The Purpose.

You see when I first got the idea of this blog, it was straight from the Lord. It wasn't a wonderful idea I pulled out of my sinful heart but a pure idea that God put on my heart. What I wanted, what I'd hoped this blog would become was a place to come and talk about our imperfections. A place to gather ideas, desires and thoughts. My hope was that in all things, it would above all bring glory to God. My hope was that it would be an encouragement to my beloved sisters and brothers in Christ. One topic I wanted to base my blog on was friendships, relationships with the opposite gender.
Who else is so tired and worn out by all these wonderful, beautiful young women letting the possession of their hearts pass from boy to boy? Heart break is a fact of life. Is it? It doesn't have to be. But a hard truth is...we as humans are lazy. We don't want to work to keep our hearts safe. We are deceived into thinking that we should expect our hearts to be broken, and even that it's romantic for our hearts to be broken. We think, well since everyone says that heartbreak is unavoidable why bother guarding it? We think that one day a boy will come along and unbrake it for us. That he will be so wonderful that our hearts will suddenly be whole again to thrust into his loving hands. Though this man will be amazing, God-centered and as loving as can be, he cannot fix what has been broken so completely. He is not the super glue we need to piece together our shattered pieces. He can't do it. He just doesn't know how, he can't love that completely. Mr. Perfect is not perfect. By this I mean that we have set our men up for failure when we wait for our "Mr. Perfect" because no matter how wonderfully amazing he is, he will never be perfect. Nor will we. There is only one Mr. Perfect, He created the stars and the moon. He created love. He created you.
 Provers 4:23 says "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."  Pure, beauty, untouched, unharmed, unbroken. Those are the words that come to mind when I read that verse. The wellspring of life. It doesn't say that the heart is important in life, it doesn't say that the heart should be expected to be broken, no it says that the heart should be carefully guarded because it is the very place where life comes into us through the Creator. We so often say that God didn't provide us with instructions on how to deal with our hearts but that is such a lie! He tells us right here what we need to do. Psalms 119:9 "How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word."
(Phew...I'd just like to say that I LOVE that blogger has the ability to save your work when you accidentally navigate away from your posting page. Perhaps Satan was trying to make me lose all my writing so I couldn't share this with you all?) 2 Peter 1:3-4 says "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires." He has given us everything we need. Let me repeat. He has given us everything we need for a godly life. We can never say that God doesn't tell us what to do about this or that situation because He tells us He has given us everything we need.
By now you may be thinking that I'm a homeschooler who lives with her nine siblings, perfectly godly parents. You probably think "This chick has been living under a rock her whole life and just doesn't understand what the real world is like. She's probably never even heard of Taylor Swift." Haha! I don't live under a rock, actually. I'm fairly social and I understand what the "real world" is like. And yes, I have indeed heard of Taylor Swift, the girl is on my iPod. Many, many times have I sat in my car feeling sorry for my myself while I wholeheartedly sang along to Invisible, You Belong With Me and many more. She made me feel like the world had done me wrong and that I deserved better. She made me so emotional. She made me sigh and think of the boy I liked. And hope and dream of the day he realized he liked me. Oh. Brother. How self-centered. I made myself the victim countless times and thought that some day this boy I liked so much would realize how silly he was being liking another girl (a very close friend) and come find me. But of course, I wouldn't approach him, I would be the quiet one no one ever noticed until he did. Again. Oh. Brother. Now, I am so embarrassed by my thoughts and desires. I am so embarrassed by all the times I tried to separate myself from my friends because I wanted to be the forgotten one so I could feel sorry for myself. Goodness. Taylor Swift was my go to girl for a long time.
I got so stuck in my self-pitty it started to really affect my life. I mean this boy WAS my life. I thought about him all the time. I was getting mad so easily, about the silliest things. I was becoming the very person I didn't want to. I yelled at my sister one night for not ejecting my ipod before unplugging it, something I'd done countless times. As I apologized to her over texts she asked what was wrong.
 Snap.
 I let my sob story fly and began to work in every detail I could that would make her feel sorry for me. My life had become terrible because the boy I liked didn't like me and I was so mad that my friends liked him too. (May I remind you that this is in a CHRISTIAN setting. These girls and I were "strong" Christians. Went to Bible Study twice a week if not more, Church every Sunday, but that didn't mean we/I were/was maintaining our relationships with God) After I had poured out my dramatic tail my sister made my eyes bug. She made me so angry I wasn't sure what to say. I didn't want to hear what she had to tell me but I knew it was true and I knew I needed to finally listen. She told me in not so many words that it wasn't as tragic as I made it out to be. I wasn't the only one who had ever gone through it. She told me that if I was that hurt by it all than I had let the boy take too much of my heart, or rather I had given him too much of it. He had taken nothing (He didn't realize I had feelings for him) and even if he had "taken" it, he couldn't have taken anything I didn't give him. I pleaded that I couldn't just stop liking him.
Bang.
She gently but firmly told me I was wrong. It is more than possible to stop liking someone. She knew from experience. She continued to tell me that it wasn't something I could even begin to try to do on my own, that my strength had to come from God and God alone. No one else would be able to help me through it. Wanting to plug my ears, or block her texts, I reluctantly listened as she shared her advice with me and explained that of course it's not somethng I would want to do but it was something that would be better for my relationship with God. I continued to think about one thing she said that I earlier stated. The part where she said that if I was that hurt by it all than I had allowed too much of my heart to be given to him and too much of my heart to be taken from God. I knew she was right. I knew I needed to do this. I knew that this boy had taken over my life and that I had indeed allowed way too much of my heart to be taken from His loving hands. In trying to get love from this boy I had become bitter towards a dear friend, I had allowed jealousy to take over me, I was angry with the world for not getting the love I desperately wanted. But how could the small amount of love I was chasing after from this boy compare to the storm of love my Creator wanted to shower down on me? This boy wasn't what I needed, though I desperately wanted him, I needed the unblemished, pure love of the One who died to have me for His own.
So after this expierence, the quesion was continually on my mind, how can I have good, strong brother/sister relationships with boys? How can I guard my heart? How can I save myself for my husband? How can I prepare myself for marriage? What do I really want in a husband?
My family had always had a strong base of waiting until we were ready to get marry to date. That may sound old fashioned but for real, what else is dating for? You date to find the one you will marry and you don't need to know who you will marry until you're ready to get married. You don't need to know his name until you're both ready to make a serious commitment to love each other.  But even though I knew I wasn't going to date until I was at least eighteen it was unbelievably hard to gaurd my heart. I wanted love and acceptance now and I thought I would find it in a boy. I thought that when I got older and found "the one" everything would be different. Everything would be perfect. But I slowly realized a boy wasn't going to fix all my problems. He was possibly going to add a few more. I guess I never really finished my story.
So after my sister told me the hard truth I told God to have the keys to my heart. That they were His and I asked Him to please keep them safe for my future husband because I knew I couldn't since I had so carelessly given them to a boy who had feelings for another girl. In Song of Songs 4:12 it says that I am "a garden locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain." How beautiful! Oh..I could talk about this for hours! But since it's nearly one in the morning I wont get too deep unto this verse but save it for another post. But according to this verse I'm a garden, and so are you, a garden that is locked. Imagine a sparkling garden full of wildflowers and green grass. Trees to shade you from the sun and every other magical detail you can imagine. Now imagine you're in that garden. It's your garden. In this garden is your purity, your virginity, your innocence, your love, your joy, your peace, pattience, kindness, goodness. Everything you are is here in this place. One day your're joyfully walking in your garden. You look past the strong brick wall that surrounds your garden to see a man. He's exactly the right height for you, he dresses nicely and his smile melts you to the core. He seems like all you could ask for, you hastily unlock the gate and invite him in. For a while he drinks in every part of your garden. He makes it blossom even more. But ffter a while he decides he doesn't like a particular part of your garden and tries to make it die. He tramples the flowers and cracks lets the paths grow over with weeds. You don't understand he was supposed to take care of your garden with you. The grass has gone brown and prickly and the flowers are slowly dying from lack of rain. Your garden is no longer beautiful like it once was. This man that was all you could ask for is angry. He doesn't want to be in your garden anymore and quickly tears through your gate, leaving the lock broken. He looked so perfect, he acted so wonderful what happened? You thought you loved him, you certainly felt deeply for him. And you thought maybe...he loved you too.

Love is not a feeling, it's a choice. We are wrong in thinking that it's an emotional two people share. You can chose to love anyone. It wont always be easy but it can be done. We often mistake emotions and hormones for love.

I'm so excited to blog more on this subject. It's one I have a passion for. Although I will say now, that I by no means know everything about it and I wont always be right. This blog is where I will write my thoughts and reveltaions as I stumble along trying to figure out how to have relationships with boys without letting it go any farther than friendship for now. Here I hope to answer questions and talk with others about what they think about the subject of boys and girls. Comments from boys are welcome! Because people are so afraid to talk about what God wants for us in purity us young people are left to ourselves to figureout what to do with dating, sex and friendship with the opposite gender. We are so often left without someone to encourage us to go to God with our questions about these things. Fighting to keep our gardens beautiful and pure and locked is...the purpose.
Love,
Hannah Dorothy