"I'll Always Love You and I'll Never Leave You"

            "I’ll always love you and I’ll never leave you.” He said it and yes I had heard it before, but this time it would be different, this time I knew it would somehow be different. I don’t know why I thought for a second that anything would be different, after all, everything  was happening just as it usually did. Why did I think something was going to be different?

Nothing changes unless something changes.

       I have taken longer to post than usual and I am sorry for that. God has been guiding and leading me about what to write and share and it is going to get more personal so I had to really seek Him about specifically what to share and how to talk about such “tender” issues.

     My heart is to share and not only in doing so continue to heal wounds and scars of my own past, but also to hopefully, maybe, touch another’s life and help them find some hope through my story.

     I have said a few times in past articles that people can be addicted to people—the secular world and the addiction “specialists” call it codependency. Whatever you want to call it, it is an unnatural desire for another person to the point that it becomes interruptive to one’s ability to function, thrive and grow.

       “I’ll always love you and I’ll never leave you.” He said it and yes I had heard it before, but this time it would be different this time I knew it would somehow be different. I don’t know why I thought for a second that anything would be different, after all, everything was happening just as it usually did. Why did I think something was going to be different?

      He had come into my life talking tales of love and happiness as though they were something he knew anything about. And I hungered and thirsted for something, someone, enough to believe what he was telling me. The word tales here has a double meaning which fits what I’m referring to—a tale is an account or description of something (the great life he was promising), and a tale is a little fib or lie (the not so great truth that he wasn’t promising).  Over the years this would come to be my story and it would not be specific to any one man, but in fact a few men.

      I must say at this point I was not addicted to sex; however, when you have self-esteem issues as a young woman who didn’t have many or you had lacking or nonexistent healthy relationships with men you will begin to get your identity in sexual relationships in hopes that someday one of them will finally “notice” YOU and subsequently fall madly in love with you. In reality it doesn’t work like that—instead the more you give intimately of yourself the more your self-esteem is shredded to pieces. There is nothing more damaging to your self than to have given your most intimate parts to someone only to have them not want you anymore—ouch! That is pain that goes deep. I know. This is how damaging it is, the bible tells us in 1 Corinthians 6: 18 (NKJV), “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” It is damaging to the very core of who we are.

     I spent most of my young adult life being addicted, codependent or unusually, abnormally attached to men. Not necessarily any specific man, I mean, if any certain one stayed around long enough to make the unusual attachment more intense and “love like” to me then I would think, feel, or surmise that yes indeed he loves me and he might be one that was a little more difficult to get over when the time for leaving me came, but that is the only specifics about it. And of course, there was never any doubt that it was love that I was experiencing even though I really had no idea what love even was.

      I am sort of like the Samaritan woman at the well. Read the (true) story in John 4:7-29. I have been married four times. I was married the first time when I was only fourteen years old and I was honestly only in love with one of my husbands. Even that love, I would come to find out 5 years later, was not the kind of love I needed and I finally realized I didn’t want it either.

      I was on my fourth marriage and I was just figuring out a man can’t make me happy and this guy loves me the best way he knows how, it just isn’t enough for me.

     If we have never fully known love we will look for it almost anywhere, yes, sometimes even where we have already looked and not found it. And we will think and feel that emotions are somehow connected to real, true love. Yes, we can and should have emotional feelings for people we love and care about, but having feelings for someone does not mean we love them and it certainly does not mean they love us!

     I didn’t want this to be a lesson on love because everyone is an expert and really no one knows what they are talking about, unless they are talking about God’s love. God’s love is agape love which means it is unconditional love, there are no strings attached to it and you don’t have to pay a price for it.

     The world’s idea of love or the love that our flesh is familiar with is a love that always costs someone something. It is painful in its very nature and we only think or feel that someone loves us if we hurt either when we have it (love), or if we suddenly don’t. Codependent people become so familiar with the abuse and or neglect from others that when they don’t have it they feel as though they can’t go on. They “feel” unloved.

     Love is not a feeling. We have all heard this a million times, but people who have never known God’s agape love and who are codependent don’t seem to be able to separate the two.

     Even though I finally got over my thing of needing a man in my life, it wasn’t until I let God be the thing I needed that I finally felt fulfilled. He is the only man I need in my life and I have been set free from getting my identity and sense of worth through a mere man.

     Isaiah 54:5-6 (NIV) “For your Maker is your husband—the Lord Almighty is His name...The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—a wife married young, only to be rejected.” I have clung to these scriptures because they are my story. I was married young, rejected and abandoned by so many men who said to me, “I’ll always love you and I’ll never leave you.” Jesus is the only one who can say that statement to us and mean it! He is the only one who cannot (if we have accepted Him as Savior) ever leave us and if He went to His death so we could have life—He really, truly, with no strings attached—loves us. Think about that for a minute, before He knew we would accept Him, He still died for us, and He knew that some would never accept Him yet He died for them also.  I believe that qualifies as real love.

     I began in my life to let My Savior “court” me, and in turn, I am courting Him. Yes, guess who I finally “let” fall madly in love with me? My Savior, the lover of my soul.  I talk to Him like I would a husband, and I talk to Him like a close friend, because He is. I tell  Him everything and if I get too lonely I ask Him to bring healthy people into my life and He does. Jesus is my everything and my all! 

     I have been happily and joyfully in a committed relationship with Jesus Christ for years now, and I have never been happier. I have been single and without a man of many tales for over 10 years now, and I am truly blessed. The wonderful thing is that I can take what I have learned and am still learning about my relationship with Jesus and make it the center of any and all of my relationships and they will be better because of it.

     Jesus longs to know me and I long to know Him. If I miss a day of prayer with Him I truly miss Him, and feel lonely for Him! I can’t wait to get my heart connected with His and it is a relationship I treasure and want to nurture and have grow. His words are “love letters” to me and I read it as such. His word teaches me about His Ways and His Heart and guides me on how to open up my heart and my ways to Him—just the way a healthy, vibrant relationship should be.  

     Those of you who find yourself in relationship after relationship and you can’t seem to ever find love—STOP looking, let it find you! Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock...” Revelation 3: 20 (NKJV), let Him be the love of your life, and you will finally know happiness.

     Jesus is the Only One who can ever say to any of us—“I’ll Always Love You and I’ll Never Leave You”—He means it. Let Him love you today.

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