V-Day Memorial

I guess I should apologize for taking so long in writing a Valentines Day blog. There seems to be a blogging phenomenon that single bloggers blog something about V-Day. It’s usually about what they did to subsitute the lack of romance, how they coped with the feeling of depression, and of course there’s the frustrated rant of the meaningless Hallmark created holiday–that V-Day is as commercialized as Christmas. Sometimes, you’ll get the optimistic blog of the hopeful romantic.

My Valentines Day was spent running errands. I closed a savings account I don’t use–got ten dollars, and I renewed my drivers license (see my flickr pictures)–which cost me ninety dollars. I asked the lady at the Drivers’ License office what day it was, and she said, “Valentines Day.” I replied, “That’s how you can tell I’m single!” She laughed.

Over the Christmas break I went through the really depressed period. That one that hits you now and then. There was like this rushing wind blowing boyfriends into the lives of girls, and it seemed like there was a handful of people my age, or younger getting engaged and married.

A few weeks ago I was lying in bed, and thought about this whole thing. You know, the thing about me being single and not having a girlfriend. I started thinking about God, and the plans that He has for my life. I concluded that the reason I don’t have a girlfriend is probably for reasons of timing, and that it’s all integrated into the big picture of the Kingdom. It’s just the way God wants things. When you look at things this way, you stop feeling like a loser and a man of lesser value.

I have been reading Erwin McManus’s book Uprising, Erwin is the guy who wrote the Barbarian book that lately has been getting a lot of attention. The last chapter I read was about humility. Erwen makes the following statement about how we treat others:

“We are to relate to one another in such a way that the other is always valued above ourselves.”

While I was lying on my bed, and just after I had the revelation that my dating status had nothing to do with who I am but rather with God’s timing, something hit me really hard, and it came rather unsuspectingly. It fluttered like a butterfly, but stung like a bee.

My conclusion and reasoning about it just being God’s timing, was all part of a bigger lie.

Listen to some of the things I’ve been telling myself:

“It’s okay that I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“It’s not God’s will that I have a girlfriend.”
“I feel like a loser since I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Why won’t she like me?”
“Why won’t any girls like me?”

Are you starting to get the picture yet?

The problem with our dating philosophy is that it is very me and I centred. And this is a very big problem. It’s about us getting a girlfriend, a fiancee, a wife. About us having a soulmate who meets our requirements. Dating is like buying or using a computer, we want one that suits us.

What if we changed some things around? What if the focus was our role and responsibility to the other person, instead of fulfulling some need of ours? Instead of getting a girlfriend, you became a boyfriend. Instead of getting a wife, you became a husband.

Instead of getting, it’s about giving. Instead of seeing her as something I’m missing, I see her as someone I’m preparing for. Instead of not having, it’s about not being. Instead of being about me, it’s about someone else.

I realize that there is a lot of pain in this world, so probably much of what I said doesn’t make much sense. If it doesn’t, I pray that one day it does. If you read through your own blogs, very often your struggle will be over something you don’t have, a friend who mistreated you, or someway you were cheated. So why should anyone have to live for other people? It makes sense to live for myself.

But was love suppose to be selfish?

(*Note that I wrote this from a guy’s perspective, so please substitute the correct sex–it’s just easier to write it from my perspective. Also, this post is part of a theme that I’m going to be blogging about over the next few days or weeks, you know those truth butterflies.)

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