Love Philosophy

 I recently read a post on love written by Hannah Farver, an eighteen year old blogger, author and speaker. It’s from a Christian, and more specifically, Calvinist, point of view, and it struck a serious chord with me. She was outlining her own “love philosophy”, her basic thoughts on love and relationships. Her main points include recognizing a mature reality, pain, fate, and taming. On a mature reality, she says that we must come to the point when we realize life is not a fairytale. Love isn’t “magic carpet rides, hair-that-heals, and magic wilting roses”, it’s something that exists in our depraved, pain-filled world. And it’s our responsibility to recognize love as what it really is. For guys, she says they must step up and take initiative, but in the same stroke, she tells girls we must be patient, but not expect the guy to do every single thing. She then moves on to explain that pain is inevitable, as it is a product of the sinful world we live in. We must stop fearing the pain and believe that God will use the pain to bring about joy once again. When she began talking about fate is when her Calvinistic view truly came out. It’s the belief that God is all-sovereign and that it is under His jurisdiction alone to choose who we will end up being with forever. This is, in a way, taking away the romantic factor, but it also takes a load off of one’s shoulders, knowing that God’s plan is always perfect and will always come to be. As for taming, she outlines the concept of having a checklist and expecting a guy to fit every little box you want to put him in. However, love is more about finding someone who fits with you.

There was really nothing in this post that I disagreed with. As for the Calvinist view, I’m not going to ramble on about my beliefs as that could be a completely different post in and of itself, but I will say that I lean towards Calvinist beliefs more than Arminian. And that’s all I will say on that. For now.

Moving on to her love philosophy…as I said, there really isn’t anything I can disagree with. I am, in all honesty, one of the biggest romantics that I have ever come across. It’s sort of ridiculous. Sometimes I want to slap myself, honestly. I grew up watching and loving fairytales. In my early teen years, I lived off of teen romance novels. Heck, I still do.  If I could only watch one genre of movies for the rest of my life it would be action & adventure romantic comedies. And sappy love songs are among the most played on my iTunes.

As the years passed, I began to grow somewhat…cynical…towards love and relationships and boys. It was the product of being in a group of friends who thrived on drama and gossip and he-said-she-said. And for years, I had an outlook on dating that was just…not good. Basically, my “love philosophy” was outta whack. I just wanted to have a boyfriend. I wanted to have a boyfriend and be some cute little couple and do all the cute things that are in the movies and books, which can be described with one word. Fictitious.

 Last summer, my love philosophy did a total 180. While I was in a Bible study and we were praying and asking God where He wanted us to go next, I was suddenly struck with this thought that I needed to read this book, Praying for Your Future Husband. I had owned the book for a few months, but never been able to really get into reading it. That week, I began reading one chapter a day-nothing more, nothing less. It became my routine to settle into my bed at night with a mug of sleepy time tea, my book, and my journal. At first,  I thought that maybe I was being called to read it because my future husband was in need of prayer. I pictured myself as some sort of super hero, all readied to pray him out of whatever sticky situation he was in. But as I delved into the book, I realized that God had called me to read the book at that point in time because I needed to make serious changes to my life.

I’m not going to get into that too much right now, as I mainly just wanted to post that article from Hannah Farver and briefly (haha) reflect on it, but I guess my point is that yes, I agree with everything she says. Especially the part when she says that God will bring two people together when it is right in His plan. The most powerful visual in Praying for Your Future Husband was that of a triangle. You are at one corner of the base, your future spouse at the other, and God is at the top point. As both you and the other person move closer to God individually, you are inherently drawing closer to God. And that’s all that matters. No matter how many crushes (I hate that word…) I have, how many boys break my heart, no matter how many times I think it’s right when it’s not…God has a plan. And I’m part of that plan and so is he.

 Hannah Farver ended her post with one line, urging her readers to not fear the pain of heartbreak. One simple line that said, “God is bigger than that.”

And He is.