Don't Settle

     "I'm telling you mom, he's like totally the one," my seventh grade self said gushing about my new crush at school. He sat across the room from me in english class and I don't think I ever actually spoke a word to him, but I just knew it was destiny.

     I've always been and always will be a hopeless romantic. I'm the girl who fawns over cheesy Hallmark movies and old school romances. Who rooted for Jess in the Gilmore Girls (because let's be honest him and Rory were totally meant to be). I romanticize pretty much everything in my life just waiting for that perfect love story I have dreamed up in my head to happen.

    So in seventh grade I just knew it was him. I knew that soon we would do what happened in the movies: where the boy and girl run into each other, the girl drops her stuff, they both go to pick it up and end up touching hands, then look up at each other starstruck. After we met years later we would start dating  and go all the way through college, get married and then tell our kids we were highschool sweethearts.

     Then seventh grade ended and I moved schools forgetting about this boy who I apparently thought was my soulmate, and suddenly finding someone new. And then this guy became "the one", but then he wasn't. Then the next guy became "the one" and then he wasn't. But surely this last guy was "the one", but still again... he wasn't.

    Being someone so tied up in dreams of romance it was difficult for me when I kept getting disappointed over and over again. Each one of these guys had ended up just disappointing me. It was confusing and heartbreaking. I mean God I'm 18 and in most love stories they've already met by now. So like you wanna hurry it up... please?

     It wasn't till a couple months after my last rendezvous with a boy I had a crush on, did I start to realize something. I had been settling. Don't get me wrong it wasn't that these guys weren't respectable and nice guys, I had just been willing to compromise some things in my own life for them. God kept having red flags pop up, showing me they weren't probably going to be who I needed them to be or who God wanted for me, but I always ignored the flashing signs. Cause to me it didn't matter if we didn't believe the same thing about something or had clashing views, I was still getting what my heart wanted which was romance. I was lowering my standards and my morals if it meant I could have a boyfriend. Which only ended up with me being trapped in unhealthy relationships which only brought disappointment and hurt into my life.

    Let me tell you, waiting is crappy. It's not fun, but it's a time of testing and molding. Looking back if God had allowed me to continue in any of those relationships I had tried to start it would've of not been good. I didn't realize it at the time, but I wasn't ready spiritually or emotionally to try and start dating. I had a lot of things in myself (insecurities, self hatred...) that I needed to work on before I got into a relationship. Even in just the past few months my faith has changed dramatically in a way I never thought I needed or was possible.

   Lastly is this, God has our best in mind. Sometimes its hard to believe it when you're crush doesn't ask you to the school dance or ends up getting another girlfriend, but we have too. I know up to this moment in my life God has always done what was best for me (Even if at the time I was too blind to realize it). He knows the desires of our hearts, whether we admit it or not. I've many times prayed to God about my deepest desires for romance, and love, and marriage, and a family. He knows. While it may not always work out the way I want it or be exactly when I want it if I decide to trust Him, and stop allowing my heart to settle for less, in the end I'll get a love story that's so much better than anything my hopelessly romantic heart could dream of. In the end He will work it all out for ultimately my good and His glory better than I could of ever imagined, because I stopped settling. 


 - Rachel