My sister, Brittany, recently had one of her blogs published on postpartumprogress.com. I was most excited to get to the bottom and read the comments that people had posted because I suspected- and I was not disappointed- that my sister’s words could really benefit people. One of the comments especially moved me…
“Brittany, thank you for sharing your story! It is basically me to a T! I’m so happy that you have chosen
to use your experience for the good instead of waisting the pain! I hope to do the same some day!!!
Thanks so much for sharing!! ~Lin”
The truth is, my sister DID make mistakes. She made the mistake of thinking she had to be perfect. She made the mistake of thinking that she was a failure and that she was a bad mother and because of those mistakes she had deep pain and regret. After reading that comment, I found myself wishing that I could write a blog like my Brittany’s. I found myself wanting to use some of my many mistakes to benefit others and to maybe redeem some of my time lost to confusion and hurt. In her words, I didn't want to waste my pain.
I can look back on my life and see plenty of mess ups. More than that, I can look back on my life and see my own pain and regret and the havoc they wreaked. For a long time, I thought the best thing to do with those mistakes would be to forget them. I thought if I continued to change and live properly for long enough, those mistakes would become a distant memory that didn’t hurt anymore. Through my sister’s blog, however, I have seen that true healing came to her through helping. Instead of running as fast as she could from her mistakes, she went back, picked them up and showed them off to as many people as she could. She did this not because she was proud of the things that she had done but because she knew that by doing so, she could save countless people from going through the same thing.
The mistakes I want to share today are very different from the ones my sister talks about. Anyone who knows Brittany and I know that we are entirely different in almost every way. One of our biggest differences, in my opinion, can be seen through our relationships. My sister met the love of her life at age 13 and married him by age 20. I, on the other hand, am 23 and traveling the world- marriage, as far as I know, is not even on the horizon. That in itself, of course, is not one of my mistakes. I didn’t need to marry young the way my sister did and her life is not the life the Lord intended for me. My mistake lies in the fact that I was unwilling to embrace my season of single life and as a result, I made countless unhealthy decisions when it came to my relationships with men hurting myself as well as them.
The situation I want to address with this blog is one that I have gotten myself into more often than I’d like to admit. It is a relationship with someone who may know who the Lord is and may even show interest in pursuing a deeper relationship with Him but whom, in that moment and at the present time, is not a spiritual leader or someone who pushes you closer to the Lord and encourages you daily to have a deeper relationship with Him.
Often times when you are dating someone whose faith you are wary or unsure about it ruins your witness and ends up pushing them farther from God. What happens is that they see you as someone who flips flops. After dating them for some time if you do not see the improvement you hoped for and you finally feel compelled to talk to them about the seriousness of their faith, they are confused about why you were content with where they were at yesterday but not today. At that point, breaking up with them only makes matters worse because they don’t see it as you taking a stand for your faith, instead they start to associate their feelings of failure and not being good enough with their relationship with the Lord and that is the exact opposite of what God wants. If, at that point, you don’t break up with them, you will continue to have realizations about how unhealthy your relationship is for you and you will start to resent them for not drawing you closer to the Lord but at the same time you will feel guilty for resenting them for something they never knew how to do in the first place.
Obviously, my best advice would be to never put yourself into this situation in the first place. However, I am fairly confident that I am not the only person in the world who’s allowed themselves to be blinded by infatuation or who’s let their common sense be outweighed by their need for affirmation from the opposite sex. So my follow up advice would be to remove yourself from the situation NOW. Whether it be 5 weeks or 5 years in to your dating relationship, if you are a man or woman of God then the purpose of your life, including your marriage, is to honor Him and no good can come from a relationship that doesn’t seek to accomplish the same goal. The damage done through this sort of break up is ultimately worth it because living a life pleasing to God is worth it- even if that means putting something (or someone) on hold that you desperately want.
Maybe this will all seem overly dramatic to you and you will assume that your relationship is different from the ones I am describing but I don’t believe that I am drawing these conclusions from my relationships alone. What I am talking about is a culmination of things I’ve experienced, learned from others and from what God has taught me. The Lord had every good intention for relationships between men and women but unfortunately, I have seen firsthand how dangerous and damaging those relationships can become when the Lord is not FULLY present in them.
Because this is a blog and you are reading my words off of your computer screen, they may seem emotionless and cold. It may seem like I am reducing your relationship to a decision as easy as what you’ll have for dinner tonight or suggesting that you weigh the pros and cons of a person as you would a clothing item but I assure you, I’m not. I wish I could communicate the emotion I feel about this topic over the internet and I am praying that my inability to express myself as intensely as I would like doesn’t prevent anyone from taking my words seriously. I know firsthand how painful these break ups can be and how long that pain lasts. I also know how insanely difficult it is to make a decision like this one and more than that, how difficult it is to stick to that decision once it’s made.
In writing this, I hope to spare some of you at least some of the troubles I inflicted on myself. I am asking you to learn from my mistakes rather than making your own. Maybe THESE words are the purpose for which God allowed my pain, maybe they’re meant for healing and redemption and maybe, just maybe, they’re meant for you.
Scriptures:
(because God's words are usually more powerful than mine. And by usually, I mean always.)
- God gives us a picture of what marriage is to look like in Ephesians 5:22-33. We cannot expect someone who is unstable and unsure in their faith to understand or abide by the guidelines set out for us in this scripture.
- Matthew 19:4-10 reminds us that marriage is a serious commitment which God intended to be lifelong. A believer cannot divorce their spouse simply because they are an unbeliever no matter how much strain this puts on their relationship.
- 1 Corinthians 7:12-14 warns us that once married to an unbeliever, we are called to stay with them. We know that marriage is already going to be hard (1 Cor. 7:28), marriage to an unbeliever can only bring us more hardship.
