Movie, Book, and a Wedding

Monday:

Cheryl convinced me to watch "The Story of Us" at her house. Her exact words were. "You'll love it!" I didn't. Don't recommend it at all, as it was pretty awful... Basically, it was about a marriage gone bad (the husband and wife were clearly not Christian, duh!) and how in the end they finally saw each other from the other's perspective, but yet nothing got resolved. Sorry, but I disagree that love is enough to make a relationship work. Love needs to be backed up by a commitment, which ideally should be rooted in a relationship with Christ. Pride and Prejudice still stands alone as my ultimate relationship movie because of its sweetness, innocence and purity, without all the yelling and profanity which I just can not stand. In the end, it just showed the kind of marriage I NEVER want to have. Relationships are hard enough as it is... Being in one without God is downright impossible.



Thursday:


Before I left Cheryl's on Monday, I took a few books from her that I wanted to read, one of them being Quest for Love: True Stories of Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot, the author or Passion and Purity. I obviously didn't realize that, or else I wouldn't have taken the book... I only took it because I thought it would be filled with a bunch of cute, sweet, heartwarming love stories to make me feel all good and fuzzy inside... Boy, was I dead wrong! There is absolutely NOTHING cute about that book! It is a HARD read! Quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to meet this lady... I haven't read Passion and Purity for a reason... I've been scared to... Well, I got a good dose of its medicine with this book and boy, oh boy, was it needed... I got slapped BIG TIME! I finally got around to reading the book Thursday morning, and as I told Cheryl later on that evening, I was perfectly happy before I opened it, but by the third chapter or so, it was like buckets of ice cold water were being poured over my hot sun drenched skin. It hurt that bad... I was in shock, in tears, full of pain, anguish, and disappointment in myself as I finally saw what I was doing from God's perspective and was faced with an ultimatum: either to obey once and for all, suffering temporary pain or bear consequences of a more serious nature than just a broken heart.

Granted, the book is old and its author even older, with most of the stories taking place in the 18 and 19 hundreds and having to do with missionary couples. As irrelevant as some stories were to my contemporary life, the timeless principles still stood. There were also enough current examples to show me that I wasn't the first one to make these mistakes, and make me realize that my situation was not an exception to the rule. So yea... it was so blunt and so clear... LOL, I guess God got tired of me going back and forth on this and decided to set me straight... very firmly. Every love story is different while every heartbreak story is usually the same... you can see it coming a mile away. When God's basic principles of male/female relationships are broken, a happy ending is no longer a possibility. Now that I look back, I see that I broke the most basic principles right from the beginning... bending them little by little until they snapped one by one. My "passion" got the best of my "purity" and I've been stifling God's whisper in heart informing me of a way of escape because I couldn't bear the thought of giving up what has come to be so dear to me. Well now the whisper has turned into an undeniable shout. There's really only one way to deal with a tangled mass of confusion... As I poured my heart out to God in sorrow and repentance, my prayer was, "Lord, if it is Your will, I know You can make it happen in Your time under different circumstances, and I would love that, but if not, please remove it from my heart and life forever."

Friday:

I've been looking forward to Brian and Melissa's wedding for a while now... Mostly because I know Brian and well, I've been close with Melissa ever since she moved here and started coming to YP. I remember all the times we talked on the phone and hung out and discussed boys ;) I remember standing in the card isle at Safeway when she called me freaking out because Brian asked her out for the first time right in front of a guy she was "in love with" at the moment. I remember her telling God that He's got the wrong guy and Him in return responding, no, I've got the RIGHT guy, it's you who has the WRONG one. I just love their love story... It's quirky, funny, and very sweet... I'm so happy for them... Their story is a true testimony of God's involvement and faithfulness in the most intimate areas of our lives... He is SO GOOD!!!