"I Want You, I Need You"

The more frustrated I get, the more I'm realizing how crazy my priorities are.

I am stressed beyond belief because of finals and trying to finish all my assignments on time, I have no car and almost no money to get a new one that I desperately need, and I'm not getting enough sleep to nurture my battered body back to health. But where is my head in all of this? Marriage.

What is wrong with me? I've barely begun life on my own, and all I want in the whole world is to give myself completely over to someone else. My life is a mess (but are lives ever not?), and I want someone else to come in and either help me tidy up or just sit with my in the midst of the chaos.

Then I remember that there's someone who loves me more than life itself, and he is desperately trying to romance me. The same way I'm waiting for the perfect person to come along and sweep me away, Jesus is waiting for me to acknowledge his attempts and love him the way he loves me. And being the jealous God that he is, he's waiting for me to fall for him before I'm allowed to fall for someone else.

I often wondered why I was never as close to God as I wanted to be, until a couple months ago it was revealed to me: I am desperately afraid to let him love me. My experience on this earth has told me that any time someone said they loved me and promised me that I could count on them, they left. And it was always my fault. So how could I offer myself up once again to someone promising love and expect him to stand by my side, even in the rough times? Impossible.

It has taken so long to finally let him in, to let him love on me the way he wants to. I still push him away all the time, afraid of how much this will hurt if it ends. I still cannot wrap my head around the idea that he will NEVER leave. Ever. And no matter how many times I mess things up or try to push him away or get too emotional, he won't throw his hands up in the air and tell me he's through. How did I get so lucky?

Yet even knowing all that I do, I still try to do things on my own. I give it "all" to God, but tell him that there's just this one space in my life that I've got under control and I don't need him meddling in. Or when he tries to go deeper with me, I push him off and tell him that it's really okay, I'm good for now. I tell the maker of the universe that I'm fine without whatever it is he wants to reveal to me. In fact, I'm just fine here on my own. ...but I know, deep down, that's not really true. The human condition that we all suffer from is loneliness. Here is the one who wants to cure my disease, and I push away the remedy.

So this is why I'm still single. This is why I don't yet have my hubs and everything that comes with. I'm still too stubborn to let God all the way in. I haven't yet figured out how to be loved. Thankfully he has enough grace to sit through the process with me and whisper in my ear all the ways that he has planned to make me fall more in love with him than ever. And with every word, I get a little bit closer to trusting him.