Brutally Honest

I was told by a coworker recently that I was one of "those" people. The type, she said, who went to church each Sunday, and volunteered at small businesses, and taught themselves to play piano. She even told her friend that I almost seemed Amish, and he mistaking her asked me if I was really half-Amish. At the time I found this rather humorous. The way the world views "my type" can be quite ironic.

They think that because I don't cuss, and I don't join in making fun of people, and I can sing along to every song that plays on the Pandora Christian music stations, I am a pious person. A person who could really do no wrong. A goody-two-shoes of sorts. But I am not. See, what these people don't know is that I tell God pretty much every day that He isn't good enough. And if that isn't the opposite of pious, I don't know what is.

What the world doesn't know is that since I was a young girl I had dreams like many other girls. But I let those desires become so strong. Not unnatural desires, but still they were too strong and still are. God and I have been down this path so many times, and I am not sure if it is ever going to end.

I may seem to be talking in circles here, so I shall try to be a little more precise. Almost every girl I know wants to be married someday, or at the very least she longs for relationship. Well I have always dreamed very strongly of the day when I would finally be a wife. As my father put it the other night, marriage is the thing that I hold in the highest regard. It is the thing I look forward to the most, place the most value in, and continually strive for in my learning of things that hopefully will one day be helpful in a marriage. After all, the idea of my blog is that I am preparing for a future Valentine, a future husband.

This is a desire that is so essential and daily to me. When I am bored, I dream of the day when I will have a house to manage and a husband to care for and aid. When I am lonely, I think of the companionship that will come with future marriage. When I am crying, it is a man's arms that I long for to hold me close until I have no tears left.

Now, I have been in a relationship before. I know that a man can not be all that I need. In fact, I relied on God more strongly in those 7 months than I ever have before or since. And yet, even though I know that, I still get lonely. I still find myself not able to sleep at night, crying because I just wish there was a man to care for me when life is tough.

Why do I do that? Why after all that God has done for me, and all the ways my relationship with Him has grown, and all the ways that I have seen Him come through for me time and time again better than any man in my life ever has, do I still cry for that many a night? Why, when I can't fall asleep and am lonely can I not think about heaven or the day I will be with Jesus instead of thinking of marriage and the day I will have an earthly companion?

I know there are girls out there who don't really care that much about marriage. They are perfectly content to be single and to thrive in their lives and their ministry. Then one day God brings the right man into their lives, and they fall in love when the time comes. Being content in being single does not make them incapable when the time does come for them to court, date, or marry. Why can't I be like that? I know that is not how God created me. He made me instead, for some reason, with a strong desire for marriage.

I don't mean that I spend all my time upset with God that He has not given me marriage yet. And I do not mean that there are not good days, because there are several where I am completely content with the many blessings that God has showered me with. And I know that He did make me this way for a reason, and that I don't need to know what it is right now.

But because that is how I am wired, I do often find myself longing for more than what I have. And in that, I tell God that He isn't enough for me; I need more. So before the world, or you, or anyone else wants to think that I am goody-two-shoes, I am not. We are all sinners desperately in need of a Savior's grace. And even after we have received that grace we are in a daily struggle against the flesh and the devil. I am being brutally honest here. I am far from perfect, and thus it is a wonderful thing that God's grace is eternal, all-covering, and comes new every morning.