Best of Blogs #7

All Is Never Lost, originally posted 4/28/06 (just a couple months before I started dating Dan). Here's a link to the song I mention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcQE2FvhhKc.

Two years ago, I was completely broken-hearted. A relationship that had never officially been a relationship but that had taken my heart had officially ended, and I was miserable. I had jumped so far ahead in my mind and in my heart that I was convinced this was the guy I was going to marry - and now it was over.

I needed to go for a drive - one of those drives where you have no destination - just to clear my head. Unfortunately, I didn't have a car. So I had to manage with a nice, long, tearful walk.

I ended up at a park, and I sat on a swing and started singing the Caedmon's Call song "Table For Two" - about how I was afraid of being alone, and maybe I had missed my only chance. Even though the song was about trusting God in the midst of that, I really felt quite hopeless. That I'd found the right guy and somehow had been too pushy, or too rushed, or just not good enough, or for whatever reason had screwed the whole thing up and now it was over, and I was destined to a life of pining after a man who didn't love me. I was faced with the terrible thought that I had missed my only chance at romance.

Now, two years later, I can't even imagine how I thought that. I'm so glad that I met this guy - it was a desire to be near him that originally brought me to Milwaukee - but I am also very glad that we are not together now. I know that there are plenty of other fish in the sea, and all is not lost because I didn't end up with this guy. In fact, all would have been lost if I had.

But at the time, I couldn't see two years ahead. I couldn't see two months ahead. All I could see was the present, and the present hurt and felt hopeless, and I transferred that to the rest of my life. So often we forget that while we are busy focusing on the here and now, God is looking at the pain in the context of our entire lives, reminding us not to despair. I hadn't missed out on anything; God had spared me from a relationship that was not healthy and never would have been. In God's economy, no matter how much it hurts right now, all is never lost.

Now every time I hear that song, I see my sad self sitting on the swing and God reminds me to keep hoping in His plans for me, whatever they may be.