I found my purpose in marriage, believing that life began when I got married. If I could just make it to the wedding day, everything would be smooth sailing. I wasn’t thinking about the rest of my life like God was.
I didn’t prize Christ. I didn’t see Him as the greatest gift ever given to me because marriage was the greatest gift. Sharing my life with another human being was the greatest thing ever. I longed for intimacy, happy moments, and experiencing life together.
I longed for those fairytales I saw in movies that shaped my idea of how relationships and marriage should go. And when that didn’t happen, I felt torn up inside, like my whole life had fallen apart and I had nothing to live for.
But I also longed to experience the intimacy with Jesus that many people talked about because I had heard He was the only One who could fulfill me. I always felt as though receiving His fulfillment was out of reach. I felt like I was doing something wrong that other people were seemingly getting right.
Even though I was in an unknown place, I held onto the belief that Jesus would come and meet me where I was. I didn’t have to run after Him or pretend to be somewhere I wasn’t. I could stop pretending so He could heal and fulfill what was missing from my life.
I’d reached a point where I no longer desired fleeting love but firm and steadfast love. Love that wasn’t temporary but eternal.
And I now know that that kind of love is God-given, not from another flawed human. Even though this love was already available, I didn’t know how to receive that type of love, but I trusted that Jesus knew.
Jesus let me go after what I thought I wanted to expose the emptiness within me and the emptiness of fleeting love. To show me that what I really desired was Him. He began purifying my desire for marriage and showed me that He wasn’t withholding marriage, but He wanted to give me Himself first.
I wrote this in December last year (with a little bit of editing) after I had a bit of an epiphany and grew tired of trying to find fulfillment outside of God.
Since then, I’ve learned that it’s okay to desire love. In fact, love is a great thing; it’s a God thing, and anything God creates is good.
What is not good is looking to people to be a primary solution to the emptiness we feel inside. Searching for love solely outside of God will temporarily satisfy us.
And as we become hungry again, we place expectations on people to be something that they could never be.
We demand that they heal what’s missing from our lives, not realizing that what people have to offer will always come up short.
So God invites us in. He longs to show us that what we are looking for is Him. He longs to reveal that we can place those demands on Him because He can meet them, and what He has to offer won’t be temporary.
God says He is the well that never runs dry and the bread of life. He invites us to come feast, without cost, on what will last.
And so, how do we find what we’re searching for in God? By developing a relationship with Him. And it really all starts with a prayer as simple as, “God, I need You.”
Be blessed, my friend. I love you.
Chronicles of a Believer 
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