Chona MalinogFinding love seems to become just a dream. It’s been a while since that recent heartbreak—and you have been wondering what’s wrong.
For as long as your mind can remember, each kilig encounter with a special person has all come to an end. And each finality has created wounds that came in all forms and shapes and sizes.
You have that First Love who came to be your first disappointment, thinking all along he could be the one. You started so young and innocent, but who cares if you’re naive? Isn’t it lovely to think that your first is also your last?
And those cute little tales of memories…
…the first day he asked you out,
…those first exchanges of love letters,
…the first songs you dedicated to each other, the first endearments (Love? Sweetheart? Babe?)—no matter how cheesy the lines and the antics only both of you could understand— all these, don’t they constitute to an amazing love tale that one day you will be proud to tell your future kids, if not the whole world?
Or so you thought.
Because…
Just like that…
Gone were those days.
The love story you have dreamed to tell has reduced itself into a mere memory, etched in your heart and stuck in your mind, along with the hurts and pains of your first heartbreak.
“Finding love? Nah, maybe not for me,” you say.
I understand the frustration for even I have had a fair share story to tell. It has become literally a one-for-the-books experience that I was able to publish my memoire.
Disillusioned in Finding love? Not Really.
It shocked you a little bit, for you thought you could not move forward from the devastation of the past, came the second chance to love, and the third, and now, it seems that you are caught in a never ending cycle of heartbreaks after heartbreaks after heartbreaks.
“Am I really worthy of the love I have been wanting to have?”
You ask.
Let me tell you this, but not only to give you words of comfort— but words of Truth—yes you are worthy.
In fact, you deserve to have the love those jerks could not give and appreciate in you—or you cannot even see and give to yourself.
Maybe the problem is not that you have little value.
What if the problem is your incapacity to see your real worth?
What if the right question to ask is, “How much do I value myself so that I would know who can only access the deep yearnings of my heart?”
Before you allow them to potentially wreak havoc in your heart, do you know how much you are already loved, so that you will not try to find it from someone else to fill the void?
We tend to find love from the world, hoping that they can find it there; only to discover that the world cannot actually give it to us.
But the search has become an addiction.
Finding love and the quest for romance became an obsession and a vanity.
It’s tiring.
Might as well you want to give up now.
Give up not yourself or the desire to have someone in your life.
But give up your control.
It’s cliche, but more often than not, that person will come into your life the moment you let go and let God take over.
You are wounded, and your heart needs healing. Give up trying to heal by using other people or that relationship to appease your past.
Give up self-medicating. Stop isolating yourself from people who truly care for you.
Give up loving from a position of needing. You cannot pour from an empty cup.
Give up demanding God your own version of a perfect fairy tale. Trying to “help” Him write your story of love is not a wise thing to do.
Give up your preconceived notions of what love is. Love is eternal and you have yet to really know all of its depths and highs for more than a lifetime. In other words, there are still a lot about love that you need to uncover.
Give up finding love and start seeking God.
Surrender. It. All. To Him.
Because by then you will see who you really are and what your worth really is.
When you give it all to Him, you will learn how to receive His love that is way beyond human version of romance.
You will know how you have been so priceless, as the love of God will let you see the reality of His sacrifice on the Cross when Jesus came in your tupsy-turvey world just to die and rise again to tell you what perfect love looks like.
He will overwhelm your feelings of defeat and unworthiness, because your worth is not in the attention or the fancy words of romance, but in the Blood shed out for you— so that when you receive Him in your heart, He may fill the void you have been trying to fill by unfitting stuff of the world.
When you give up control, He will orchestrate everything in His perfect timing.
And He will do all things for good, including your past, in the end.
When you realize how much you have been loved, you will learn to not recklessly give up your heart to someone who does not know how valuable you really are. And this this how worthy you are: for God so loved you, that He gave up His one and only Son, Jesus, and so that when you believe in Him, you will embrace the genuine, unconditional love not only for a moment but for eternity.
As you realize how valuable you are, you will learn to take good care, really take good care of yourself.
You will learn to be content by being alone even doing some stuff by yourself. Gone are the emptiness and loneliness, as you have now appreciated the value of self-company even while joyfully waiting for an earthly love to come along.
You will be healed from the wounds of the past and you will have a new-found meaning of life and love.
Above all, you will realize that you don’t need to find love anymore, as it has already found you and even has been actually there all along—even before you set out to search for it in the world.
*Listen to some parts of this blog in the spoken word below.
