I tucked it away in some journal (an unfinished one) and promised to take it out when I found what I was looking for:
Rereading it, my heart pounds a little harder and I feel that old familiar longing sitting, waiting, so so heavily on my chest.
All I wanted, all I asked for, was just one person. Just one that would be mine. Someone to be always for me. One person that would pick me over and before any. other. person. I was oh-so-willing to be this for somebody else, but I wanted it in return, too.
It sounds simple, but when you are a little more than awkward growing up because you carry your feelings and your dreams as if they're weighted in gold and then get mortally wounded when you share those heart-nuggets and the recipient doesn't treasure and cherish and love it like you do, you can feel pretty lonely. (Please don't kill me for that run-on).
I remember one painful, gut-wrenchingly lonely day with my broken heart sitting on the kitchen table and my mom trying her best to sew it back up.
I remember begging her for an answer. I wanted to know just why what I seemed to need from a friend was just so much more than what others required. I had never asked to be this way.
Finally, with a smile in her eyes, she leaned back in her chair, looked at me in her straightforward manner, and she declared, "Sarah what you are looking for is a husband."
This is the part where I apologize to the pressure I may have put on my middle school and high school friends to be that ONE friend. I may have missed out on some fun, lighthearted times wallowing in my loneliness. Sorry, ya'll.
She was right, but I was only sixteen. Thankfully, my parents also taught me how to rely on God for my everything, and He carried me through those painful, alone and having-everyone-but-no-one-to-call moments and years. HE was my best friend, and still is. He is for me, even when I feel alone in my current season...
Believe me, even though I have a true BFF in that sweet husband of mine, I still have those moments.
I still need Jesus first and more than I need any friend of this world.
But, because He is good (so good), He gave me Billy as a salve to the wounds for all of those times of feeling so. by. myself.
I now have a person, and he is for me. I know that it may not be normal need, and I know some women find that amazing friendship in other women, but for some reason, it was different for me. There was a Billy-sized hole in that eleven-year-old heart of mine, and God knew all about it. He put it there just so that He could prove Himself.
This is not a post that says being married is better than being single.
It's a post about how God provides for our deep-seeded, individual, God-crafted needs.
It's about how He can bring relief to the parts of our heart and our pasts that are dry and cracked and weary (even if they reach all the way back to awkward eleven).
It's about how sometimes He withholds, and sometimes He gives. He comforts us in the brokenness, and He celebrates with us when we recognize His gifts.
Because the gifts He gives... they're the uncontrollable goofy-grin kind of good.