finding love

She sat on the edge of her bed. 

The last few beams of Sunday afternoon sun warmed the part of the bedspread she laid her head back on. Staring up at the ceiling she wondered what she had done wrong. Numbness settled in her chest. Her heart cramped. Sunlight faded into blackness and the clean brightness faded into a calm black. 

The world around her stopped. I shouldn't have said that. 

I knew, I should have waited. Or should I have been more outgoing sooner?

Little hints she’d been dropping for weeks, and he never seemed to notice. Finally, she had done something drastic. But she hadn't done it unprovoked. He had asked her, well basically he had. 

Had he? Maybe he didn't. Had she ruined it?

Of course she had. 

But what option was there. Things just couldn't have kept going on the way they were.

Every time that other girl talked to him hopelessness and fear filled her head. 

Then those feelings became a callous, a wall that she put up. 

That wall that was more like a dam, holding back the waters of her love, had been cracking for weeks, months. Anger also resided behind that wall. Anger towards the other girls he talked to, resentment towards him for not liking her and worse of all, 

anger towards herself and the feelings that she had for him.

Then the walls had ripped open. 

he bricks of her wall hadn’t been able to withstand the emotional pressure any longer.

She told him how she felt. She made the fatal first move. Things were different now. 

How could they not be?

It’s so scary to put yourself out on the line like that. That was the beginning of the end. Tears welled up in her eyes. Her tear laden mascara slid down her cheek and tainted the pink of her bedspread making black little spots. She mourned the loss. The loss of her pride, the loss of her future hopes and dreams, which was worse?

“A lady’s imagination is very rapid;

 it jumps from admiration to love, 

from love to matrimony in a 

moment.” 

Jane Austen

Just as the washer machine had washed out the black stains in her bedspread leaving faint gray spots, the pain in her heart also faded. Next time she’d do things differently. She had learned to be more careful with her heart.

Her whole life she’d been taught about purity and told to guard it. It wasn't always easy to do in the world she grew up in. With the help of the Lord she had been pure her whole life. Or had she?

Never until now had she understood that there was more than one meaning of purity and more than one way to be impure. Purity of heart was something she had never even considered. Her thoughts and emotions had strayed from reality. Letting her emotions run wild had been fun. Playful daydreaming had turned into curious hoping, and through the course of time that had turned into an unrealistic expectation for the future.

But, don’t worry about her. She’ll be alright. She’s resilient. There might be parts of her heart missing but there is no hole there that the Father can’t fill. In fact, if you were to ask her today if she could do it all over again, she wouldn't change anything.

It wasn't fate, or karma that certain things had happened, it was providence. There were some lessons that HE knew she could never learn by reading in a book, or hearing from a friend. HE had wanted to protect her and keep her from hurting her heart, but she had chosen to walk away from HIM. Every step that she had taken punctured HIS heart. 

“We all, like sheep, 

have gone astray, 

each of us has turned to our own way…” 

~Isaiah 53:6

But finally, when the path she was treading had gotten rocky and come to a dead end 

she turned back to the Father.

And when she saw HIM, what did she see? 

Was it a scolding, ‘I told you so’ frown, or a wrinkled ‘I love you’ crease across HIS brow?“

“We love because HE first loved us.” 

~1 John 4:19

Who is this girl? She’s a self-conscious sixteen year old with red hair. Actually, she’s a Senior in college with deep yearning blue eyes. Or maybe she’s the ‘has-been’ mother of four sitting alone watching the news every night.

This girl is every girl.

Who is her Father?

He is EVERY girl’s FATHER, King Jesus.

I've never written about this because I've honestly \been afraid to. Maybe that’s why I haven’t written in a while. I always write best when I write what’s on my heart, and I guess this has been on my heart for a while. 

I pray by reading this someone can know that they don’t suffer alone, or know that it’s time to talk to someone, or be grateful for the love that they do have in their life, because we all have love…

“and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled 

to the measure of all the fullness of God.” 

Ephesians 3:19