Self Worth: What Jesus Taught Me Through Singleness and Dating

Surrendering the Struggle:

          I’ve always been kind of obsessed with romance, which is ironic because it wasn't until senior year of college that I went on my first date. Still, long before that, seeking validation from boys and the desire to be pretty, funny, or smart enough was a struggle. I knew God wanted me to feel worthy as His daughter but I didn’t know how I could believe that. I felt enslaved to people's opinions of me, always caring what I looked like, measuring how funny I could be, a compliment or critique from a boy I cared about making or breaking my day. Fall before senior year, I remember crying out to God at a retreat, agonizing over whether I could truly be free from this deep desire for attention. God spoke to me:“Karisa, are you going to try to fight this on your own? Or are you going to trust me to heal you?”

            I resisted, unable to believe it would be possible for me to feel “free.” But I realized that faith doesn’t mean “fixing” ourselves; it requires the willingness to trust that God can heal us and surrendering ourselves to Him. Surrender begins with admitting we have a problem, allowing Him to be our healer by inviting Him into the healing process. The question wasn’t whether I could free myself from caring so much about what boys thought of me but if I believed God could in His power. I think sometimes our inward struggle can be proof that the Holy Spirit is working within us. I envision God cutting us free from sin like He frees a person wrapped in thorns; the pain hurts the most when the healer begins to pull the briers out. Even if we've grown numb to the thorns within us, He is not content to leave us and will patiently persevere until every one is out. Our biggest weapon against sin isn’t our strength but our refusal to let our weaknesses prevent us from coming to Him. He doesn’t equip us so we can walk into battle on our own but so that we might grow intimately more reliant upon Him. He never expected me to fight my problems alone but stands right there beside me, round-housing kicking sin in the face. 
          I surrendered the issue to God, and He gave me a vision: I could see myself sitting in the dark with my arms wrapped around my knees when Jesus suddenly approached me. He took me by the hand and lifted me up, and as the two of us walked hand in hand towards the light, I could see boys along the side reaching out their hands to me. But I was so in love with Jesus that I didn’t even care.

        The vision seemed a shot in the dark. How could I ever be that free?

The Friend Zone: 
           Somehow, as I entered senior year, I found such a joy in the ministry God placed before me that I began to care less about what boys thought of me. It was nothing I did other than trusting God and meditating on His words. Hosea 3:1 spoke to me in particular:“Love her [your wife] as the Lord loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

God’s unconditional love for me wasn’t based on whether I loved Him—as Hosea was called by God to love his wife and go after her in her prostitution, God was pursuing me in the midst of me pursuing the affection of a boy. Perhaps God is less preoccupied with how “strong” or “active” a Christian we can be and more concerned with where our hearts are at and continued dependence on Him. 

            Yet one thing bothered me; I still cared about what one boy thought of me. Several times I was about to “friend zone” him, as I thought if I could establish where we stood, I would stop seeking his attention. But every time I would try, I would get a bloody nose out of nowhere. The third time, I prayed God would stop me if it wasn’t His will—and of course, it happened again. There I was: lying on the fuzzy carpet with my bloody nose utterly frustrated, why wouldn’t God let me friend zone him? My conversation with Him went something like this:

Me: God, why?

God: Karisa, why do you want to friend zone him?

Me: Because if I can, I can clarify where we stand and I will no longer worship him.

God: That won’t remove the idol. This is so much deeper than that—the problem isn’t this boy, it’s that you idolize the idea of a romantic relationship.

Me: God, I’ll never be able to date. It’s impossible to like a boy and worship you.

God: No, Karisa, it is not impossible for you to like a boy and worship me. But it is impossible for you to worship a boy and worship me. You don’t need a friend zone, Karisa, you need a perspective shift on what relationships offer and are meant to be.

I secretly believed that if I could have this relationship then I would be fulfilled. In reality, that “moment” I'd been waiting for wasn’t the day I lived “happily ever after” like the chick-flicks. The moment my life was built up for was Heaven—where God and I would look into each other’s eyes and He would take my hands in His and say, “I love you, Karisa, forever.” I was seeking a happiness so much greater than a human could offer me.

            In those next few weeks, He tore down my pedestal of relationships and healthily redefined it. The struggle wasn’t over, but freedom doesn’t mean the idols aren’t there—it means not giving in and letting them control us. Jesus worshipped God in the face of temptations, and we have the same Holy Spirit living in us and empowering us to do the same. Freedom isn't always felt immediately. God has to teach us to live into our freedom just as the Israelites weren’t used to freedom after 300 years of slavery. But if this was the same God who set me free, why was I afraid He would leave me now? What made me think He wasn’t strong enough to take on whatever would come in the future? Exodus was solely the work of God--freedom for the Israelites cost the people nothing and God everything. How could I take the credit by putting on myself the burden to live perfectly in freedom? I would surrender my anxieties and let the Lord lead me. 

The Vision:

          As I started embracing my singleness, God started fulfilling the vision from retreat. When one of my friends asked me out, I felt so content in singleness that I didn’t think I could give it up. I prayed about it but did not feel God calling me to this. The following week, another friend asked me on a date. I gave him a similar answer. I found myself saying no to the hands of boys just like in the vision because I was so in love with Jesus. I realized how truly God loved me, that He would walk with me through my struggle, never abandoning me. True love isn’t a feeling--it is the God of all creation wiping the grime between our toes the night before He walked to the cross.

Though I embraced singleness, I found myself still thinking about dating, particularly the boy I had wanted to friend-zone. Apparently, I wasn't the only one, because a few weeks later, he asked me on a date. Though I was thrilled, I also felt terrified. What if I got hurt? I was finally embracing singleness and freedom from boys--did Jesus really want to throw me into the midst of it again?

I believe that He did. There were so many things about relationships and God that Christian books couldn’t teach me—sometimes, God brings challenges too great for us to handle so He can prove His power to save us and teach us to depend on Him. The God who pieced my heart together hundreds of times would be the same God by my side when it hurt. Would I trust God enough to surrender my fears to Him? I realized, that sometimes when God gives us good gifts to bless us, we don't have to feel guilty for accepting them. And I felt so content in singleness that, by the time he asked me out, it meant nothing new to my identity. I was worthy of a love greater than what any human offered, and no one was going to love me like God did. 

Dating With Open Hands:

           The date was so fun--we ate powdered sugar beignets and talked about books. It’s funny how we get to thinking we’re good and have all that we need; for me, in my pride, to think that I’m at the maximum capacity of loving Jesus. And then He throws in a plot twist like this boy, and I start to wonder if He made a mistake. But God knows better what we need in order to grow, and He doesn't leave us in mediocre situations but challenges us in the areas we didn’t even know we needed pruning in. My friend told me that sometimes we grow so comfortable in our shoes that we fail to realize they’re pinching our toes. Little do we know, there are new ones coming in the mail on Tuesday. Though the news ones might feel stiff at first and cause blisters as they're broken into, soon we'll have room to run and dance, going farther than we ever could’ve in our old shoes.        
          I was too awkward for my own good; he was patient and kind. I had to accept God's grace in the fact that I made mistakes and could never figure out how to date perfectly. I had to trust Him in the realization that I wouldn't be able to foresee if this would last forever. Often times, God doesn't lay out the whole future for us to see--He just gives us one step in the dark, and as we take it with faith, His lamp illuminates the next one. It's that process which requires the greatest trust. 
       And as I sensed the boy becoming less attached, I tried to hold on tighter. I didn’t know then but I can see now how God was gently prying open my clenched fists, teaching me how to hold a gift with open hands trusting that it was safer in His hands anyways. As humans, I think we have this habit of anticipating what will come next--for me, it's usually the worst possible situation. I tell myself I'm just preparing, but this ends in me bitterly blaming God for something that hasn't even happened. 99.9% of the time, I've discovered that I was way off with predicting what would happen next, and I wasted all this time and energy freaking out over nothing. Since then, I have to fight to stop myself when my thoughts spiral into future anxieties, reminding myself to be thankful for what I have and trust God for what I don't. I can't blame Him for the future when I haven't even given Him a chance to get me there.  Surrendering to God is not a one-time deal--the Gospel isn't a clean, packaged message we can share with others and do a quick quiet time to learn. It's a messy, elbow-deep daily surrender of our stubborn will, crucifixion of ourselves, and depending on God's grace to save us. I see how much patience God has with us in the process; we don’t simply walk into a new season and know how to glorify Him perfectly. Worship looks like trusting He knows better and fighting to believe His promises.

        I asked God for a reminder that He would carry me through. That Sunday, a guest pastor preached from Micah 7:7-9. The sermon was on how God will lift us up in our “heartbreak.” He used the same exact passage that God had given me over winter break when I was freaking out about dating the boy. The passage reminded me a lot of the vision God had given me last fall, where He took me by the hand and let me out into the light.

Micah 7:8-9

“Do not gloat over me, my enemy!

Though I have fallen, I will rise.

Though I sit in darkness,

The Lord will be my light.

He will bring me out into the light;

I will see his righteousness.”

The Good Shepherd:         
        We dated for a few months. And then, one afternoon, I felt God telling me it was time for this to end. I told God He would have to have the boy end it because I couldn't. An hour later, he came over to my apartment to end things. I cried for a long time. It was one of the worst pains I'd felt, but in those next few months, the closest I had ever experienced God's love. The morning after the break-up, I woke up upset at God, wondering why He brought me into something that wouldn't last. Stepping into the bathroom, my nose started bleeding out of nowhere. 
          I looked to Heaven and laughed bitterly. "Is this some kind of joke to you, God?"

       “No, this isn't a joke,” He told me. “But this is my doing, Karisa. I'm the one who brought this together, and I called it to stop. You have to involve me in the healing process because this is mine.”

         So I let Him in. I told Him all my frustrations, the dreams that were dashed away. I asked Him why it had to be this way and how He felt. He told me He loved the boy but had great plans for me that didn’t involve him. And as I cried out to Him in honesty, I didn’t feel the sadness go away, but I realized that the God who hung like meat on a cross and wrote the book on suffering understood my pain. Perhaps even deeper because He had to feel both my broken heart along with everyone else's in the world. Sadness is a Godly reaction to a broken world, and in it, God allows us to understand a tiny fraction of the daily rejection He endures daily from humans. One day, He will personally wipe every tear from our eye but, until then, we cry because we're human and it hurts to see good things broken. 

         He told me that it’s okay to miss these good things. He missed them too—as He designed each of them. A lot of times, I categorize emotions of sadness and anger as "unhealthy" and bottle them away but God has purposefully gifted us with a full range of emotions, and He feels deeply. 

My sadness drove me to Him; I dug into scripture and clung to worship music and sermons when my feelings were overpowering. I discovered that God doesn’t call us to alter our feelings; He calls us to pour them out in honesty and allow His promises to guide our actions. Rather than trying to stop liking the boy, which I found impossible, I filled my mind with scripture and prayer. He taught me how to focus on loving Him more instead of liking the boy less. Though He calls us to embrace sadness, we do not have to despair. My tears didn't shake His promise to remain by my side--I hadn't truly lost anything, as Jesus remained the treasure I was guaranteed to take into eternity. 

Jesus is Enough:

          Our ability to be content in a situation isn’t based on our surroundings; rather, contentment is knowing who Christ is and allowing our satisfaction to be met in Him. Just because I was walking through a difficult time didn't mean God abandoned me or that what He had brought me from was better than my present or future situation. Sometimes, God has to bring us to the place where our dreams die in order to create space for greater ones He desires to build within us. It's a scary place to be when you can't see around the corner of a dark tunnel, but thankfully, we have His perfect track record to assure us that He'll carry us through. Though God delivered the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, as soon as they hit a rough patch, they thought He was leading them to die. But there were lessons they needed to learn in the wilderness that they wouldn't be able to stand in the promise without knowing. 

          And after some time of healing, I forgot what it was like to wake up sad, as God brought beautiful gifts into my life. Singleness is a gift, but like most good gifts, there's a process involved in learning to appreciate and steward it wisely. I've found that often God uses disguised blessings, like the struggle for attention or a break up, to challenge and uproot the sin within us. Contentment and surrender look like  receiving the gifts He chooses to drop into my lap, trusting that He knows what I need in every moment and will bring it to me. If I spend all my time pining over gifts He hasn't handpicked for this season, I will miss the gift before me deemed the best for right now. 
          The best part after my healing was that I not only felt happiness but a greater sense of freedom than I possessed before dating—God revealed to me through the whole process that I'd always been complete in Him. Like the woman at the well, I discovered that Jesus is living water that never runs dry. Having Jesus doesn't mean we'll never feel thirsty, whether that be seeking validation or struggling with insecurity or any other need (God knows I still wrestle with new and old issues today). Having Jesus means He'll always be there to quench our thirsts. In fact, I think our thirst can be a good thing--perhaps we have this unending longing to be filled because God has an never-ending desire to satisfy us. 
            Though sometimes I wish I didn’t have to feel "needy" for anything, my thirst causes me to run to Him and allows me to appreciate His ability to fulfill me. Because, in Jesus, there are always bottomless refills.