not a girlfriend
It’s in the most pain-filled moments I realize that God is my Portion. When that one thing I’ve been putting my hope in for happiness - my life and my salvation - dies, I see. And as I give it up to the Lord, I understand what is not my Portion and Who is.
I grew up in the church but became a Christian the summer before my freshman year in high school. On a cold dark floor of a retreat center, I pray and see a picture of where I stand in relation to God. Full disclosure - I just heard the speaker talk about the devil, the enemy of God trying to lure me away from God. Young and impressionable I know, but the distance I feel from God is real. And in my pre-high school mind I reason, “if I am this distant from God, I must be pretty darn close to the other guy.” I stretch out my hand, earnestly asking God to reach out to me, to pull me up, and to close the distance. I believe that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, God draws me close, even though I’ve done nothing to merit or deserve it. And in my mind’s eye, I see Jesus reach out with his arms and grasp my hand. With a firm grip, he pulls me and lifts me up. He seats me right beside him, next to the Creator of the universe. I thank Jesus because the vast distance was bridged. The price was paid.
I stretch out my hand, earnestly asking God to reach out to me…
…pull me up, and to close the distance.
My life begins to change after that moment in ways that I’ve never experienced before. I’ve gone to a dozen church retreats before, all through my years in middle school, and have these “spiritual highs” afterwards. These are periods of a week to a month where I am really passionate about God, and where my prayer and Bible reading times peak and then fade away. This time is different. I am not content with another spiritual high, and neither is God. He takes me to a new level as I grapple with the feelings of my new identity as a Christian.
A week later, I am hanging out with my best friends at the mall. As we walk around and hang out over food, something tugs at my heart. I feel strangely uncomfortable with them. When I return home I can’t shake the feeling, so I decide for the first time in my life to go for an evening walk. Three steps out the door, I sob and weep not really knowing why. I later understand that those uncomfortable feeling are a result of many different emotions that were bottled up inside. I feel disconnected from my friends. They don’t know me. How could they? I’m living two lives - one as passionate Christian that my church friends see and one as a regular student just like everyone else. All at once I’m happy to be a Christian but don’t feel understood by anyone - not my family, school friends or church friends. I continue to walk along the streets sorting through my emotions and praying to God.
I feel so lonely. What should I do?
Ninth grade is a lonely year as I make an attempt to explain the gospel to my friends and how it’s changed me. I fail. I estrange myself from them and continue to feel just as disconnected with my family and church friends. I take evening walks three or four times a week that year. I listen to Christian music, pray for my friends, and commune with God. I also journal for the first time. Almost every night now. The only person I can share my feelings with is God through my journal. Out of these desperate feelings of loneliness, confusion, and a desire to love others, I long for a girlfriend. Someone I can love and loves me back. I dream that we understand each other completely. We have the same feelings of loneliness. She understands the pain I’m in because she’s feeling it too. We’re even reading the same devotional book - My Utmost for His Highest. I imagine a chance meeting on the street as I walk around my neighborhood. I imagine we meet on a ski lift during a family ski vacation. Though I’ve never felt so close to God in my life before, I feel I need a real person to talk to. I need someone who I can share my journal writings with.
Out of these desperate feelings of loneliness, confusion, and a desire to love others, I long for a girlfriend.
Over the school year, I feel less lonely. The only semblance of hope that someone out there understands what loneliness feels like came from a study note in my Bible.
[Loneliness is rampant. Instead of feeling self-pity for not having friends. Try to be a friend to others. This is the gist, but need to insert real quote here.]
I take its advice and try to be a friend to others. But secretly, I still search for that special someone. It helps, but leads me to deeper loneliness and self-pity at times. Why am I the only one giving and caring for others? Who is caring for me?
That summer, a friend from church invites me to join him at an elite summer school program in New Hampshire. Yes, it’s school in the summer, but it’s also a chance to be away from home for a summer and on my own - not to mention, it’s the opportunity of lifetime for a rising high school sophomore to find his future wife.
I waste no time - the first week I meet someone who has almost all of the characteristics I’m looking for. Same Korean-American background, Christian, and lives 20 minutes from me by car. She’s pretty and we click. By the end of the first week of our six-week program I ask her out. I have my first slow dance. I get my first kiss on the cheek. But it’s clear from the beginning that we are on two separate tracks. I am already talking about introducing her to my parents, while she is thinking about running for the hills.
Seven days later, my dream, my answer to countless prayers to God, ends when she breaks up with me. I should have seen it coming. Though the song playing for our first slow dance was “I Swear” by Boyz 2 Men, a week later, 20 minutes before we break up, we dance to “End of the Road.” You can’t make this stuff up!
You can’t make this stuff up!
It’s my first girlfriend. My heart shatters. I lock myself in my room my friend from my home church looks for me. He knocks at the door. I don’t answer. I’m hurting. I feel sorry for myself. I try to make sense of it all. I turn down all the lights. Sitting in darkness and nursing my emotional wounds, I hear, “Knock, knock, knock! Are you in there? Open up.” I’m too embarrassed to open the door. I wipe away my tears and turn to the Bible looking for answers.
For weeks leading up to this night, I was reading and thinking about a particular story. I saw a link between my story and how the people of Israel longed for a king. After Moses and Joshua led the Israelites, the young nation is ruled by judges who speak for God and settle disputes. The text of 1 Kings 8 reads:
When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have (emphasis added).”
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”
What can I learn from a broken heart?
For the entire year I was asking God for a girlfriend, someone to understand me, and someone who I could love in return. I wanted to be like everyone else who was in a relationship. God gave me ample warning that a girlfriend would not satisfy my loneliness or deepest emotional needs. But as my heart continually longed for a girlfriend, God answered. He answered by allowing me to pair up with a girl who met almost all my standards for a girlfriend.
When the Israelites continually asked for a king, they rejected God. He wanted the people to rely on Himself. He would be their king. He would be their everything. But in his wisdom, God answered the Israelites and allowed them to have their king. But in the end, the first king rejected God and treated the people harshly. Just like my first girlfriend! Just kidding! HA!
By my constant longing for a girlfriend, I rejected God. I placed my need for a girlfriend above my need for a relationship with Him. In his wisdom, he allowed me to have a girlfriend, albeit just for a week. He also allowed me to experience the pain of a broken relationship. It was like God knew that it was the only way I could learn that a girlfriend was not the answer to my loneliness.
God comforted me that night. Through the feelings of pain and hurt, God reached out to my heart and revealed a lesson about Himself and about myself that I realize now I could not have learned in any other way except through this pain. I had a need in me that could only be filled by God Himself. I realized my inmost needs could not be met by any person. I was looking for that understanding and that love and joy in another person, but all the while God was right there bringing me to a place where I would realize that he was my first love.
After King Saul, God installs a king who really follows after Him, King David. It was now my time of waiting so God could prepare me for that relationship that he had in mind for me. In the meantime, I began the process of living up to the lesson God revealed to me in my dormitory room of my summer program, that a girlfriend was not the answer to my loneliness. I need to seek God as my king, my lover, and my closest friend before I would be ready to be in a mature committed relationship. In truth, the process took months and years to fully lay down, several times of symbolically laying down my hopes and dreams for a girlfriend and letting go of the pain of loneliness.
The lesson: my needs could not be met by a girlfriend. God wanted to meet those needs with Himself.
Observation - What was your first relationship like?
Understanding - If you broke up, how did that impact your walk with God?
Application - What steps can I take to grow in my love relationship with God?
