I’ve been wearing a ring around my neck for over a year now. When I started going back to church again, my parents gave me this ring on the day I was baptized. They didn’t mean for it to be a purity ring, but it is in fact what it is.
The past nine months I thought of it as a symbol of my parents love. A little piece of them that was always with me on the race that I almost never took off.
It wasn’t until the end of last month where I felt God calling me to take it off around my neck and wear it on my right ring finger. At first I wasn’t sure why.
A few days had passed and everywhere I went I kept hearing people say or I would read somewhere how God was the “lover of their soul.” I had heard that multiple times on the race and it always intrigued me, but I never truly looked into it.
So I asked God, “Is this something you want me to walk in next month?”
Something I have struggled with on the race and really for a while now is who I am going to eventually end up with in life.
All my life I have always felt this overwhelming desire to be loved.
Back in Laos, God walked me though why I have always wanted to be loved, but how I wouldn’t let others love me. Kinda contradictory I know. I was so afraid of getting hurt I ended up hurting myself in the process.
I went through a lot of healing and allowed God to show me what love was. He showed me what it was like to be loved and to allow His people to love me in return.
However, my mind still got wrapped up in what this world wanted of me as well. I am about to turn 25 and most people I know are either married, getting married or having children. I have no idea what God has in store for me in a future husband, nor do I have any idea when or if it will happen. I couldn’t help but imagine my future.
The problem with this was, I wasn’t allowing God in it. I was creating all these expectations and false realities and to be honest I was thinking selfishly. I was thinking of someone to fill a hole I still had yet to allow God to fill.
Though I never said it out loud, I was basically saying Gods love wasn’t enough.
“WOOF.” -A.M
Thats hard pill to swallow and ever harder to come to terms with.
I was doing a devotional and it said “we must be willing to sacrifice our hopes and dreams for marriage” and “If we only knew Gods plan for us we would choose it every time.”
[We would choose them every time.]
And I was getting in the way of that. I thought my plans were better. That If I just imagined what or who was going to be in my future it would make me feel better. It only made me feel worse and fill with doubt.
This month I have learned that it’s okay to dream of the future and ask God for things. Heck we should be asking God to do big things in our lives. But its different when the motives behind these dreams and hopes are not putting God first.
Everyday I look at this ring and I am reminded that its okay to not know who or what is going to be in my future. In all aspects of my life I need to put God first. If I get out of the way, the Lord is going to (which He had planned all along) fulfill my deepest desires. They may look different than I would have envisioned, but they will look far better.
God wants me to enter into the type of love with Him where I am willing to sacrifice the things of this world and trust that He has better plans for me. Sacrificing my future and having a blank canvas for God to fill with color hasn’t been easy. It is something that Him and I will most likely always have to continue to work in, but I cant wait for Him to fill that canvas with colors out of this world.
He wanted me to put this ring on my finger as a representation that His love conquer all. That there would be no other love that could fill the hole I so desperately want filled. That He was the lover of my soul.
“My beloved is mine, and I am his..”
-Songs of Songs 2:16
