Finding contentment in singleness: big hearts are for breaking.

I love “love”. I love loving people. I love seeing people in love. Love makes me happy… to the point that I crave it. I crave relationships. I crave love. Now, psychiatrists would say, “Oh, you must have had absent parents so you try to fill that craving for love from guys.” This, my friends, is a HUGE misinterpretation. My parents – my family – have always been there for me and loved me with every morsel of their soul. You see, I’m just a romantic. It’s as simple as that. And that’s OK. It’s actually caused a lot of heartache, but it’s still OK.  There’s never really been a season in my life where I’ve been content with being single… until now.

I have spent my life pouring my talents, gifts and heart into guys who are quick to receive them but fail in returning any of their hearts or talents back into me. This probably sounds tremendously selfish, but it’s not. In relationships, when I break up with a guy, it’s because I feel like he has stopped caring. That’s been the only reason for any of my break-ups. I have painted so many pictures for male friends (also known to me as ‘prospects’). I’ve made them cards. I’ve done sketches of things that I know are special to them. I've made endless mixed CD's for them. Honestly, I feel like that’s all been wasted time and heart. Maybe they treasure the things I’ve made for them – but how silly is it of me to have already given away so much of myself to guys who won’t be the man that I spend the rest of my life with? I hadn’t even made my best girl friends paintings until I had found that I was completely content in this season of singleness.

  

By the way, this is the painting I did for Laura – it’s lyrics from a Jack’s Mannequin song, American Love. We went to the concert together and honestly, I think that was one of the highlights of our awesome friendship. I remember her yelling these lyrics at the top of her lungs… because our hearts are big. And they’ve been broken. And that’s OK. Obviously, a guy won’t ever be able to heal that brokenness, only the Savior can… but at the same time, I know we will meet men who won’t break them in a way past boyfriends have.

Please know that I have no desire to get married anytime soon. I'm not in any rush. Just to clear the water on that one if you were getting a different impression. In fact, I’ve decided to soak and revel in my time of singleness. Learn from it and write about it. There are days when it’s incredibly rough – like when you hear about so many people around you getting married and engaged… all at one time. Oh, and springtime – totally my season for love. But then I realize how much time I have to enjoy complete independence. Granted, I will still consider myself to be strong and independent when I get married. I think that’s one characteristic that my husband will find attractive about me – that I love him and need him but won’t be completely and utterly dependent upon him, that I can still be my own person. I mean, I hope he’ll find it attractive, because that’s how I’m going to be. But I will also be madly in love with him, and that will be all he needs to know. Through a new goal of creating things only for my girl friends, family and maybe customers soon, I will truly be saving my best for my husband. How cool is that? As content as I am, the wait is getting tougher, just because I have so much love to pour into him. There are so many things I want to share with him… but I will spend this time progressing in my talents and making him things during the wait. Plus, this will be my time to grow by myself before we can grow together. He’s the only one who will truly receive all of me – not just physically, but with everything – and that’s awesome. 

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And I wanted to end the post on this. Because my great-grandmother (yes, I am fortunate enough to still have all of my grandparents alive, as well as a great-grandparent... and she's actually a great-great-grandmother) is the coolest. She fell the other day and broke her leg, but no worries. She's still awesome. She loves getting cards so this one will be on its way in a day or so. I love her.