Motherhood and the Illusion of Control

I like to control things.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Everyone likes to have control in their life. They like to choose, or know who is doing the choosing for them. I can even have control when Michael asks me what I want when he runs out to get take-out and I say "Surprise me." I know Michael. I know that he knows what I like. I know that I'll get something I enjoy. If it's a place we've been before, chances are he'll probably get something for me that he knows I've already ordered. I can have control by anticipating what will happen and figuring out how I'll react to that something.

Motherhood is the best thing I've found so far to teach me that control is an illusion. It never really existed in the first place, but to keep my mind from going crazy, I try to assume that I have control until I don't.

I should have known, when I had Evvie two weeks early, that I wasn't in control. When my labor lasted 23 hours because I got stuck at 6 centimeters and needed an epidural even though I wanted to do it naturally, I should have seen that control was not real. When my milk came in late and I had tons of nerves because Evvie's weight wasn't where it should be immediately, I should have known that control was just an illusion. Sleeping through the night, self-soothing, falling asleep on her own for naps, actually TAKING naps, growth bench marks, teething, and unpredictability should have all clued me in.

My first big realization came when we took Evvie to a friend's wedding in Tennessee. It was a 6-7 hour car ride, and Evvie didn't sleep for most of it. Then she cried all the next day and slept for maybe 30 minutes. And on the third day, the drive home, she slept equally as little. I did everything I could think of to get my baby to sleep, but because she's a human being with likes and dislikes and is in control of her body, she didn't. I merely had to deal with her mess, or ask Michael to, because I was playing for the wedding. Because I was worrying, because I was controlling, I also tried to control Michael, who had graciously come along as baby-sitter. We argued because of that.

Next came Evvie's weight loss. My child seems to have the appetite of a sumo wrestler. She's not even crawling yet, but I'm chasing her all over the place. At her nine-month Dr visit, the Dr said "She's underweight. Put as many calories in her as possible. Come back in two weeks for a weight check." Control went out the window. I knew my milk supply had been down. I talked with the lactation consultant on how to bring it up. I fed Evvie more fatty foods. She took on more weight and chunked up. Hurrah! But then she started teething again and suddenly she didn't want to nurse. Control gone again. Many times I found myself wishing I could just force Evvie to nurse, instead of listening to her needs (gums hurt = nursing hurts). While she was supposed to be gaining weight, she didn't want to nurse. Lovely.

I worried constantly. I fell into fear. I justified my worry because if I was worrying about something I would have a better chance of figuring out how to fix it, right? I refused to accept that there was simply nothing I could do to make Evvie do what I wanted her to do. So I drove Michael crazy. And we argued. I went kicking and screaming to God after that argument. I told him that I felt abandoned by him. I asked him why he made me a mother and then gave me a body that made it really really hard to provide what my baby needed in terms of food. I heard him whisper that it was because I wasn't in control of anything in the first place and that I needed to trust him. I had become over-confident and this was his way of showing me that I needed to trust him for control of my life. I asked him for peace and he gave it to me.

Amazingly, I think we forget to ask God for what we need. We ask and ask and ask for the things we want, or for the things that we see other people need, but we are so blind to our own true needs, that we don't ask him for the things we really need. All we really need is a right view of ourselves and a right view of God. This applies to the time and place that you are in, and not just that you are a great sinner and God is a great savior. My right view of myself is that I am needy, I am not in control, and I am not as clever at coming up with solutions as I think I am. My right view of God is that he needs nothing so he can give everything, he is in control of all things (even the smallest atom), and that he is infinitely clever and wise. Resting in those knowledges helped me have peace.

Evvie is now back on track with her weight, and I'm waiting to see my need to control rear its ugly head again. However, I know that my God is faithful to pull me back to himself by showing me as many times as I need that he is really the only one in control.

~H

God is Good, part 3, or On Peeling a Sunburn

I went to the beach on Saturday with my sister and a mutual friend of ours. I've been lifeguarding so much this summer that I have a fairly decent tan, though, as I've been telling people it's not my cute suit tan. Well, after this Saturday, I no longer have a guard suit tan. I have a cute suit sunburn that is turning into a tan.

Now why bring up a sunburn? Well, I started peeling yesterday. And because I started peeling, I started thinking about snakes and their shedding their skin. The way my brain works, I automatically started thinking about my favorite part in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third book in the series, The Chronicles of Narnia, by CS Lewis. Many of you probably have already guessed which part that is. As it is, I'd like to put some of it here.

Eustace has been turned into a dragon, and when he appears at camp a boy again, he tells Edmund what happened. How a lion found him and let him up a mountain to a well where Eustace thought he could bathe and soothe the pain of the golden arm band that was hurting his dragon arm because it was made for a human. Eustace tells Edmund,

"The water [in the well] was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don't know if he said any words out loud or not.

"I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that's what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

"But just as I was going to put my foot into the water I looked down and saw that it was all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as it had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, o dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

"Then the lion said -- but I don't know if it spoke -- You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know -- if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off -- just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt -- and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others had been. And there I was smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me -- I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on -- and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment."

The thing I love about this, is that Eustace says that when he was peeling of his skin it didn't hurt him. He only felt proud of himself. But when Aslan (because we all know the lion was Aslan) went and undressed him it hurt like crazy, but Aslan only had to do it once. It probably would have taken Eustace just about forever to get to the point that Aslan did in one go.

The whole moral of all this peeling is that, no matter how much I try to change myself and recognize my sinfulness by myself, I won't be able to change. It takes Aslan sinking his claws into my selfishness and sin to make it go away, and it probably will hurt like the dickens, but it's the only way forward. In the end it's good. Aslan is not a tame lion, but he is Good.

For that, if only for that, I am glad I got burned and started peeling. God is good.

Thanksgiving

Thankful is a big deal, especially on a day like today. A day reserved especially for giving thanks. Who to give thanks to, well, I guess that's up to you, but for me, I have a lot to give thanks for, and it all goes primarily to my God and Father.

In no particular order, here's a list of what I'm thankful for:

BLT sandwiches, and dads who make them for you when he was only planning on making one for himself.

Friends who are awesome.

Breathing. This is good for living.

Family, that while they are crazy, make things interesting.

College, that has taught me a ton.

Good music that inspires me and makes me feel like laughing, crying, dancing, and sitting still all at the same time.

Food. The end.

Grace. In the form of a sister. Especially when I need it.

Michael.

And definitely for my Savior. Because He died for me. Because everything I have comes from Him.

I'm thankful, basically, for the life that I have. It's strange to think of a different life. It's easy and probably very true to say that if God had put me in a different life with different parents, I wouldn't be what I am today. I've told people that if my parents had been any less caring and nosy about my life, I probably would have gotten seriously messed up with my relationships and possibly ruined myself first year of college. Because of God's care for me, every single thing that has happened in my life has been for my good, even though some of them have not seemed good in the end. Today it is easy to say "God is good." Tomorrow it might not be as easy, but it definitely still applies. God is good.

My challenge to you is this: How is God good in your life?

[edit] I'm also thankful for KB and spleens. [/edit]

Do-it-not-by-myself

I've been learning lately, in a very steady fashion that I can't do it by myself. I'm pretty certain that this lesson is going to be a never ending one, seeing as I'm a stubborn do-it-myself person. As it is, this lesson hurts sometimes.

The biggest thing about this semester, the thing that I think I'll look back at this semester and remember, is the pain that I've been in. Mid-september I played in a concert that was fantastic, but managed to stress my shoulder out to the point where I injured it. I left several of the practices for the concerts feeling as if left collarbone was broken. Because I also had a recital to give this semester, I wasn't about to put the violin down just because I was experiencing some pain that would go away most of the time. I had to practice and that was final. If I didn't practice I would fall behind on the excellence that could be my music.

I took to Ibuprofen, and tried to lay of practicing viola, because I was/am also playing that this semester in a string ensemble. I quickly learned that being in pain meant that I was surly towards people, moody, and more quickly emotionally drained. I'm afraid that there were several times where I shoved my attitude at other people, Michael and my sister being the two closest people most of the time.

God was also gracious to present me with time to be alone and on my own. I didn't, and normally don't, think of this time as a gift, because each time I was alone I would come dangerously close to breaking down. Each time at some point I would have to cry out to God, normally with tears in my eyes, and tell Him, broken, that I couldn't do it on my own. That I couldn't cope with the miniscule pain of my shoulder, or that I couldn't cope with being lonely, or that I couldn't cope with whatever was bothering me at the time of my breakdowns.

Each time I come out of these spots, I come away with a fresh realization of how blessed I am to have friends, family and someone standing by my side, even if it's only for now.

I might not be the strongest person, and I know that I can't do it by myself, but even when I'm at my lowest, and still trying to plod along in my do-it-myself attitude, God has blessed me with family and friends that hold me up and keep me pointed at God and His greatness, and sometimes when I turn too much to those people closest in my life, God takes those away too and gently but torturously turns me towards Him all by Himself.

I know this lesson is long from being over, but I just thought I'd share where I am now. God is good in all circumstances, even if I don't necessarily like them.

loved

Velvet black night

Pierced with white

Stars waiting quiet

Wide listening sky

Stillest of air

Light hanging there

Out of despair

Rises a prayer

Can we take in Your light so we can shine like You

with all this weariness?

Can we shine like you with this weariness?

So we are loved

We are loved

And it's quite enough that we are loved

We are loved

We are loved

And it's quite enough that we are loved

If the whole world could feel it

If the whole world could feel it

We could love

We could love

'Cause we are loved

Surrounded in white

Oh, purest bride

No lovelier sight

The Church will rise

Take in Your light

To shine like You

Take this weariness so we can shine like You

We could love

We could love

'Cause we are love

We Are Loved by DC*B

I got his new album today.

Wherefore Worship?

There is, I think, something built into every human being (and maybe every creature, plant, animal, bug, inanimate object) on this earth. That is the desire to worship something. Dictionary.com says on their list of what "worship" means,

7. To feel an adoring reverence or regard for (any person or thing)

It also comes up with the synonyms: honor, venerate, revere, adore, glorify, idolize, adulate. This is rather telling. Worship is something that is not only done towards a deity, and by the pious, but is also done by the common man, the punk with piercings all over his body, the geek with his calculator in hand, the overworked mom with food on her front, the high school girl in the bathroom making her self throw up.

You know that question: If you were stuck on an island indefinitely, what would you bring with you? (In other words, would could you not do without.) If you're a Christian in a Christian circle when this answer comes up, you're automatically going to give the church answer of "my bible," or, "my book of prayers," or something equally as church-y ("my Hymnal!"). The question is the same when you substitute it with "who would you bring with you" instead of "what". (On a slight side note, there's always the saying about a couple, "He/she worships the ground he/she walks on!")

If you have anything that you, at one point, realize that you couldn't do with out, you are, to some degree, worshiping it. If you have adoring feelings for it that place it above all other things, you are worshiping it. Gosh... that doesn't leave room for much that I'm not worshiping. Maybe I'm being a little extreme here. I think though, to look at one extreme a person needs to look at the opposite extreme. Either your worship everything, or you worship one thing. What you worship will affect your life, the way you live, the way you talk, the way you act.

Have you ever watched a really good movie, read a really good book, or heard a really good song? What happens if you see the movie more then once, read the book over and over again, or hear the song a billion times? I know what happens for me. I start quoting funny lines from the movie, dreaming about characters from the books, or quoting points the author made in the books to make points of my own, or I'll be singing the chorus of the song for weeks, frustrated that I have the "stupid song running around and around in my head again!!" Whatever I'm "in to" becomes a part of me.

Psalm 115 (I love this psalm) says:

⁴ Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
⁵They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but do not see.
⁶They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
⁷They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throat.
⁸ Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust in them.*

The Bible states that those who worship things, those who make idols out of things will slowly become like them! That's huge. I look at eternity and I realize, do I really want to be like that book, or that person, or that tv show for all of eternity? What do the things I worship on this earth actually do for me? Do they make me a better person? Do they help me find happiness? I'll be happy with them for a little while, but not for all eternity. Twilight, or a CD of songs, or my favorite mascara is looking pretty dull against the backdrop of eternity. So, I need something to match up to this colorful and inexhaustible backdrop.

Right now, there is only one thing I can think of that matches that backdrop and outstretches, outshines and out-colors it. That one thing is God. God is so colorful it hurts. He is so eternal it's exhaustive. He is so personal it's almost too personal. My God created the Heavens and the earth, He created me. He created the things I love. If He created me, that means he also created that desire that I have to worship something. He also realized that I would not find the ultimate satisfaction to that desire here on earth. I was made for something more. I was made to worship Him with all I have. C. S. Lewis once said, "If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world." I think he's very, very right.

I told you in my last post that I thought God might be teaching me about worship. What I have realized recently is that the worship we have here is a taste of heaven. We practice worshiping God here because that's all we'll be doing in heaven. We practice singing songs of praise to God so we can be ready to sing out in our best voices in heaven! What's amazing is that we can worship God through making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (to quote Matt Gurney), or by putting our socks, or flipflops on in the morning. I'm never fully going to stop learning about worship, just like I'm never fully going to stop learning about relationships, God's sovereignty, or anything else that God reveals to me about Himself! The worship that I'm learning here on earth is just practice so that I can worship God with all my might when I finally get to heaven.

With everything I do in live, I want to worship God. I want my whole life to be a "living sacrifice," testifying to the amazing power of my Lord. He created me, and he created the ground I walk on. Like I've said elsewhere, I want to worship the God whose ground I walk on.

That's all for tonight folks! (I really need to get to bed...)
~H

*ESV translation, (It's so good, I suggest reading the whole psalm!)

How did I get here?

I know I said in my last post that family is such a strange concept, but right now, I'd like to go out on a limb and say that life is a strange concept too.

Everyone seems to have these pre-conceived notions of what life is supposed to be like. Young girls are constantly watching their mommies and thinking, "I'm gonna be just like my mommy when I grow up." For me it was, "I'm going to become a mommy. I'm going to have a passel full of kids. I'm going to have a husband who can be a daddy to my kids." As I grew up, I would look at the girls around me and compare them and where they were in their life to me and where I was in my life "plan." There were other girls, one of them my at-the-time-best-friend, who met guys they really liked and who really liked them back. They would come to me, "Oh Hana! You'll never believe!" I'd sit there and be happy for them, but I'd want the same thing. Like I've said on here before, I was in love with the idea of being in love. Well, maybe I've said that, but it's pretty certain that I've given that impression.

If you had told me when I was 16 that at 21 I would still never have been kissed, would not have a steady boyfriend, would not be engaged, and would have only dated on guy for three months, and had been the one to break it off, I would have laughed at you and then thrown myself at the nearest guy to prove you wrong.

I look at my life and I think that if God had put me in a family that public schooled, I would have been seriously rebelious. I might have even given away my virginity, if not pregnant within the first couple of years at college. It is because God was gracious enough to stick me in a family where my parents are so integral in my life that I am who I am today. Granted, I'm still nasty and ugly inside, but thank God for his graciousness, His mercy.

I never ever expected to go into music education at school, but here I am. I'm moving into my third year of music education at ASU and I'm loving it! It's not everything I'm looking for, but it'll give me a good background on what I need to know to get a small studio going. I never would have thought that I would learn guitar on getting to college ("I'm never going to play something with frets!"). I never thought I would enjoy my crazy family the way I do. I never thought that I would enjoy the frantic hecticness of coordinating two jobs during the summer. I never thought I'd have two jobs during the summer. I never in my life thought I'd be content with being single, and yet, somehow, God has brought me to that very point. Thank God.

However, it is now late, and as I said in the previous paragraph, I have two jobs. I have to coordinate them, and that is going to take someone who is awake and on her feet. I am not really that. I need sleep, so I'll sign off. Just thinking about this, the fact that life hasn't quite turned out like I thought it would, but I'm so glad it didn't. This way has been much better. I'm glad I'm not the author of my own story.

Sleep well to all! and to all a Good Night!

~H

Welcome to the nuthouse!

Family is such a strange concept. Have you ever thought about it? You're born, and do you figure life out on your own? No. Instead God plops you down in this place where people not only care for you, by changing your diaper and teaching you about how to feed yourself and walk, but they also love you, no matter who you are, or how ugly you are, inside or out! These people are sometimes blood related, but other times they're not. No matter what, we'll normally drop everything to protect these people, because we know that no matter how ugly we are towards them, no matter how many times we stab them in the back, they'll still put themselves in harms way to protect us.

Sometimes you hate your family, other times you can't believe that you've had the good fortune to be related to them. Sometimes when you're with your friends, your family totally embarrasses you, but other times you can't believe that you ever thought you were embarrassed by them. I mean, duh, they're exactly like you are!

Thank God for family. Yeah, my family (according to a small plaque in a souvenir shop on the beach) is a lot like fudge: a ton of sweet with lots of nuts. :-D I'm the biggest nut of them all, and I can't wait to head for home.

Two days!

Craziness here I come!

To worship a God...

There's something strange about the word, "crush." Many guys will shy away from a girl who has a "crush" on them, or will even turn away (it seems like it) if a girl says that she has a crush on someone. If one girl tells another girl that she has a crush on someone, the second girl will automatically squeal in a very high-pitched annoying tone that some how all of us manage to do at some point in our lives, and then automatically demand to know everything. Pushy girl. The girl with a crush, if she is 12, will think it's amazing and that she couldn't possibly fall "in love" with anyone else, ever. If the girl is 16 or 17, she will feel silly for having a crush (possibly), and feel like she's in middle school again, discovering the fact that boys really don't have cooties.

As long as I can remember, I've always been told, by my parents, to guard my heart, so that when the right guy comes along, I can give him my whole heart. When I turned 12, I had my first recorded crush. I was certain that he was the one! Since I'd been a little girl, I'd read stories of princesses and their handsome knights in shining armor who worship the ground they walk on. Somewhere in my future there was going to be a fantastic wedding, I would be the one wearing white, and at the end He would be standing there, ready to pull me into His arms, to love me for who I was. Surprisingly enough, the person I had the crush on at age 12 is Him. Every young man who was remotely good looking, or had a good disposition and manners, or even possibly liked me, was considered. I pined, I dreamed, my imagination sometimes pushing me to tears. Why didn't any of them like me?

I was 18 when a young man who had entered my life several years earlier, declared that he really liked me. Unsurprisingly enough, I really liked him back. He was cute, he was funny, that crooked smile of his charming birds out of trees, my heart from its chest, and he, at the time believed in the same God I did, and was willing to ask my dad if he could date me. He had put off telling me that he liked me and wanted to date me for a long time because he knew about my parents dislike with the word "dating" and how they would rather I "courted." Then he did something that no one else ever had: he went to my daddy and asked him for permission to date me. My parents were reluctant, and it took them a whole month to get back to him, but in the end, because of many persuasive arguments that started and ended with, "Because, I just want to date him. Do I need a reason?", they gave in and told him that we could date. It was on my 19th birthday that my daddy called him up and let him know.

I was on cloud nine for three months, during which we went on dates, held hands, went to homeschool prom, but never kissed. I told him I was saving that for the man who married me. He respected that. Towards the beginning of the third month, he called me (we had a long distance relationship) and told me that he'd realized that I was more emotionally involved then he was. He said he didn't want to break up with me because he still liked me, but that he didn't want to break my heart, because he realized that I'd given it to him. He was right. He tried to hand it back on a silver platter, the way I'd handed it to him. At the end of the third month, something wasn't right. He was distant. I knew something was wrong, but he wouldn't say anything. I had to ask him if he still liked me. When he said no, I broke up with him, and told him we could go back to being friends.

My parents were worried about me. My best friend, who had steadfastly warned me against dating him, was relieved. I was glad I hadn't had my heart broken, and proud of the fact that I'd not shed a tear over any of it. I told my mom that I didn't regret any of it, because it was a huge learning experience. I told her the truth.

At the same time, I was left with thoughts running through my head. They were the same thoughts I'd had before I had a boyfriend, but now they were intensified. "Why did he tell me he loved me one month and then not mean it the next? Is something wrong with me? Why doesn't he like me anymore? What's wrong with me?" It took my conscience probing deep, asking some questions that he didn't realize hurt, to make me realize that I was feeling these things.

I swore off boys.

The end.

Ok, not really, but I did for a while decide that the only safe place for me was a nunnery...or rather a home with the nuns. (I can't think of the word right now.) Then I stumbled across a saying, on, of all things, a facebook bumpersticker: A girl's heart should be so lost in God, that a man must seek Him to find her. That completely changed how I looked at relationships.

While I had been told all my life that Prince Charming would come (dude, Cinderella's had come hadn't he?), I had also been told that God should be the center of my life, and that he would write my love story. That's what Eric and Leslie Ludy had said! I had read the books that they had written, and come to the conclusion that if I pursued God, that if I tried to bury my heart in God's, romance would come blooming into my life, instantaneously, like those funny little sponge animals that you could buy in plastic capsuls and then drop them into a cup of water and they'd expand instantly. I was convinced that if I just found the cup of water, my romance would blossom instantly.

I'd missed the mark again. I was still focused on the word "romance." I was ready to drop everything if a guy that loved God came waltzing into my life and declared his love for me. It wasn't until last semester, a mere 3 or 4 months ago, that I realized I had a "crush" on a guy again. I hadn't had a "crush," really, since that disastrous three month relationship. I'd been denying the crush for a while, I'd been fighting, because I had told God that all I really wanted was to know Him better. I wanted to bury myself in God. In todays terms, I wanted God as my boyfriend, as my husband, my lover. Even though, I'd been doing this to subconciously to find romance, God had been faithful, and honored my feeble attempts to draw closer to Him. He wrapped me in arms as large as...well, as He is, and drawn me towards him. When, in about November, I finally admited that I liked this guy, I struggled with it for about a week because I didn't want a crush. It was a hinderence in my trying to bury myself in God. I wanted romance to hit me over the head. Then, at the end of the week, I realized that I didn't have to struggle with my "crush." I could ignore it and continue to pursue God, because, God was the creator of the "crush."

I decided to sit back and go along for the ride.

What a ride it's been. I've sat back and watched as the "crush" on this guy is put on the back burner and God has put Himself front and center in my life. Every time I approach a guy, I approach him now, with prayer, asking God to lead our relationship. It has done wonders to me and my relationship with my champion, my knight in shining armor, my savior who died for me, saving me from the jaws of the dragon.

One last thing before I sign off. In answer to the questions I asked myself before I had a boyfriend and afterwards. "Why don't they like me?" My answer is, "Who cares? If they had shown me that they actually liked me and done something about it, I wouldn't have even considered God. I would have shoved Him on the back burner and forgotten about Him. Instead, God, in His sovereignty, knew exactly what I'd need to pull me towards Him, and gave me the yearning for romance, but made sure that there was no romance in sight. Instead, He stood there, waiting patiently for me, holding in His hands a white dress that is more beautiful then anything that I could ever imagine, dressed as a groom, waiting for me, His bride. Why He would choose me, me who would easily chase after something that doesn't fulfill is beyond me, but He has. It doesn't matter whether or not the guy next to me, or the guy who I am/was "crushing" on likes me. All that matters is that He adores me. He does."

I don't want a man who worships the ground I walk on. I want to worship the God whose ground I walk on.

As I end this post, Phil Wickam is singing in the background,

For You I sing, I dance,
Rejoice in this devine Romance,
Lift my heart and my hands,
To show my love, to show my love.