to be.

There's nothing better than to be than in His will.

Here's to coming to grips with finding my purpose

 in going to graduate school,

in serving others daily at my job,

in spending time with my family,

in being okay with today.

Glimmers

"I am restless,
prone to wonder.
And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my glaze."
--Winner

Like every loving example of Christ & His bride 

I've seen in every wedding I've been to this summer.

Like a look shared between two best friends
volumes spoken, without a single word.

Like a friend whose eyes are fixed on Christ

in the midst of losing his mother.

Like a past you see yourself freed from.

Like the bits of commonality I can find

in a 2 minute conversation with a Starbucks customer.

Like coming home.

Heaven is all around us.