Unworthy Entanglements

“I would do anything for you, I would go through all this pain, take a bullet straight to my brain. Yes I would die for you, but you won’t do the same!”  ~  Grenade by Bruno Mars

I fell in love with this song almost instantly. From the moment I heard the first verse I knew it was going to be one of my favourite songs. Quite like everything I have professed to love, in a matter of days I had worked myself up into a frenzy and my love had morphed into obsession. It became the subject of almost all my status updates on both Facebook and Blackberry messenger, it was playing on my mind all day everyday. I’ve come to realise that there’s a pattern in how I love…I’m an obsessive, compulsive lover!

Being single is, without any doubt, a sad and lonely time and it chips away at your self-esteem one piece at a time. As much as you know you have  friends and family that love you, you still feel like you’re undesirable and unloveable. This feeling is especially heightened when it seems like everywhere you go you’re bombarded  with couples including events and activities exclusively for them that are designed to specifically alienate you, the lone single person. It feels like a cruel, undue  reminder that you have scarcely had time to forget because the feeling of emptiness just never leaves you. Every time you are catching up with old friends and relatives you hear of all the people getting engaged, the upcoming weddings and the freshly announced pregnancies.  What deals the biggest blow however is undeniably the moment you find out your ex is now engaged!

No matter how much we protest and how many volunteer hours we spend to prove we are not, we ARE inherently selfish! I for one do not love my ex, do not want him back and I strongly believe I am better off without him but do I want him engaged? No! Especially not when I am single and I consider myself to be the more decent one of us both! What makes it so painful is you start thinking, “Well there must be something wrong with me if he spent six years with me and didn’t marry me and before I even have time to fetch my stuff from his place I hear he’s with someone else and less than two years later they’re engaged!” When the bitterness creeps in I just smile to myself and start singing, “I pity the fool who falls in love with you, oh shit she’s a gold digger, I just thought you should know…” and yes I go on to sing, “although there’s pain in my chest I still wish you the best” which I’d be lying if I said I meant it, I just sing it because I love the medley.

I have to wonder though, will I meet somebody or will I die of a broken heart, a non-scientifically proven yet still very real cause of death? Of late I have started thinking a very scary possibility; God will not bring me my life partner until I get over my addiction.

I am known as a person who loves others and showers those I love with immeasurable amounts of love. I used to think that this was a great quality to have but now I have come to realise it is also my Achilles heel. I have come to realise that the reason I love Grenade so much, is that it is about me. I have spent many, if not all, of my romantic entanglements catching grenades for people who would not do the same for me! As much as it is as a sad realisation, it is also a liberating one because it makes you realise that you deserve so much more than what you were getting and it’s ok to let go because you will not get anything worthwhile from that relationship anyway.

I might be wiser beyond my years in some areas of life, when it comes to relationships though, my growth is severely stunted. I do not think I will progress much until I learn to overcome all my weaknesses that feed into me being the way I am now. I always find it amazing how all my failures in life are always linked to me disobeying God. We all assign different names and different sources to that ever-present, still, small voice we converse with everyday. Pinocchio’s was Jiminy Cricket, who can forget the legendary, “And always let your conscience be your guide?” My small, still voice? Well that’s God of course. I am ashamed to say that He speaks and oftentimes I do not listen and I wonder why when I get hurt and have to crawl back to Him with shattered pieces of a violated heart.

I have had two serious relationships in the past eight years and in the interests of complete honesty, I was never meant to be in either one of them. I knew they were bad going in. I knew both guys were not ready to give me the relationship that I wanted and I still entered into relationships anyway. Not only that but I gave them both(not simultaneously of course), all that I had to offer and they became the very core of my life and that is my greatest sin.

First two commandments, notice how it’s two and not one and also how it is number one and two and not nine and ten, are about worshipping no one other than God. Exodus 20:4 commands us to “not make an idol of any kind…not bow down to them or worship them.” One of the dictionary meanings for the word “idol” is, “One that is adored, often blindly or excessively.”  Just like that, I have been repeatedly breaking two commandments in the way I conduct myself in romantic relationships.

I would be lying if I said I had stopped, though I do pray for the grace to stop. I do understand a bit more now that it is for my own protection that I remain single up until I can love someone in a constructive healthy way. It is time to accept God’s call to rehab and stay there till I am healed. Up until then I am ducking all grenades that I spot flying my way and I am certainly not about to go catching any for anyone who would not do the same.

Beyond A Shadow Of Doubt

Birthdays. The days you’re supposed to demonstrate you’ve gained a whole year’s wisdom so that you can be allowed to advance to the next level. Nothing quite invokes extended periods of contemplation quite like a looming birthday and with my twenty-sixth merely days away I have a lot of burning questions on my mind, questions I need answered to prove that I actually learned something from being twenty-five and I am now ready for level twenty-six.

 I’ve always had this feeling that I cannot shake that I will not be around for a very long time. My grand time line for my life does not extend anywhere past mid-forties and not because I’m incapable of seeing that far ahead but because at that age my life just goes black  in my mind.  Thinking about it now, I can’t help but wonder if I have been using this ‘premonition’ as an excuse to get things done and get them done right now!  I do however acknowledge that this might be legitimate, but how can I know for sure? Is it even possible to know for sure?

I am a woman of many convictions and I absolutely cannot cope with doubt. Doubt tends to cause some of my very unbecoming character flaws to rear their ugly heads for all to see. So quite naturally I do not appreciate it very much when I have to spend time, least of all weeks doubting and doubting my own beliefs no less.

There are three things I am certain of in my life:

1) God is the author and finisher of my fate  and He knew exactly how every second of my life would play out before I even took my first breath,

2) God is merciful, loving and compassionate and He is the definition of the word good, and

3) I have a flair for the finer things in life and therefore was never destined to be poor. Yep it’s true! I make no apologies for it!

I am absolutely convinced that all three of the above are true. Number three I have known all my life and have held onto through the darkest times in my family’s life. Even as I slept on floor, didn’t eat meat for sometimes weeks on end, only received new clothes once a year, I still knew that I was not destined to live like that and I knew it was going to end. I remember when I was ten years old my father said to me, quite prophetically, I would never amount to anything in life and I would forever be poor because I am too extravagant. Weirdly I did not believe him even though I believed him when he said I was stupid and wouldn’t get very far in life. Through my parents divorce  when I was twelve when we had to start from scratch, the conviction was there. I think it is therefore safe to say it’s one of those knowing beyond a shadow of doubt situations. But where did such an unshakable belief come from?

I still remember having to scrape my bottom lip off the floor when I heard a pastor say, “Not all good things and not all good thoughts are from God.”  I thought he’d lost his mind but as I sat and listened, it all began to make more sense. You see, the devil’s been a scam artist for ages now and has evolved in his trickery. He knows that he is more likely to fool us with a lie that appears good and feels good and right rather than one that feels wrong. I don’t think I am the only person to have been in a relationship that was ultimately wrong and I even knew it was wrong but was still in it because it felt to right! This revelation of course opened the brimming box of questions that led to me doubting my intentions, decisions and beliefs.

About two months ago a close friend asked me how you know if you’re destined for something and whether it is possible that some of us are destined to not of have our heart’s desires fulfilled. Almost immediately, I told her that that was ludicrous. I was of the belief that God doesn’t put desires in our hearts that He would leave unfilled, this belief I had picked up from a sermon I had heard a while back. Rather than being laid to rest at that point her question haunted me, two months later it is still haunting me! It is not that I necessarily think my original response was wrong, I do however think there are multiple options that I had not considered.

The first being; if satan was capable of deluding us with seemingly good things what would stop him from trying to lead us astray with good desires? Mine for example is to be married and be a good wife and mother. I can honestly say that that is my heart’s biggest desire. One day I started thinking, what if the enemy is using my desire to drive a wedge between God and I? Could he be somehow standing in the way so that I can discouraged and start doubting  the truth of scriptures like Jeremiah 29:11?  Within days my thoughts jumped to the other end of the spectrum…why was I so convinced that it was supposed to be? Could I not tell from all my failed relationships that God was trying to tell me something?  I soon realised that I was caught in the depths of doubt!

After weeks of contemplation, presenting arguments back and forth in my head, I think I am finally ready to deliver a verdict. There a millions of things that we were predestined to do all of which we will do. Then there are things we believe we were destined to do, these may or may not happen. Sound like I am still stuck sinking in the sea of doubt? Let me clarify further. As humans we have a finite view of the world, God does not! What we do not understand is that we are eternal beings and part of what we were predestined for was never meant to unfold on this earth. Whilst things that we predestined for WILL happen, there is no certainty for the desires of our hearts, they will however fulfil their purpose in our lives. I’m a firm believer that every experience and non-experience(if I can call it that) serves a very specific purpose in our lives some purposes we will never get to grasp simply because we are human.

Some things are just not for the human mind to comprehend and I think at some point we need to reach the point where we are willing to stop trying. God is the only one who knows things ‘beyond a shadow of doubt’, we just don’t have it in us to comprehend the space that exists beyond a shadow. Whilst I remain convinced that I was never destined to be poor, I think it would be quite arrogant to think my beliefs will alter what I have been predestined for so spare a thought and a penny should it one day turn out I was wrong.