Admittedly, I am no expert on the topic of love. Now if you were to count the number of hours I have spent yearning for love, recovering from the effects of what I thought was love, watching others in love, not to mention my favorite - watching soap operas, you might say that I had the requisite amount of time invested in the topic to make me an expert. Well time spent doing these sorts of things does not qualify one for expert status. And so while not an expert, I am clearly a person who has been hoping for, dreaming of and generally wishing for love for a very long time.
Somehow that’s a painful confession for me. I want to say that I am happy and fulfilled without a husband or boyfriend. I want to be able to report to you that I am a complete woman regardless of my status in the love department. I want to somehow be true to my youthful outlook from the 70s, where it was all about being whole and complete as a woman on my own. I am part of the Helen Reddy generation, “I am woman hear me roar”. As part of my enlightened woman’s status, I even wore a T-shirt that sported the phrase “A woman without a husband is like a fish without a bicycle”. You don’t suppose that had anything to do with the limited number of date invitations I received?
But that was then this is now. Now I am 50+ years old and single. At last look, there was no line of suitors outside my door. Valentines Day looms on the horizon. The closer we get to February 14th the louder I seem to hear, in the background, music from the movie Jaws. Dunta ... Dunta ... Dunta ... Dunta. Oh Valentines Day.
The quest for love is universal. It is part of our human condition. But the romantic type of love - being swept off your feet with flowers, chocolate and loving words - is only part of the story. Our human quest for love really is about the need for connection, warmth, and companionship. To know that we do not face the future alone, enables us to enjoy the present. If marriage, based in the notion of romantic love alone, were the answer, then our divorce rate would be much, much lower. People would more readily find their life partners and be partners for life.
So what’s a single girl to do? For that matter, what’s anyone to do? Clearly, romantic love has a place in our lives. I for one, have not given up hope for that kind of romantic love and partnership in my life. I think it was Snow white who first sang, “Someday my prince will come.” I have been known to break into that very same song in the shower.
But it is not, the only love I seek. More importantly, it is not the only love I treasure. The love I treasure above all other, is the love I already have - from Jesus. He loves Me! Sacrificial, unconditional, grace-filled love from the very Creator of love, is mine. It is His love that wakes me up in the morning and gives me hope for the day. His love that comforts me when my body fails me. His is the love that keeps me warm when the circumstances of my life and of this world are all too cold. The love that I have in Jesus is a love that is quite simply all I need.
Now if that sounds romantic and fanciful well then so be it. If it sounds just a little too good to be true then think again. I will grant you that Jesus is not the best date for the prom but he is the best companion. I have no idea what he looks like in a tuxedo, in a swim trunks frolicking on the beach, or in an old pair of blue jeans sitting on the porch. But all of that is external. It comes and goes. It has no lasting truth.
The joy of my relationship with Jesus is that it IS a lasting truth. The love I have been promised transcends all other forms of love. It gives me hope, life, and peace in each day. The romantics would have us look for that in one another but the truth is we are mere humans. We are flawed and even at our best incapable of being responsible for another’s happiness. It is only in looking outside of ourselves and to something greater than ourselves that we find real happiness and real true love.
We teach our children in Sunday school to sing: “We love because God first loved us.” God’s amazing and unbounded love for us seen in the person of Jesus Christ. And so since He first loved us I am also reminded of a song from the 60s: “to know, know, know him is to love, love, love him and I do, yes I do, indeed I do.”
And with that - I still claim - my whole and complete woman status.
Till next time,
Paula Still Gimpy by Grace ... And ... Well in the Lord
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