"He is jealous for me, love's like a hurricane."

My favorite quote ever that has ever been said by another human is this, "What the hell are you thinking, child? You wouldn't know what love was even if it smacked you in the face and drove over you with it's car four hundred times!" I can laugh about it now, sitting here a little bit closer to figuring love out… but back then, it was painfully accurate. I didn't know what love was… I don't honestly even know if I knew what love was two months ago. 

My idea of love was wrapped up with one question, "What can you do for me?" I didn't know what unconditional love was, how to accept it, or even if I wanted anything to do with it. It was a concept I didn't know… 

God loves you. Blah, blah, blah. To be honest, that phrase is terribly overused and has been sugared down that it virtually has no impact on a dying world… I can sit here and say in a thousand different ways how I know that God loves me and you or that Jesus showed love when He died, or anything, but the point is it isn't going to matter to anyone… the power of that phrase, "God loves you…" has no meaning until personally you stop hearing it, start believing it, and apply it to your own life. I grew up in church, by 21, it had no meaning to me…none. I had to personally encounter Jesus in a real and desperate way before I ever understood the power of such a love. I think the only way to reach people with the love of Christ is for us, as Christians, to stop just saying it and start letting people encounter it. We, as Christians, need to start embodying that love and start walking it to people in our world. Zip, Zero, there's no other choice. 

If you have had a single conversation with me or known me my entire life… or even if you have read anything I have written, you should know that following Christ is a relatively new choice for me. I haven't always purposefully lived my life for Him. In the last month, my eyes have truly been opened to love and grace and redemption and salvation and truth… but more importantly, I realized everything I was doing wrong when it came to relationships and love. 

I have known since I was a child that "Christians date Christians…" I know it's somewhere in the bible that believers shouldn't date unbelievers and there's passages that talk about "being equally yoked" but in my mind, none of that mattered to me. I had this mindset that I'll fall in love with whoever I want… that thinking has only caused me problems, given me a hundred broken hearts, made me feel hopeless, and shattered my idea of what love was. 

I chose the wrong person to fall in love with… 

I looked to other people for comfort and security and acceptance and love. Sin is sin… no matter what it is, it is as black as it comes and it leaves trails of hurt and shame and fear and darkness. The moment I looked for love in places other than Christ was the moment I sinned. I made a lifestyle out of putting everything else before the God that created me, who loved me and sent His son to die for me. My love life was hopeless from the beginning… because I never made it about Christ. I made it about me and what someone else could do for me. 

I've learned a lot in the last month… I've learned in many ways what absolutely NOT to do. But I have also learned about real love, real grace, real security, real hope… I have learned to be real. I took a leap of faith a month ago and decided that Jesus might be the real deal and that just maybe, trusting Him wouldn't be a bad idea & HE HAS BLOWN MY WORLD AWAY. I decided to become a part of the greatest love story known to mankind and I have fallen in love with the greatest man who has ever walked this Earth… who while I was still a sinner, chose to die for me.

"He is jealous for me… 

Love's like a hurricane, and I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

When all of a sudden, 

I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your

affections are for me."

-"How He Loves"

 It doesn't get any better than that. That is love at it's finest, no man could ever love me the way Christ loves me. I know that, I don't understand it, but with everything that I am, I believe it. For the first time in my entire life, love isn't something that I'm chasing after. I don't need anything other than the love of Christ… it is Him who gives me life, not some boy who sends me "good morning" texts and buys me pretty flowers. In comparison to the cross, flowers don't even make the list. 

News flash, guys, real love can't be explained in emojis. 

Thankfully for me, it's not my milkshake that is going to bring all the boys to the yard… it's the future that God has planned for me. I know God has the perfect man picked out for me and I know that when He sees fit and when I am ready, He will let that man blow my world away even more than I thought possible. I trust in that, I trust in the future God has planned and I have hope in Him… no one else. 

Take notes, boys...
So because God is teaching me crazy new things about life and love and everything in between, here is a list of everything I never knew I wanted in a man: 

1. The man I love MUST love Jesus. I'm not saying the man I love must occasionally go to church and he might casually throw the word "christian" around… I am saying, the man I love who will be my husband someday, MUST with everything he is, LOVE Christ. I not only think this is biblical for believers, but I know this is the ONLY choice God has for my future marriage. 

2. The man I love MUST have a relationship with Jesus. This is similar to the above, but I not ONLY want my future husband to LOVE Christ, I want Him to follow Him, talk to Him, consult Him, trust Him, and have faith in His plans, not his own-- or mine. 

LASTLY, 
3. The man I love MUST choose Jesus over me. Honestly. I believe the only way a relationship and future marriage will ever work out is if Jesus is at the very center. I want a relationship with a man who believes strongly that God is in control and that we, even our marriage, is nothing without the grace of God and the love of Christ.