The Value of One

Once upon a time, there was a sixteen-year-old girl who had everything all figured out.

Life was a very simple puzzle, one of those 25 piece ones where you can clearly see which pieces goes where.

Things would happen in a very pat order. Graduate from high school. Six months later, boom. A young man that matched every little things I ever wanted would come. It would be love at first sight. After a whirlwind courtship, in which we would never, ever quarrel and he would bring me flowers every day, he would get down on one knee in a perfectly romantic spot during a perfectly romantic time and pop the question with a soliloquy that smacked of Romeo and Juliet. I would accept without a moment’s thought, of course, and after a whirlwind engagement, we’d have the perfect without-a-hitch fairytale wedding, have the perfect fairytale honeymoon, and then live in a little dollshouse and have twenty children and live a long and happy marriage, having never quarreled in our whole lives. The same cycle would happen to each and every one of my close friends, and I’d be a bridesmaid at least twice a year for the next five years.

Then I got older, and suddenly the puzzle turned into a 5000 piece one…with a few pieces apparently missing. Suddenly all my pat ideas were one by one tossed out of the window by reality. Princes transform into real men who forget to pick their clothes up off the floor and forget to buy flowers. Weddings have catastrophic events occur. Love at first sight can be a complete joke. Years, decades can go by before a man ever appears on sight. Courtships–even unbreakable, foolproof courtships don’t work out. And an engagement ring is not the sign that wedding bells are definately in sight.

“It’s not supposed to be this way.” My heart cries as reality continues to smack me. “Where’s the happily-ever-after?”

The perfect little dream of a starry-eyed teenager is gone. And maybe that’s a good thing. It seems like this year the Lord has seen fit to slowly turn me away from my ideals to what he has planned.

I look back, even to the beginning of this blog, and see how much I thought I knew about everything, and how little I really did. I was the expert on love, courtship, and marriage. And then as I was witness to “perfect” circumstances turning out in not-so-perfect ways, as I saw friends face heartbreak in many different ways, all my big opinions were pulled out from under me.

Just because we do it the perfect way doesn’t mean that it’s going to turn out perfectly.

Because we live in a sinful world.

But even though the realities of life have taken the dream of my childhood, a new dream rises in its place.

A dream of serving my family. Of helping in their endeavors. Of bonding even closer to my siblings, and enjoying the time I have with them.

And someday, in circumstances only God could work out, meeting not a prince or a knight or a superhero, but a man, a man probably much different than me (because we are two totally different human beings–duh! ). A man that will love the Lord first of all, and then love me. And he will be a prince and a superhero because he is a godly man and because he is mine, not because he can (or can’t) fly or magically think everything I’m thinking or kill dragons.

A dream of a courtship prayerfully considered through a long period of time. Of a courtship that will be riddled with problems and petty quarrels, but that will last by the grace and will of God, not because we are courting, and therefore are assured of a perfect ending.

A proposal romantic because the man I love is asking me to be his wife, not because there’s a sunset.

An engagement full of smiles and tears and wedding planning, still keeping our eyes on the Lord and praying for His will and guidance.

A wedding that glorifies what God has done in our lives,

And a marriage full of flus and moving and bills and even quarrels. If God wills, a marriage full of happy children. A marriage that will last because God is in it.

Yes, the old dream is gone. But that dream was the dream of a child, a child who was full of the Disney Princess idea of romance, of love at first sight, of happily-ever-after.

I can’t let go of the promise that God is going to work all things out for good. That he will give the desires of my heart. (And that courtship is the way to go. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving that up.) And I am content in that. I am happy to enjoy life now. I see now that love and marriage doesn’t solve all our problems. It creates whole new ones. And that’s not bad. But I realize that if I’m not happy now, I never will be. I’m not going to be magically rid of my problems and worries. I’ve got to face them now.

And I’m happy with that.

Someday it will happen.

But for now, I wait.

Posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 3:26 pm in the category:Courtship, Godly Womanhood, Superman, Waiting. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.