Two Loves and a Promise

Those who know me best would probably agree with this claim, that I am truly one big walking contradiction. I like to say I am a very private person, yet I sit here and write for all of you and share the most intimates parts of my life - my testimony - with strangers. And in the spirit of being consistent, let's go ahead and talk about my love life. If you're new here, hi, I'm Mackenzie and I'm someone who is very good at two things: falling in love and being heartbroken. After lots of prayers, therapy sessions, and girl talk, ya girl is ready to try and tackle this "love" thing once again. My most recent relationship was very sweet in the beginning and he really taught me about a lot, one thing being how people fall in love three times in their life. As I sat in his apartment on a Thursday evening, he looked at me and asked, "You know what they say about your three loves?". I looked at him through my naive 21 year old eyes and thought this was such a deep conversation and was excited that I was finally dating someone with some emotional intelligence. He proceeded to explain that our first love is the one that "looks right". AKA, you're young and dumb, how people view you in this kind of love is way more important than how we actually feel. The second love is the hard love, the one that teaches you how you want to be loved and ultimately ends because you're more focused on trying to make it work rather than asking whether it actually should work. He looked at me and smiled, "the third love is the real one, the one that works". I knew I was his third girlfriend, I knew exactly what he was hinting at. I was panicking - did he just foreshadow what was to come? He was forgetting that he would only be my second love, the one that was going to hurt me. Now, here we are, over three years after that conversation took place and coming up on two years since that relationship ended. After several mini-situationships, failed talking stages, and almost-relationships, I remembered that conversation and thought maybe I just wasn't ready for my third go around. Actually, I thought he was just full of it and made something up to try his hand at sweet talking. But looking at things from a different perspective, I have certainly fallen in love for a third time. I have only had two serious relationships - two worldy relationships. And as I catch myself smiling at texts from a boy who lives 12 hours away, I know that I can't actually give him my heart because our God has it. My third and final love is my Savior. All of those things I was hoping to gain from love with a partner; companionship, comfort, support, healing, wholeness - are things that only our God can give me. Living rooted in the Lord's love is like sitting in a window where the light is coming in just right and warms your body. It's like having the windows open with a slight breeze and fresh clean bedding. It's the smell of rain. It's spending time with your friends and belly-laughing. It's a love that never ceases to amaze me. As I enter this next season of life and try the dating scene again, I feel at peace knowing that the best way for me to love another man is to love the Lord, and the only way for a man to get to me is through our Lord.