14 – The Hazards of Love, part 1

Love. We long for it. Anticipate finding it and how it will make us and our lives better. And it often does exactly that. But for many, the reality of love isn’t remotely related to the dream of it. How can something so seemingly good become a negative in our lives? In this series of two podcasts, we explore three of the most common hazards of love–what they are, why they happen, and how God can heal them.

Show Notes:

Love can be a safe place, but for so many of us, it’s got land mines everywhere. As we talked about this issue, we realized that women in particular look to love and its celebration to give us a sense of wonder and being cherished. We want the warm fuzzy we get at the end of a romantic comedy. Those of us who have written romances, we write them because they are so much fun, because the heroes are all heroes. We love it that love is just wonderful.

But real love, the love that we know as humans, is hardly ever like that. It’s just not warm and fuzzy all the time, and there are some relationships where it’s very seldom warm and fuzzy. In fact, love can end up being more hard work, and sometimes it’s downright messy.

There are three particular hazards of love that we’ve identified. There are a lot more, of course, but these are the three we’re focusing on for the next two podcasts. Yes, my friends, love is a two-podcast topic!

 

Hazard of Love #1 – Unrealized Dreams

When you haven’t found love, it’s an unrealized dream. You’re waiting and waiting, and you’re ready to jump into the wonder and the adventure, but your perfect mate is not showing up! Or maybe you’ve had one potential prince after another turn out to be a big fat frog. With warts. Lots of big bumpy warts.

We are joking here, but we do know, this is an issue that a lot of people struggle with. It’s one that makes us wonder what is God doing? Or maybe more appropriately, why isn’t He doing what we long for Him to do?

In many ways, as women, this is what we long for, to be cherished. And God put that in us, so why isn’t He fixing it? I wish we had some profound answer to offer those folks who are single and who want to be in a relationship, and those who feel they’re ready to love, and receive love, but it’s just not happening. I know you’ve all heard the nice and tidy responses we could give you, but these are platitudes.

Here’s the truth. There is no easy answer for being in the waiting room of God’s will. Regardless of what you are waiting for, whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s a contract, whether it’s anything like that, your focus should be on God. And your focus should be on what He has for you in the midst of the waiting. And in the midst of the here and now, focusing on what He’s doing in you right now.

 

That’s one kind of unrealized dream, but there are a lot of others that have to do with love. What about the dream proposal, or the dream wedding? When it really happens, no matter how much you plan for something, things are going to go wrong. And if we are fixed on what our dream is, we feel like they’re slipping away, like we are losing those dreams, one little piece at a time.

There’s another dream too. What about the dream of the love life and the marriage that has 2.5 children, and you stay married until you are hitting your 60th anniversary? These are all dreams that may or may not come true.

 

So what’s the fix for unrealized dreams?

We’ve been talking about this and praying about it, and one of the answers we discovered is that you need to have a paradigm s...