We've seen these pictures and hashtags all over our Instagrams, Pinterests, Facebooks, and so on... #goals, #relationshipgoals, #couplegoals, and it goes on. We all await the day that person will sweep us up off our feet on a white horse (or an SUV- I'm not picky) and it will be pure bliss from there. We like to admire the love some popular couples have like Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins, Prince William and Kate Middleton, Beyonce and Jay-Z, Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, Chuck and Blair, Derek Shepherd and Meredith Grey, and more. We see our friends in happy relationships and comment on their pictures #goals. Sometimes, even for me, it can spark the inner jealousy we can have in us to be in such a loving relationship and to have someone so immensely adore you in that way.
However, we often times don't see the entirety of what goes into those relationships. I am in no way saying that anyone's love is fake. I rejoice in the fact that there are many admirable couples out there that love each other so well even with the incredibly high divorce rates and patterns of fleeting love in our nation. From what I've learned seeing some of my friends' relationships grow, no one tends to post the ugly or hard things. No one normally posts a photo of an empty room where his or her significant other just left after a huge argument. We don't often see a Facebook status of someone listing all the disagreements they have with their spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend. Not many people really enjoy openly talking about the hard situation that they are going through with their significant other that has led to many tears and much heartbreak. People enjoy happiness and love; sadness, anger, and hurt are much harder pills to swallow. I'm also not saying that this is all couples experience either. I think these situations are what helps build such a solid foundation for a relationship, and what makes a couple often look like #goals. We generally have to go through the valley to get to the mountain.
Ultimately, the point isn't idolizing what we see on social media but that we frequently idolize the wrong type of relationships. Any earthly relationship will have its faults and every human we connect with will hurt us or let us down in some way. It's a risky thing to put all of our worth and ourselves into one human person. We are all searching for an intimate kind of love that satisfies and wholly accepts us for who we are- every fault, every mistake, every imperfection. Throughout the almost twenty-two years of my life, I have found only one truly perfect love to satisfy my love-thirsty heart, and it is in Jesus Christ. Before you click the exit button because you don't want to hear another person tell you about how Jesus should be the only one to satisfy, just hear me out for a second. The Lord delights in our desire for marriage and intimacy; He himself gave us that desire! The Lord loves to see when two broken people come together to represent Christ and the church. However, the key word here is broken. Just like I mentioned, everyone is broken and no one can make us whole except Christ.
Jesus brings us into a whole new and exciting type of love. An agape love. An unconditional love. My "home girl" and one of my favorite authors, Marian Jordan Ellis, says it best in her book, "Sex and the City Uncovered," when she first met Jesus, her first real love. "He was different from anyone I'd ever met before. Magnetic. Mysteriously available. Powerful and yet full of compassion. True. Kind. Revolutionary." We were made to love Him and for Him to love us. He longs for an intimate relationship with us if we allow Him, and He's all that we could ever ask for in one. He saw us being knit in our mother's womb. He saw us on the mountaintop and in the dirty mess of our sin, and He's still ever so infatuated with us. He's our authentic and true #relationshipgoals.
Even though this pursuit of us is shown throughout all of the Bible, the book of Hosea is dedicated to showing us an example of it. Hosea 3:1 says, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel though they turn to other gods." The Lord shows us in this book how He called a man to love a prostitute, even though she was unfaithful and sinful. No matter how many times she ran away, he still loved her and went after her. The Lord is continually after our hearts in this way. The reason why these earthly loves don't gratify us is because we aren't actually searching for a person but for God -- the only one who can fill that hole in our hearts. As I quote from Marian again, "God doesn't abandon us. He knows our design. He knows apart from Him we are searching, restless, and incomplete. And because He loves us with this incomprehensible love, He comes to rescue us and set us free from our prison of 'looking for love in all the wrong places.'"
So you may ask, "How can I know this love? He seems so distant. I don't think I even know how to love." I've probably asked these questions one too many times. Coming to the Lord, admitting your brokenness, and telling Him you need Him is plenty enough. The Lord will show you His love in unexpected ways. I've learned that God's version of flowers and chocolates is through breathtaking sunsets and cool breezes; He romances us with His creation. King David writes a lot about the love of God in the Psalms, which is a place I turn to often when I need to feel His love for me. Another way we tend to miss God's love for us is in the people He puts in our lives. Many times I have felt the Lord's love for me through friends, family, classmates, and more that He puts in my life that love me so well. It may be different than the kind of love we're all used to experiencing, but I promise it's better and deeper than we could ever think to imagine.
One of my favorite passages in the entire Bible is Romans 8, which includes one of my most treasured verses. "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Yeah, that is a mouth-full to say, but it's so comforting and warming to my heart. So, I encourage you to rejoice in the love God has blessed us with on this Earth while allowing Him to fully become your own #relationshipgoals.