I found the man of my dreams and all my problems have disappeared!
Would you believe it if I said it were true?
And, maybe if you don’t fully believe it, does a small part of you kind of believe it?
That if you just found the right guy, then things in your life would get a lot better…?
You’d never be lonely. You’d never be insecure. You’d never be jealous. You’d never doubt. You’d finally have this piece of life figured out and you could focus on other things, right?
I’m happy to report that it’s not true.
The movies, the books, the magazines, the Facebook timelines that depict a life of perfection once the husband and kids come along…? The problems don’t disappear… they just change, they shift. Oftentimes they are even enhanced.
Let’s take two sinful people and put them together for the rest of their life. They will sleep together, eat together, raise children together, sometimes even work together. Let’s take two people with different upbringings, different traditions, different values, different perspectives. Let’s put them together and expect there to only be happily-ever-afters. Let’s forget to mention the struggle to effectively communicate (in ways that are also gentle and respectful), the struggle to constantly be selfless, the struggle to unconditionally love. Let’s forget to talk about sacrifice, compromise, the altering of plans and hopes and dreams.
When I think about all of that, I truly believe it’s a miracle that any marriage survives.
I feel like I’ve had time to process through the pros and cons of being in a marriage-type relationship. If I’m being honest, there were times in my past, while able to acknowledge all the hardships of what that type of relationship can bring, it didn’t matter. All I could see was a life-long companion who I could love deeply and vice versa. My eyes were glossed over and I felt like all my problems could vanish if only I could get married. It was a chosen naivety. I wanted it so desperately sometimes that I wasn’t willing to consider the negatives of the situations I was in. I wanted it so desperately that sometimes (even if brief), I was willing to consider taking anyone who might possibly want me.
All that to say, I didn’t enter into my current relationship lightly. I did it, fully knowing that this wasn’t the solution to my problems. This wouldn’t be what saved me. In fact, in the conversation that led to us deciding to date, one of his bigger concerns involved this very issue. His past had brought him to a place of recognizing how attached the heart can become and how very crushed it can get. He, in no way, wanted to ever crush me… and he feared he could.
I remember telling him, very clearly, that I was okay. That with or without him, I was okay. That the Lord had me and that he, as my boyfriend, couldn’t take responsibility for ‘crushing’ me. Sure, things might end in heartbreak….but that’s different than devastation, a squandering of my whole being. And sure, even if things worked out, that there might be heartaches and disappointments along the way…but that’s different than him ever ruining me. And even if there’s joy and excitement and lots of love… it’s a far cry from him ever saving me or fixing all my problems.
I don’t want anyone to ever look at my life and let this be the end of my story. “Debbie was a cool single lady, aspired after the Lord in all things, was faithful and eventually (even after tears, doubts and giving up from time to time) met the man of her dreams.” That can’t be the end. Because the story still goes on. My problems aren’t solved. My relationship doesn’t save me, it doesn’t fix me. There’s still junk, there’s still refining, there’s still learning how to live life with a man (which sometimes, honestly, sounds terrifying and exhausting….while simultaneously sounding wonderful and adventurous).
Meeting the man doesn’t solve anything.
I mostly wish we’d be women who truly believe that.
That as much as we can be hopeful for the day when it happens for us, that we never let ourselves believe that we’ve found the answer when he comes along.
Because being single isn’t the problem. It’s what we become, what we do, how we think that becomes the problem when we let our singleness define us. And that stuff doesn’t just disappear when we meet the guy.
He won’t save you.
He won’t fix all your problems.
You’ll still be lonely, jealous, insecure… and then you have the added on problem of the guy who can’t understand why you’d ever feel that way when he’s right there.
He doesn’t fill the void. He can’t. He was never meant to.
I have found the man of my dreams, and I still have problems. Some things get better, some things get harder.
My story goes on.
We’ll wrestle through them together because we both fervently believe that, while we can’t save each other, we must look to and point each other to the One who can. It’s the only way we’ll survive. It’s the only way it’ll work.
And, it’ll be a miracle when it does.
Because it’s hard.
And we both have problems, we’re both still sinners.
And yet, we have been saved.
I have found the man of my dreams, and I am so thankful.
But the story has hardly begun.