Awaking Love

Dear Teenage Darcy,

Your 16th year was marked with many changes, many more steps closer to independence from your family. Although you enjoyed many of those changes as the year progressed, you struggled with who you saw yourself as. New Year's Eve of your 16th year was a down year, you were broken-hearted because so many people in your life had "someone." You found an interest in your life at that point, and you acknowledge that it was infatuation but you had hoped it to be more than that. You plainly stated that you had "wished it was love."

Oh girl, how this statement has been uttered many times throughout your life in various relationships with guys who walked in and out of your life. But something you need to know at this point that would drastically change the course of your life: true love looks so unlike what the world would have you believe. At this point in your life, you think that love is dependent upon what you can see and what that person can do for you. But love is so much more than that. Words are difficult to form into a real sentence about what love really is, but I can assure you that many of the guys you met in your teens and early 20s had no right to really be as close to your heart as you had let them get. You saw the exterior and thought that having a great exterior made for a great interior, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Something I wish that you could grasp at this age is this: enjoy the time of innocence in your life and quit trying to be someone that you are not supposed to be. Being yourself is the greatest gift you could ever give someone else, and if someone chose not to be in a relationship with you that's not your fault. You cannot choose or control someone for not being the person you want them to be, but you can become the woman that you are called to be. The only person that you can control is yourself, and loving yourself is far more significant in an relationship than anything else.

Song of Solomon 2:7 says to not awaken love until it so desires. Love, in the purest form, is not controlled or manipulated. It is not rushed or forced. True, pure love is patient and honoring of a person's character and heart. Looking at God's response to His people in the Bible, you see that He's patient and allows His people space to do their own things. He doesn't force them to have a relationship with them, He allows them to go off and live the life they would choose. But when they come to their senses, when they find themselves in the darkest pit of life, He answers their prayers and comforts them in their greatest time of need. So when someone moves away from you relationally, just trust that God is protecting you from something that you may not be able to see right now. And know that when His appointed time for love happens, it will happen:)

You are a precious gem, and I truly hope and pray that you fully grasp the depths to which you are loved by God and those He's placed in your life. Just because it seems as though you are alone because you don't have a dating relationship doesn't mean that you're alone. It means that you're prized enough in the eyes of God to put a barrier between the those boys who aren't worthy to have your presence and you. Just because you're the "only" one (which you aren't, by the way) who doesn't have a relationship doesn't mean that you're a social leper. It means that God wants to keep you for just the right man at the right time. For now, just enjoy learning about the woman God has called you to be and be thankful for the intimacy you have with the one who breathed the very existence into you.

We'll talk soon, and enjoy your holiday weekend!