| One of my friends saw an illustration in a christian meeting once. The speaker handed out puzzle pieces and told everybody "This is your future spouse. This piece will complete you some day." My friend didn't like that much. He said that you should look to God to complete you and then you find a spouse. I agreed with him for the longest time. It makes sense. We are not supposed to look to people to complete us. God completes us. People will only fail and hurt us. However, as I thought about this in the shower, I came to the conclusion that the puzzle piece thing is right. God cannot complete me. He knows this too. He said "it is not good for man to be alone." If God were enough to complete us, He wouldn't have created woman in the first place (sorry, ... ladies). True, there are many people who go their lives without spouses. One of the most Godly is my aunt. However, if you ask her, she will tell you that she definitely wants to get married. She wanted to have a family with children since high school, but God took her on missions work until a few years back. It is important that our work and our love for God comes first in our lives. But if God makes opportunities for love from the opposite sex, we would be foolish not to take it. It is a deeply designed need of ours to be met intimitely by one and generally by the others of the opposite sex (preferably it would be met completely by the one, but I'm writing this to people who are unmarried too/mostly). For those of you who are probably ready to debate me on "God cannot complete me," let me say this. God completes us men through women. "Love is a many spendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love." - Moulin Rouge I think true love is a miracle if it exists. True love, as in the perfect connection between a man and woman romantically, emotionally, commitingly (is that a word?), etc. There are so many things battling true love. First is the very rare occasion that a man and woman actually share the same level of feelings for each other at the same time. Once you get past that, there's jealousy, inadequacy, pride, inferiority, impatience, superiority, intent, selfishness, contentment, and location in life to name a few. With so many things that can tip the balance of a relationship that had any potential for finding true love, any of those is enough to destroy. If you have "true love" or think you're in the running for it. Value it. It's worth so much more than it would seem. On another subject, closely related, is this: "God is not preparing you for anything. He's already prepared you for where you're at right now." This statement is inaccurate in that God definitely is preparing you for the future. The first part of the statement is to stop the reader from looking ahead to what they will be and how they will serve God "if I can just ____" and look around themselves. Look around yourselves. Look at where God has placed you right now. Who are your friends? Who are your enemies? What are your responsibilities? As boring or excitingly busy as your life may seem, God has placed you there and you are prepared to handle it and do something with it for Him. Make plans for the future, but don't dwell on the future so much that you don't do anything for God now. Take your eyes off of where you want to be and accept where you are now. I love the movie Garden State. The movie is about a guy who has not been able to feel emotion most of his life because his psychiatrist father does not want him to experience pain. The main character's mother dies and so he returns home to pay his respects. At this time in his life he decides to not take the drugs anymore and see what happens. The world opens up to him and he, through the help of a friend (later girlfriend), begins to discover who he is and what it means to be truely alive. At the the end of the movie, the main character is leaving to go back home. He is leaving the girl behind with the idea that he is not good enough for her until he goes away and discovers who he is. Then he will come back to her. He comes back without taking his flight, however, with the realization that she is part of the journey he has been on to discover himself. He doesn't need to leave to discover himself, but it is her that will help him and that it is ok to go on the journey together. I think this is beautiful. So many times in our lives we try to make our lives perfect, then come back to God. When we're looking to the future of what we will be, we are forgetting that God wants to be with us on that journey. Not just the destination. Live with God now. |
