Today’s blog is for the people who are or who want to be in a relationship – because I feel you. I’ve already had a journey with love, but I’m hopeful that God has marriage for me in the future.
A mentor of mine asked me an important question when I told him this:
Why do you want to be married? Do you want to be a husband? Do you want to be a protector? Do you want to be a provider?
Normally when we hear someone talk about relationships, we hear about what they want, not what they want to be. But when I think about this, I know I want to be a husband. And you might be there too, wondering, when you’re going to get the chance.
In my own experience, there are 3 things that keep us from relationships.
One is failure.
A lot of us have failed in past relationships, and we’ve lost people we loved. But there’s an element of grace we’ve got to receive so that we can be the men we were always meant to be, even if we’ve failed in the past.
The second is insecurity.
Standing on the other side of divorce, I struggle with this. I often try to fulfill something that I think is lacking in me. I have baggage that I haven’t been able to unpack, and trauma that I may understand but I haven’t been able to release yet.
At times, I’ve looked to relationships to affirm my past failures or to fill the insecurities I’m carrying but in reality, I can only sort that out with myself and with God.
As I’ve gotten into the Bible and what it says about marriage, I can see that it’s the coming together of two whole people to form a single union. But what happens when people who don’t know themselves enough to come together as one?
For me personally, I can sometimes relate better to a woman I’m interested in than I can relate to myself. I can even love someone else better than myself. But then I think of this verse, “So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church.” (Ephesians 5:28–29) The Bible assumes that we are taking care of ourselves and then can as a byproduct, we can care for someone else.
At times, I’ve looked to relationships to affirm my past failures or to fill the insecurities I’m carrying but in reality, I can only sort that out with myself and with God.
In order for me to love someone else, I’ve got to learn to love myself. I need to become intimately familiar with the identity that God placed on me so that I can securely love the identity of a woman.
If I’m not able to create my own boundaries and respect my own boundaries, then it’s going to be tough for me to respect someone else’s.
In order for me to love someone else, I’ve got to learn to love myself.
The third thing keeping some of us from relationships is isolation.
This is especially true if you’ve experienced hurt in the past. There is a learned line of creating boundaries and using them to build walls that keep people out. Boundaries are created to guide healthy relationships but don’t allow your walls to blind you from the love that could be coming your way.
At the end of the day, we have to be able to look at our lives and find grace for our failures. We've got to fall in love with ourselves and learn to let God bring the right people to us. I want to be a husband, but I spend the most time with me, and I want that time to be a space I’m comfortable in.
If you’re a man or a woman who can relate to any of this, leave a comment and we can chop it up there.
Live love,
Ty
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