My dating life, revealed.

God has been pressing something on my heart lately. It is a subject that I, myself, have struggled with since I was about 13 years old. I'm not sure how my words will come across but I pray that God guides me and I am able to write my thoughts to touch another person and to help someone else out there.

Well, here goes nothing.

the world of dating

ahh yes, I said it. Dating. What a sticky situation. Who honestly has all the answers for dating? Let me tell you, no one. Except for God. But I am going to share a bit of what I have dealt with in the last 8 years of my life. Maybe something I have gone through will relate to what you are going through or help you deal with a situation.

When I was younger, I literally went on dates, all the time. Not an exaggeration. I thought it was the greatest thing ever to have a guy ask me out. I mean, me, a guy to talk me out? Who wouldn't want that. I went out with a lot of guys, and I had maybe two serious relationships in my high school career. Unfortunately, one thing that I never really put in to play was how to put God in the middle of my relationship. Maybe I can use the excuse of being young and just wanting to have fun but really, I just didn't think God had anything to do with who I was dating. Boy, looking back now, was I wrong. I look back to high school and even my college relationships and think how different they would have been if God would have been at the center of them.

Now, my college relationships were a bit more serious and I had some major struggles with them. I chose to date, "fall in love" [or so I thought], with a man that had no relationship with God. This man did all the right things, he made me feel important and treated me well—until we were actually in a relationship. I convinced myself that him not treating me the best during the relationship was because he was stressed or because it was the first time I was dating someone so much older than myself. Oh ladies, please do not fall into this trap. This man did not give me the respect I deserve, and how could I expect him to when did not respect myself the way I should. My confidence was broken. I let a guy define who I was instead of believing in God's definition of me.

WOAH RED FLAG. That's not a good thing.

For me, this trend continued until recently. Through college, I was known as the girl to always have guys asking her out or there was always someone with a crush. Flattering, yes, but not the reputation I really wanted. With all of this, my heart was continuously getting passed around without me having any hold on it. When I wasn't in a relationship, I felt lonely and got down on myself because I couldn't define my worth without a man at my side telling me how great I was.

Growing through this was a long, treacherous road. It has been 3 years since my first, very serious relationship and I can tell you that I am a whole new person. Even in my last relationship, I still struggled with defining myself by God's standards and not the guys. I was self-conscious and worried he wouldn't like me for me. I ruined the relationship, not intentionally, but I did it to myself. The past six months was a constant back and forth to what I wanted and what I didn't want. During this time I chose to focus on me, and realize that my relationship with God needed to be stronger before I can give my heart to another person.

I am now single, happy and in a loving relationship with my God.

Ladies, the past year has been the hardest of my life. Starting with one decision I made on February 14th of last year, it was really the craziest roller coaster I have ever been on. I would not change what happened because I grew so much in to the woman I want to be for the rest of my life, but I could have definitely survived without all the tears that I shed. Until last week, as much as I wanted to convince myself that I wasn't letting a man define who I was, I really was lying to myself. I thought the only way my senior year could end happily was to be with the man I had picked to marry and start my life with him.

—hold up, did you read that? I said the man I picked to marry. Not the man God picked for me to marry. I had this huge, beautiful fantasy planned out for my life without letting God have any say.

I think this is one of our biggest issues as humans. We say we trust in God and will give all of our problems to Him. But really, we still like to keep a hold on some things. For me, it was my relationships. I want to have a say in whom I fall in love with, who I spend my life and time with. But really, it's not my deal. It's Gods. He has the perfect man picked out for me. Maybe I've met him already, maybe I haven't. But it will all happen in Gods time. Not mine.

This may all seem like a bunch of rambling but the main points I want people to gather on are these:

1. respect yourself or else no one will respect you

2. don't let the guy define you, God defines that you are a perfect princess

3. God has the perfect man picked out for you, don't let what you want get in the way of His plans for you.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Genesis 1: 27

Seriously God?

Since my last post things in my life have been pretty...interesting.

I posted about knowing who I was supposed to give my heart to and how happy I was that I could finally accept that. Well, remember how that post was also about wondering what the heck God was thinking? Again, it happens, all the time.

God has recently taken that man out of my life. Crazy right? So, this past week has been a learning experience in trusting the big man upstairs. At first I was hurt, and frustrated. All I did was cry and wonder what the heck was going on. But after a much needed prayer break the light shown.

I have been praying to God for strength; the strength to conquer my fears, to live my life to the fullest and to really get to know the real me. Turns out, that's what God is starting to do. [I think] He is giving me the time to be independent, to focus on me and my relationship with Him. I don't need someone else in my life taking away from my time with God. I need someone who will lift me up and challenge me in my relationship. God just had a different way of telling me that a different man is meant to do that for me.

Does this mean I'm looking for the next guy? No, I'm taking this time to focus on me. God has shown me that this is my time with Him. I will focus on Him and bettering myself so that when I move out of state I can take this world by storm. I will be strong, focused, and ready for anything the devil wants to do against me. If I were to stay in a relationship, I would be nowhere near strong enough to live on my own for the next two years away from my family.

God does everything for a reason. And this weekend, I really learned that I need to trust Him. Do I still hurt? Yes, every day. But with time, that pain will fade and I will be healed. I trust that God has a plan for my life and everything happens because a new, and better thing is going to come.

I love God. He has my back. Who has yours?

God, what are you thinking?!

Have you ever wondered what the heck God was thinking? —hopefully I'm not the only one, because it honestly happens to me all the time.

Over the past few months of my life I have gone through a lot. Especially dealing with my personal relationships. The entire situation has been confusing and hurtful for all that were involved. Throughout everything I kept praying to God to give me strength and to lead me in the right path. But you know what's funny about being a human and asking God to show you the way? We normally interpret things WRONG! Who knew that I have been doing that for months on end?

When a person asks God to give her strength or patience, for instance, God will give her something to be strong/patient about. Well, go me. I spent 6 months asking God to give me strength to make the right choices and every time He gave me a situation I could have made the right decision in....you guessed it, I chose the wrong way out.

In a way I was intentionally ignoring what God was putting right in front of me, but I didn't see it that way! When I was in the situation [until now] I had thought that I just kept being tempted by the devil and I needed to keep praying for my strength from God to get through my struggles. Now, I'm much wiser and realize that God was trying to help me out and give me strength. I just kinda didn't realize what He was trying to do.

I feel as if lots of people have that problem. We pray for some certain "thing" from God and when He gives us the opportunity to grow we kind of crash and burn.

From now on I am going to try so hard not to fall and neglect what God is putting out for me to do.

Okay, back to the story. I don't want this to be a blog post of some sap story about my life. But God has really shown me something amazing and I can't help but want to share it. I, ladies and gentlemen, have opened my heart up. I mean really, and truly opened my heart up to another human being. For months I have been questioning what to do and who to turn to and the person was right under my nose the entire time. I have only ever been myself when with this person and can't imagine spending time with anyone else.

You may ask, "Well, what the heck? why did it take you so long?" And let me tell you, I am asking myself the same thing. But the thing with God is, is that He does things on His own time, not ours. I may have been lost for 6 months but I know what God wants for me, at least for right now.

I know that I have a lot more growing up to do but I would like to think that I am well on my way.

This man, that I am opening my heart to, is no one new. He is not some unexpected guy that just walked in to my life. He has been around for awhile and I am so lucky that I know him.

I'm sorry that this post is not my norm, but I just thought I should share.

We all go through hard times where it is hard for us to really listen to what God is saying but, if we can block out the rest of the world and purely focus on what God is saying, I think we would all be better off. God really does know what is best for us and in His own way He shows us that. We just need to trust Him a little bit more.

The Right Now

In our world today people tend to focus on "the next step." We never live in the moment and enjoy things when they happen. Have you ever really considered doing that? I mean, really taking the time to live in the moment? Let's take a second to just think about what could happen if we did that...

Today at work, the slightly awkward person you work with said hi to you and wanted to talk to you...unfortunately you were too busy focusing on the meeting you had later that day to realize how interesting that conversation could have been. This person wanted to talk to you about the love of God that you show to everyone. This person had been watching you and your actions over the past few weeks and wanted to figure out what made you tick. You see, they have been feeling lost and confused and want to feel the content feeling they can see radiating from you. —if you would have taken a deep breath and opened yourself up to this slightly awkward person you could have shared the light of God on a new person.

Say you're in talking to someone and they are opening up to you. Perfect right? But instead of just sitting there and listening to what the person is opening up to you about you focus on what you are going to say next. Have you experienced that? This person is sharing the hardships of their life with you and you are too busy freaking out about what you will say after they finish talking to actually listen to them. What if we just took a step back and listened? What if we just listened to what they said and trusted God to give us the words to say next?

Think about it.

I challenge you over the next few days to really just stop and listen. Stop thinking of what is going to happen in the next hour, or your next meeting, or tonight. Really take the time to focus on the right now. God will take care of the rest, I promise.