The Past Month.

Lately things have been good. God has really given me a vision for my life and I go through my days with excitement for life after college... Yet, at the end of the day, I can not deny this feeling that weighs on my heart. It's not loneliness... I guess it's just the desire that God has placed in almost every woman's heart. I like to joke to myself and say that it's because I'm "getting old." I want to cook dinner and have a husband there to enjoy it with. I want to do laundry and fold clothes that are not my own. I want to be next to that person that knows me inside and out...

Lord, you know the desires of my heart.

Sometimes I just wonder if David still thinks about us. If he's even concerned about preparing a life for us in the future. I'm foolish for thinking these things. It's just safer to assume that he's no longer interested. It's only been a few months, but it is to the point where the thought of getting back together is hard to imagine. No doubt, I wish we were, but thinking about it actually happening is starting to become a weird thought. I guess the reason is because there is no relationship. If we're friends, the friendship isn't growing... I need to stop thinking about this.

I'm just ready to settle down... I love the thought of starting a family... I can't wait to have kids. I can't wait for the day where the kids will come running into my room on a Saturday morning and wake me up with laughter and silly jokes... I just want to love. The kind of love that's deeper than "having lunch with a friend."

like I said, Lord, you know the desires of my heart.

Desires of my Heart.

A few nights ago I had a dream... it was my wedding day. This is actually a reoccurring dream. Usually what happens is that the entire day would be so hectic and stressful that I wanted out. I didn't want a wedding anymore. But unlike the other dreams, this dream included the ceremony. Everything was horrible. The bridesmaids walked down the aisle too fast, my dress was basically my blanket, and I even messed up the kiss... but surprisingly, I didn't care. I didn't care about the mistakes, the decorations, or what I was wearing. All I could see was my husband staring back at me and how I couldn't wait to spend the rest of my life with him...for the first time my husband had a face... I long to have that face stare back at me in delight and joy again... too bad I had to wake up.

Scared.

The Lord is good. He has never failed me yet...but times like these, I can't help but be overwhelmed and fall to my knees. For the past 2 months, I've been very cautious to not think and obsess about things that aren't happening. When real situations actually arise, I will then reflect and deal with them... The Lord has been good with healing me... I can seriously say that I have about a good year worth of healing in 2 months. Emotions I expected to feel never happened, feelings others expected me to struggle with was not a struggle for me. This healing process has been a very unique process that can only be from God himself.

Throughout the summer, certain thoughts would come into my mind. What would I do/think if David pursued me again? Would I be ready for marriage if all of a sudden a Godly man pursued me? Am I ready to be in a relationship anytime soon? All these thoughts I suppressed because these things weren't even happening... Well, I am forced to think of these things now because some of these questions are starting to become real. Honestly these past 4-5 days have been extremely stressful. I am scared. I do not know what to think. All I can say is that I trust God and his plan.

On one side, I have David, the man who I dreamed of marrying for the past two years. I wish he would believe me when I say that I don't care if he is jobless. I've seen him struggle for the past year and a half, trying to get a job... and all I want to do is stand beside him and encourage him. I want to tell him that I'm still here and that I believe in him and that he can do great things for the Kingdom of the Lord... but as a girlfriend, this level of encouragement is not my role yet- it is the role of a wife. This is one of the reasons why I wished we would have gotten married. As a wife, I would have loved to walk beside him and encourage him in his struggles. At the end of the day, I desired to just hold him and delight in his presence. In his darkest days, I wish I could be there to comfort him and take care of him. I so badly want to do all these things for him...but somehow, I'm still not his wife...although it was planned so many times before... He is clouded with the lie that he has to have it all together- He has to be better, be a somebody, be more of a man... but he does not hear me cry out that he is enough. DAVID, YOU ARE ENOUGH. Please, stop striving and just rest in the Lord... As each day goes by I feel like this hope that I have of us ending up together is slowly dying away. He is starting to close himself out and I can't reach him. I can't read him. I don't even know if he still wants to be with me. For all I know, he may have changed his mind. If he moves to San Fransisco, he could very easily find someone else and be happy to leave the stress of his past behind... It breaks my heart to think that I may simply remain his past... This is something I can't let go of. I can handle no dating, no talking, no one-on-one time, but I can not handle the thought of us not ending up together. The thought of him being with someone else makes me sick to my stomach. Oh God, help me. This is all becoming too real.

On the other side, there's Cheng. A man who is already well-known by my relatives and is ready for marriage. I've told him that it's not fair to him for us talk every night when I'm constantly thinking of someone else...yet he remains persistent... I feel horrible that I can not give him the answers he wants to hear... He wants to hear that I like him too, that I am ready to marriage, that I consider us to be "talking"...but I do not feel that these things are appropriate at this time...the last thing I want to do is break his heart. I've been telling him to protect his heart because he has no idea what is going to happen. It's just stressful because Cheng is the one pursuing me, when I so badly want it to be David.

I can not make myself "wait" for David because like I said previously, he can change his mind about me at any time... so I would need to protect my heart against all possible situations. With all these things happening, there's still a voice inside me of me saying, "David, hurry up, please, it's happening." I cry out expecting him to come...to rescue, and protect me from this situation...But no matter how much I'm screaming inside, I can't control anything. I can't persuade him, I can't persuade God... Lord, I'm so scared.

Gospel

I am tired. My soul is weak. I feel like I'm fighting a battle alone. I fall because there is no one beside me who has my back. I feel like my battle isn't against the enemy, but people that I know and love. How can I go on fighting if I am unwilling to fight? How did this fight even start?

I can't even describe the battle inside my heart. I can't even pinpoint the moment it all went wrong... it all happened so fast, how did I get this far? I wonder if Adam and Eve had this same feeling. The serpent appears in the calm, the quietness of the garden. It sees God's image in the stillness, pure and unashamed. It approaches with a simple question. Yet little did they know, the question challenged everything. Then before you know it, they are naked, ashamed, and stripped of their innocence... that's it. It has been done. Sin. How many times does this happen in our everyday lives? We act on impulse and are left hurt, hurting others, and further away from the One who has given us life from the beginning.

Yet the beauty of it all is that God didn't abandon us to this cycle. From the very moment it happened, God had a plan to redeem. How great His love for me. He is patient with me even when I constantly break His heart.

Battles.

The battle is easy until you leave yourself vulnerable. I've taken a hundred steps forward and somehow I ended up a hundred steps behind from where I started! I guess I wasn't as strong as I thought I was. I was foolish. Friday David and I had dinner together, and I was fine until the end when he told me how he would look at his phone and want me to call at night... I guess what was going on in my head was that he still desired me... so it gave me hope that he would want to be with me...or maybe the lack of interaction made him realize that he wanted to take the steps to be committed to me. So that night began the emotional attachment again. The most foolish thing I did was that I wore the promise ring he gave me... later realizing that there was no promise at all. Last night we decided to pull back on the communication. It was honesty more painful than the break up itself...basically cried myself to sleep. I'm surprised how hard I could fall in one weekend.

During College Life, Jeremy mentioned that it's not bad to have desires for marriage because that is how God designed us to be... to desire relationships. I guess my situation is that I'm not afraid of marriage, and a lot of people are...so of course, no one in a relationship right now knows how I feel!! People are content with being in a relationship and not moving towards marriage, but I can't play with emotions like that. I'm still confused on how people can make dating glorifying to God. People say it's okay to kiss, but agree that making out isn't...well I kinda put those things in the same category. I don't know one dating couple who doesn't struggle with physicalness, I don't know a dating couple who hasn't made out. In Bible study we saw in Galations 5 that the bible makes it very clear and how we live is very black and white. Yet, there are so many things Christians do that they think is permissible just because they don't have a conviction about it. If I go to the store and notice that the cashier didn't charge me for something, it doesn't take a genius to know that if I don't say anything, it's still stealing. Even if I'm not convicted of it, I still know the difference between right and wrong. I feel like the things I say to people don't even matter. I guess people can just live how they want. It's all the Lord's work anyways.

Truth

Freedom in Christ... I am no longer a slave to the flesh and I refuse to be! Tonight at bible study we read through Galations 5 and the first verse says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. STAND FIRM, then, and DO NOT LET yourselves be burdened AGAIN by a yoke of slavery." Christ has set me free, but that does not mean I will be immune to sin. Sometimes I wonder, why would I ever want to fall back into the very sin that has been a chain around my neck for so long? It doesn't make sense to revert back when Christ has clearly set me free!

Last night I read the passage in Romans 7:7-25 about why we still struggle with sin. In verse 21-23 it says, "when i want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members." From what we talked about in bible study a couple weeks ago, struggling with sin is like a bad song stuck in your head. You want it to stop, but it keeps playing over and over in your head until it begins to drive you crazy! The body still remembers the sin and still desires for it, but my soul desires Truth! This is why Galations 5:1 speaks so strongly to me, "DO NOT LET yourselves to be burdened AGAIN!" Every single night for the past week I've been looking back on my life and wished it was back to how it use to be. Yeah I'll admit, I miss the dates, I miss the closeness, I miss the intimacy, holding hands, and spending every day together. The flesh still remembers and desires it! But I can stand firmly and declare that I CHOOSE JESUS! I realize that I want to go back to dating when I look backwards, but I am filled with hope when I look forward. I must not only look forward, but move forward! I can't wait to go on dates with my husband,and not have them end at ten o'clock! I can't wait until I can hold my husband at the end of the day, unlike a boyfriend who has to leave me at the end of the day. Although, my flesh still desires my past, I can still feel the heartache from following the flesh and how much it weighs on the soul. The Spirit in me desires Truth and I have felt the chains lifted from my shoulders, why would I ever turn back?

my heart

These past 3-4 weeks, I have been crying constantly. This week alone I've broken down five times. My heart aches for something more. I yearn for the things of God and for things to be right. From the consequences of my sin, God is healing me.

Christ gives an everlasting hope and in Him I am washed white as snow. Though my heart chases after other lovers, He comes after me and still calls me his beloved. No matter how hard I try to run towards the road that leads to death, He pulls me back into the shelter of His arms. How many times will my heart long for the things of this world when He has proven himself over and over again.

trusting, praying, trusting, praying. trusting. praying, praying

I think at this point in my life, trusting the Lord is all I can do. I guess this week has kind of been a little weird. I see all these things that I have no control over and I'm willing to surrender it to the Lord. Yet, at the same time I'm scared that I might hold on to things too tightly, so I end up not wanting to have any emotion towards the important things in my life. A lot of things can happen in a short amount of time. If I lose my passions, my relationship, my plans in life, I still want to rejoice in the Lord for the things he's done in my life. Although this is true, I shouldn't approach everything with an apathetic attitude in fear that the Lord might take it all away and I'll be left heartbroken because I held everything so tightly.

People say the important things in life are worth fighting for...But what if you're fighting for something that you think is important but in reality, it's not? What if you're fighting just to hold on to it? What if the hole you've been digging all along is just so deep that you're comfortable in it? Maybe I want to fight the one who wants to rescue me from this hole, but I want to justify that the hole is safe, secure, and good for me?

I'm probably just rambling now... I guess I don't really know what's going on inside of me but God knows and he I trust that he will sort it all out. The thing is, he already has sorted it all out, I just need to remain obedient and patient.

inner battles

I've spent the past year and a half obsessing over marriage. I would think about it every single day and wonder about my wedding. It was so extreme, it would be the only thing I wanted to talk about when I talked to David. A year and a half of this. Over winter break God convicted me of my obsession with marriage. I was so consumed with my earthly wedding that I didn't even look forward or care about the day when Jesus comes for His bride. The vision of my life stopped at my wedding, I can't imagine how disappointed I would have been when my wedding ended and had nothing else to look forward to.

These past few weeks I've stopped thinking about marriage. Instead, I've been focusing on having a kingdom vision. It was really hard at first because there was a day when my day was filled with me overhearing people talk about marriage as I walked to my classes. I was extremely sensitive to the words: engaged, wedding, ring, and married. I wanted to get married so bad because I thought it would end my struggles with physicalness and that it was the only way to make things right. Some things I still can't understand, but I'm trusting God for those things.

Although I'm doing well in this area, there's another thing that has sprung up. Friday was David and my 2 year anniversary. It was the original date he was going to propose to me. Things just come up and plans change. Since I stopped thinking about marriage, I was fine with not being engaged. I praise God he took away such an unhealthy obsession so quickly! But the problem now isn't wondering about when I'm going to be engaged, but how can I put off marriage. It's pretty confusing. How could I desire something so badly that I don't want it anymore? For our 2 year, David sang me a song he wrote, which was really sweet of him, but I remember my mind started to freak out when he sang lyrics that sounded like marriage vows. Suddenly everything started to seem real when he gave me a promise ring. Isn't this what I wanted? Wasn't this the direction I nagged him to go in for a year and a half?! Now, i'm just... terrified.

I think I'm feeling this way because these past few weeks, I've been wanting to accomplish things in my season of singleness before I get married. I'm wanting to do things by myself instead of "settling down." I can see this manifesting to something unhealthy too. I've been praying that God would help me embrace my singleness, but not make me oppose marriage if it comes earlier than I want. It's all a delicate balance. In His perfect timing it will all fall into place. I'm just nervous to see how it's all going to work out, especially with my parents. Marriage is not only two people who love each other, it's a union between families. That's also another thing that makes my heart break. I want my parent's approval. Not just that, I want them to embrace this relationship I'm in and be genuinely happy about it. I want them to be involved and have their guidance, but it just seems so awkward now.

I trust God. I'm not putting my trust in Him making things happen how I want them to. I trust that he will make things happen for His glory and in His perfect timing it will be known and understood the things He's done. I have to protect my heart. Since David is not my husband, I shouldn't assume he already is. Lord, I trust you. All of this is beyond my control.

memories

I don't really know how I feel right now. I guess the only word I can think of is... numb? I had a concert tonight... and David said he was going to be there, but he didn't end up going because he overslept. It wasn't really what he did that's making me feel "numb"...it's just that it brought back some memories that I've kept buried for a while. Whenever I have a performance, I don't tell anybody...it's because I've decided to stop telling people. I guess tonight just brought me back to the night when I decided that I would never tell anyone about my performances again.

If anyone knew me back in high school, they knew that I was crazy about music. I joined every ensemble I could. My favorite was being part of the pit for musicals. I remember the day I declared to myself that music was what I had to be doing for the rest of my life...it was while I was in the pit for Cinderella my freshman year of high school. I loved the atmosphere, the architecture of the performance hall, the intimacy of a small ensemble...and what better way to make it all come alive than to share it with someone.

Senior year of high school. The musical was "Fiddler on the Roof" and I was so excited for it. the music was great, the setup and the effects on stage were amazing...i couldn't wait to be part of the production. I told my parents that they should come see the show, and they said they would come on a saturday night. Well, saturday night came and I remember looking out in the crowd to find my parents, it was a big performing room so they could have been anywhere. I didn't find them, but I just assumed that I wasn't looking hard enough, or that they were running late. As the show started, I played my part and was enjoying every moment of it... When intermission came around, I gave it another shot of search the audience for my parents. I still couldn't find them. I don't know why it never occurred to me that they simply just didn't show up. Even at intermission when I couldn't find them, I still hoped that they would be there.

I don't remember if it was through a voicemail or when I came home, but my dad said that he and my mom didn't go because they needed to save money. At that time, they were throwing parties every week at our new house, and it didn't make sense to me that they could spend hundreds of dollars each week for throw parties but couldn't spend $20 on tickets to be a part of what I was so passionate about. I think that night just ended with me crying for the rest of the night.... it's not the fact that they didn't show up. It was fact that I had the hope and the expectation that they would care. It wasn't the realization what they weren't there... It's the part where I'm looking out into the crowd...hoping to find them smiling back at me and finding joy in the things I took joy in. That was the night when I realized that there's actually nobody out there in the crowd. I was simply looking for someone who wasn't there in the first pace.

Ever since then, that's how it's been. I don't tell anybody about my performances anymore because I'm the only one who cares about it...when I think about it... I don't even care anymore. I dread performances now, I can't sit through a full concert, I end up leaving after ten minutes... I dread band rehearsals...I don't want to say "hate" but I hate it all.

My concert tonight was no big deal. I didn't even care about it. But the part that I was expecting David to be there when he said he would, just brought back those memories in high school. I'm not upset at him, I'm not angry, or disappointed... I feel numb because I just don't want to bring back those memories.