Sacrifice has some of the greatest rewards....
As I have been on this Daniel Fast, God has been speaking to me ALOT. He has been working in my life and has been drawing me closer to him. I am so thankful for that too. One of the things he has been doing is allowing me to look back on my life and see how far he has brought me and the ways he has made me into the person he wants me to be.
So, I was sitting in my car yesterday eating some fruit and veggies on my break from work and thinking about how much God has been doing. I put in a cd to listen to while I was eating. I grabbed one out of the glove compartment of my car and it turned out to be an old mix cd I had made for a guy I thought I was going to marry. I put it in, and began to listen. I actually began to cry.
Let me explain a little bit of our story. This guy, his name was Gary. Gary and I met in college. He was a Junior when I was a freshman. Gary and I were very good friends to begin with. We just hit it off right away. We would spend lots of time together, him playing his guitar, me singing. Sometimes we would do homework together or pray together. Gary learned to play some love songs on his guitar just for me. I remember that he made me feel special. I felt cherished, loved, worthy when he was around. When we spent time together, I felt like he cared about me alot. I remember one of the first things he ever did for me was learning to play, "Hopelessly Devoted" on his guitar for me. It was from the movie Grease. One day we were sitting at our college coffee house ministry and out of nowhere I burst into song, like I do quite often, and that was the song I chose. He worked on it for several weeks and for my birthday, he played it for me. I melted. I mean, I dont know about many other girls, but when you love to sing, and probably even if you dont, when a guy learns and plays a song just for you, its like "magic", amazingly every bad and horrible thing they have ever said or done is erased, and they are a prince.
Just a few months later, he learned another song for me, "When You Say Nothing At All" by Allison Krause. Now for those of you that are reading this, and you have been a part of my life for very long, you know that this is my all time favorite love song, when I get married, I want it at my wedding. In fact, at Meggan and Trevors wedding, two of my closest friends, Meggan made me dance with Trevor, because she knew I loved the song. She had picked it because I was a bridesmaid and she wanted to have it at the dance for me. Needless to say, when Gary played the song, I was hooked. He could have told me he hated me after singing it, and I was floating so high on cloud nine, i never would have heard it.
Gary, as you can see, was my first and actually my ONLY love. Unfortunetly, Gary broke my heart. He led me on. He played with my heart and then left me standing in confusion and heartbreak. As I listened to the cd, all of those things began to flood back in. The songs he had learned for me, the times we spent together, all of it. I had given him ALL of me, and he took my heart and broke it into pieces.
But ironically, as I listened to the songs, the reason I was crying was that I had realized that I had given ALL of myself to Gary and he wasnt even the one for me. I wasnt crying because I missed Gary, I was crying because I am dreaming of the day when I meet the man that God has for me. I was crying because I realized how much I had given to Gary and yet, I didnt know if I had been that commited to my Lord and Savior.
I love the show One Tree Hill and I watch it all the time. A couple weeks ago, Brooke shared the quote, "Im tired of being the foot note in someone elses love story." That quote came into my mind as I was reminicing. This last week, on the show, Brooke shared that she was scared to love again because her heart had been broken too many times. She had given her whole heart in relationship after relationship and over and over again it was broken. That is how I feel too. I realize that I am scared to love anyone, Im scared to let people in. I let people in after Gary. There was Jonathan, but I couldnt be myself around him. I had to smoke and swear and become someone I wasnt proud to be at all. I knew that wasnt love, so it had to end. There were others, but I got to a point where I got scared, so I did everything I could to push them away.
Now, I am 27 years old, and Im alone. I mean, I have friends and family that I would not trade for the world, but the man, the one Im going to fall in love with, the one who is going to cherish me and only me, the one who I will marry, the one who I will have kids with, the one that I will grow old with, I havent met him yet and I miss him.
Im tired of being scared, Im tired of being everyones friend or litttle sister. I want to be the girl that gets the guy in the epic love story, not the girls bestfriend. I guess Im just realizing that I want to dream again and I want to find the one that will make those dreams come true. I miss my future husband and I wish I could meet him soon.
That is all for this post, sorry if its kinda sappy, just where Im at today.
I loved this post for many, many reasons.
ReplyDelete1) You are more like Brooke than I could ever be:)
2) It made me remember some of my first moments of being friends with you.
3) I am glad you are letting yourself dream again. You deserve to. He'll come one day, probably when your least expecting him. And in the meantime, keep dreaming about him. Pray for him. He'll be worth every minute of that wait.
i thought alot about you when i was writing this. thinking about the times that we would go to each others rooms in the dorm for sleepovers to talk about guys. or when we were roommates and had our bunkbeds and would stay up late talking. i miss you friend.
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