Trusting Through the Doubt

When I can't sleep or I'm up late reading a book or doing something on my computer, I tend to think a lot.  Tonight was a reading night and now it's almost 2 o'clock and I'm still awake and thinking and looking at facebook.  Now normally I don't look at people's pages all that often.  But tonight I was looking at some friend's pages and a few of them were recently engaged or in a relationship and had pictures up.  Looking at the pictures of them so happy in love I felt that familiar clenching of my heart that's part pain, part jealousy.  And as I kept looking at the pictures of these people that I had graduated with  or were only slightly older than me, I felt all the doubts coming back.  Doubting that God had someone out there for me, doubting that anyone could ever possibly love me, doubting that I could ever truly love someone again myself.  And then there was the jealousy too.  Why did they get someone and I didn't?  Why couldn't I have that?  In a matter of minutes, I was dealing with a full on war between my heart and my head.  My head telling me that I was right to doubt and that my jealousy was rational, even reasonable, and my heart was simply naive.  And then there was my heart telling me to trust God and remember that He has a plan for me even though I can't see it and also telling my head to shut up.

Complete Only In Him

Update:  Rereading this has made me think that I really need to be more active about trying to find a Bible Study I can regularly attend because I haven't thought about any of this in a very long time.  On a semi-plus side though, I have gotten to the point where I don't look at every Christian guy about my age as a potential boyfriend.  The way I've gotten to that point isn't so great since the main reason is that since moving and having to leave my church where I was surround by very godly young men, I've discovered that there are many young men who say they are Christian and don't act at all like that and can in fact be just as mean and cruel as any non-Christian guy.  As I mentioned in my post the other day, I've gotten to be very wary of men which means that I'm not going to be jumping into a relationship with anyone until I know them pretty well.  That doesn't mean that I don't occasionally look at a nice guy that I've met and have a passing thought of, maybe he's the one.  What I don't do is see a guy, have a conversation with him where he's nice to me and everything, and basically fall head over heels and analyze his every word and movement and consider whether it means he might like me too.  Yes, I used to do that.  The biggest disappointment to me is that with not being involved in a church, I have done zero mission or service work other than occasionally volunteering.  That is something I would definitely like to work on.

~*~

Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to attend a camp called Regeneration in Glorieta, New Mexico.  I'd heard of the camp before, but it was the first time that my youth group had decided to go.  All I can say, is wow!  Everything about that week was amazing.  The preaching, the games, the preaching, the people, the preaching, the worship, the preaching...  Okay, you get the picture.

Don't Fall

Pretty much everyone has heard the quote "Don't make a girl fall for you, if you have no intention of catching her." I can't tell you how often I have seen and heard this quote. One of the most common ways I've heard it, is when a girl likes a guy, but he has no interest her. So she'll got on about how he made her fall for him, but he didn't catch her, which obviously was not his fault. So, honestly, I've gotten kind of sick of hearing this quote. On the one hand, I do like it, just not used in that way. However, I did find a quote that I really love and that fits perfectly.

Heart versus Mind

One of the quotes I hear most these days is "Listen to your heart" or "Follow your heart." As a matter of fact I just did a cover the other day of a song called Listen to Your Heart. But should we actually listen to and follow our hearts? I don't think so. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9) This is one of the first verses I ever learned in AWANA. But so often times we still listen to our hearts especially when comes to relationships. For me, when I like a guy, my heart tells me to run before I walk, and I can tell you, I already have a problem of falling way too hard, way too fast. My heart will tell me that he's perfect, he's the one. And when my head reminds me of the little things that might be an obstacle in our relationship, my heart simply tells my head to shut up and that love conquers all. In other words, my heart says go and my head says no. Typically for me, neither wins exactly. Obviously I'm still single and I've only dated one guy, so I've never had the guts to walk up to a guy I like and ask him out or anything, but on the other hand, that doesn't mean that I don't stop thinking about him.