Love is on my mind: Lessons learned

I know that a lot of you read my last blog entry titled “love is on my mind”. With permission from the subject of that entry I am writing this to follow up with everyone. My hope is that you can take something from everything I am learning through this situation. If you didn’t read the post before then don’t bother to look for it. I took it down for obvious reasons but I encourage you to read this anyways and apply the lessons as you see fit.

First of all, I learned I have a great friend. I don’t regret pursuing something with her because she was definitely worth pursuing. As you can guess she did not feel the same way towards me but because of her incredible maturity and character the situation turned out to be a good one and I believe we have a stronger friendship and trust because of it.

However there is still the inevitable pain. I don’t think I really need to explain that. The pain was very real and not at all pleasant. Through the pain, God is teaching me a lot about myself. Im learning that I have a bigger ego than I thought I did. This greatly upset me but it also helped me turn even more to God and hold less for myself. I have wanted more than anything to have a real relationship and to love someone but it is not going to happen on my own time and It will not be her. Coming to terms with that is perhaps the hardest but most important thing. For now I have to give over my desire for love to God because I don't know how long the wait will be. I do know this though, the wait will be worth it!

It takes time and acceptance to heal anything. I know this is like a papercut in comparison to many hardships others have experienced but I think that the lessons can still be applied. Please comment or correct me if I am wrong.

Take chances. Life is about taking chances. I have a poster of John Wayne on my wall that says “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyways.” Its funny because this poster actually motivated me to do something about my feelings. But we also must know that courage doesn’t equal victory. We can saddle up and come back wounded but If we never saddle up then we miss lessons, opportunities worth pursuing, and we become slow, apathetic, lonely people.

I only have one regret in the situation, and that is that I posted my feelings for all of you to see. Granted, I know many of you enjoyed the post and may have even benefited from it but honestly, nothing that personal should be posted. Most of all it was probably awkward for her even though not very many people knew who I was talking about. It was just a very foolish thing for me to do and I hate public drama. Don’t mistake me though, I don’t regret what I said at all. I would have said it to her either way, but it should not have been public. New rule for myself, when emotions are running high let somebody else who is neutral read your post before posting and better yet, don’t post at all. By posting that I made myself even more vulnerable and I don’t like feeling like everybody knows I just went through something tough. I also don’t want the situation to become about me, and by posting that I was being pretty narcissistic thinking people other than my close friends would actually care. That’s not supposed to be a sad or self-hating thought at all, I only need to recognize I have an ego and I shouldn’t feed it.

Friends. We need friends to talk to but even more so parents or mentor figures. These mentor figures have so much wisdom to offer and if we want to make the wisest decisions we must seek that wisdom out. Being around others is the fastest way to heal anything. Give into the pain for a bit and experience it because that is ok but don’t mope for long. Get out and be with others you care about. Serve people.

Talk to God. The best thing to pray for in these situations is for learning. Ask God to teach you and to be with you. God is our one true lover and he deserves all of our attention and more. The pain of rejection helped remind me of how incredible the pain must be for God when we reject him even after the whole hearted sacrifice he made for us. Of course, the woman in my scenario cant be related to us rejecting God. I don’t even want to imply that. She obviously did the right thing unlike humanity rejecting its creator. I also don’t want to imply that my pain was anywhere near that of Christ’s but ANY pain is a chance to better understand Christ’s pain.

Action is what counts. My parents taught me this lesson. During those first few days I had to constantly remind myself of this. It is in these times where my emotions are off the charts that I must stay true to God, my values, my character, and my convictions. It was tough doing so many things that directly contrasted with how I felt. To do this I had to make a list of what I wanted to be, and who I wanted others to see me as so that I still might bring glory to God. I am trying to stick to this, and I have failed a few times but all in all it has helped things heal much quicker and it has prevented me from making any stupid decisions. My actions matter, not how I feel.

Thank you all for being encouraging and I hope you will continue reading my blog, not as a source for drama, but a source for growth, life lessons, and wisdom.