Pursued

My heart was made to be pursued.

As a woman, it's etched in my DNA. I want to be questioned, sought after, remembered, asked to dance, asked my opinion, asked if I'm okay. I want to be valued, respected, worth getting to know, worth fighting for.

God made me this way because it was always his plan to pursue me. He knows exactly how to communicate love to me, and he goes all out. His love ascribes value to my life. It sets me free to be myself.

My job is to learn how to be pursued by him. To accept his sheer pleasure in who I am. To love myself because he says I'm worthy of his love. Self-hatred and insecurity melted away the minute Jesus held a mirror to my face and said, "This is what I see when I look at you." It was nothing like what I saw when I looked at myself.

For years, shame drove me into hiding. I tried to clean my life up, fix my brokenness, and heal my own wounds so I could offer God something other than a total mess. I wanted him, but I was afraid he'd stop loving me when he saw the real me. Shame sabotages relationship.

But God, like the King he is, pursued me anyway, in the midst of my brokenness and shame. That's real love. As I relinquished my shame, he gave me promises in its place. He's a gentle physician. He's a patient lover.  My junk doesn't determine his faithfulness. My imperfections don't intimidate him - he fills in all the gaps for me. All I have to do is... let him.

No human relationship can ever satisfy us the way our very existence requires satisfaction. We need human relationships to be healthy, but only relationship with God can make us whole. Jesus came to give life, and relationship is life-giving. That's why He keeps pursuing us even after we get saved. He's the definition of romance.

Relationship with God is forever. Learning to be pursued by God isn't just "practice" for a human relationship, it's the very reason I was born. Marriage is gonna be great one day, but it's just a shadow of the most important relationship in the universe. When that day comes, I won't need a man's love to sustain me, because I am being sustained by Love himself.

Being pursued is empowering. The spirit of love we've been given is also a spirit of power. The world looks at unmarried people and calls them "singles," as if they lack something. But the truth is that when God captivates your heart, he gives you a spirit of power that will sustain you for life. I'm not sitting around waiting to experience love, wondering what it feels like to be desired and sought after. Love has won my heart.