Monday, November 28, 2011.

I spent the first part of my evening with the book “Pride and Prejudice” and a tall Starbucks chai. It was nice: a great read, delicious drink, just enjoying being 23.

I spent the second part of my night with a family: a mom, dad, and five daughters, all under the age of seven. We ate dinner and dessert and drank coffee and told stories and talked about serving the Lord in Africa – their desire and my own. I shared my dream for my love life with the wife, a lady I respect a great deal. I left with a full heart, full belly, and a vase full of yellow roses, my early get-well-soon present for Wednesday’s surgery.

God is so faithful. When the desires of my heart are in line with His will and His character, He lovingly and willingly grants them. My confidence, my hope and my joy and my faith, is not based on God’s actions, but on His character. Who He is.

I’ve struggled the last few days with that relationship that ended a couple of months ago. I’ve struggled with things that happened in the relationship, things that have happened since, what the end of it means for my future. I get braces put on tomorrow (Tuesday) and part of me thinks that if I have braces, I’ll never get married! Like I ruined my chance with him (and any boy!) when I had it.

But I know those are not words of Truth. It is Good that that relationship ended. Good for both of us, really, though maybe for different reasons. I do not change because of braces. I am still me – Melissa, age 23, Project Administrator/Change Management Coordinator. Because of all the recent struggles, however, I have developed (or there has developed within me) a new desire for my love life.

I really – REALLY – want to be in love with the Lord. I want to be so wrapped up in His love, in His pursuit of me (and my pursuit of Him), and in what He is accomplishing in my life… I want to be so caught up in our Royal wedding dance that I don’t even notice a boy until He has sought the Lord and requested from Him the privilege of cutting in on my dance with God. And only when that man steps in, takes my hand, and leads me in the dance will I acknowledge him in my heart. I want to know that the Lord has placed me in this man’s hands – that I have been turned over to him, so to speak, and that YWHW is looking on with pleasure and delight, just tickled pink that He can dance with both of us from that day forward.

I want to do what God has for me to do, with boldness and enthusiasm and all the fruit the Spirit of God can muster. I want to serve willingly and passionately: in GAs, at work, in my family and among my friends. And I think that it is while I am doing that – while I am pursuing God and His will in my life – that I will find The One With Whom I Am To Spend The Rest Of My Life. Not before.

That’s my heart right now. That’s where I’m at. Let’s do this.