There are a lot of personal opinions floating around about love. Some people believe in love at first sight. Some people believe you only have one true love. Some people believe you can only fall in love with the one person you are meant to be with in our earthly life. I could go on and on.
Since this is my blog, I express the right to share my own personal opinion about love. I may not have a lot of answers about life, but I do know a little bit about love because I truly believe I've been in love. Before we go any further, I want to state another personal opinion. I fully believe that we as humans have the capacity to fall in love more than once and with more than one person. I don’t believe that falling in love is something God ordains. I believe He has a perfect will and plan for our lives, but I am firm in the belief that He has given us a free will for a reason. He has given us the option, the choice, to choose to love who we want, even if it’s outside of His plan. I believe there are varying degrees of love and the love we have for different people in our lives. The reason I believe it’s possible to love more than one person is because He actually commands us to love people, not just one person.
Mark 12:31
The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.
Romans 13:8-10
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
When I read these verses where God commands us to love one another, I am so convinced in my heart that we have complete control over who we love. I think that if you put yourself in a place to fall in love, if you leave your heart open, if you’re looking for love and affection and inviting towards love, you will find it. And that’s not always the best thing. Not everyone around you who loves you back, or even falls in love with you is meant to spend their life with you. I think maturity, wisdom, and seeking God and His perfect plan will help lead you in the right direction. So many times nowadays, I see girls literally begging for love, seeking it, inviting it, and it terrifies me for them because I know what it’s like to fall in love with the wrong person. I know what it can do to your life, because I saw what it did to mine.
I was 17, recently heartbroken, and just trying to enjoy my summer before senior year when I fell in love. It was a boy I had liked since I was 14 and the timing had just never worked out. That summer was an absolute fairytale. I was on cloud nine and you couldn’t tell me anything. We were the captains of our sports teams and he modeled for Abercrombie. Our relationship looked perfect. My senior year passed in a whirlwind of emotions and once I got to college, the fighting started. I determined in my heart that I loved this boy more than my own life, and I wouldn't let hardships ruin what we had. I was there for him in the death of his grandparents, his house that burnt down, and his cousin's move back North. He was there for me when I had to move away to college and had fights with my dad so bad that I almost moved out more than once. I made him the center of my life. We even fought our families for each other if they came between us. There wasn’t a moment we weren’t together. I was head over heels in love and there wasn’t a thing I wouldn’t do to make it work. Like any relationship, there were struggles, but from the outside, it looked like perfection to everyone else.
Five years later, I found myself in the emergency room of self-inflicted injuries and our relationship was a crumbling mess. I won’t go into the dirty details, but I can tell you that nothing I found out in those last hours was the result of my ending our relationship. Everything I was ending it over, I had known all along. At some point, I just realized that I was honestly not happy and that I couldn’t live that way another second of my life. No amount of love would force me to live like that.
There are a lot of psychological reasons my relationship ended the way it did. There is a lot of baggage and hurtful memories I will never share. There is a lot of pain. But in the end, I realized one thing: I had allowed myself to fall in love with the wrong person.
I know what it means to be in love. I fully understand going to the ends of the earth and back for someone, even if they won’t reciprocate, because you love them. I know what it means to love someone who cheats on you and lies to you, but you never say a word about it because all you want in life is to make it work out. I understand loving someone with every fiber in your being and praying every night that one day they will love you like you love them. I know.
But I was wrong. The entire time, I was completely wrong. I was in love with the wrong one. I let myself fall for the wrong person. Instead of seeking God first, and falling in love with Jesus and letting Him point me to the right one, I followed my heart. And my wicked, imperfect heart led me to the most attractive, most athletic, funniest guy I knew. My heart fell in love with the wrong boy, and I let him break me into little pieces.
When it all ended, I made it my life’s goal to find Jesus, learn about Him, and fall in love with Him. I wanted nothing else in life but to be completely in love and sold out for Jesus. I found a satisfaction and a genuine, soul-deep happiness that you just can’t find anywhere else. You can’t find it in sex. You can’t find it in love. You can’t find it in status, or money, or friends. It is only found in Jesus.
And let me tell you something else. If you’re all caught up in falling in love and meeting “the one” and getting married and having babies and starting a family, then I suggest you slow it down and take a look at your walk with Christ before you crash and burn like I did. I wanted a perfect life and family so bad that I ran head first into disaster looking for it. I grabbed a lover by the hand and we sprinted to destruction because God was nowhere near our top priorities, much less our number one priority. And don’t get me wrong, we went to Sunday School, church, and Wednesday night services. My daddy was a deacon and our parents sat a row apart every Sunday. Like I said, we LOOKED like perfection walking. But God was not the center and we were a ticking time bomb. We took our own lives in our hands, fell in love with the wrong people, and we wrecked ourselves at only 22 years old. It was absolutely devastating, not only for us, but for all of our friends and family as well. It ripped our families apart and shattered so many people close to us. It was, by far, the hardest, most emotionally challenging, painful experience I have ever endured.
And what was the worst thing about it all? I was still in love the day I walked away. I literally felt as if I ripped my own heart from my chest. So if anyone knows a thing or two about love and breakups, I think I qualify. And what I have to offer is Jesus. He is the ONLY one who fully satisfies. I beg you to seek Him before you seek a relationship. When you find Him you will know love. You will know happiness. You will know peace. He is all of those and more.
Matthew 6:33
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Deuteronomy 6:5
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Learn from my mistakes and don’t allow yourself to fall in love with the wrong person. You have a free will. Use it to seek your Creator who gave it to you and He will make your life incredibly satisfying beyond anything a lover can give. I can promise you that because He is something else I know a little bit about.. not a lot, not as much as I wish to know. But every day I wake up with the priority to make Jesus first, to fall in love with Him a little more and it is so satisfying.
