Do not awaken love before it’s time.

Looking up at my mother, I saw a beautiful woman standing before me. I wanted to be just like her. Her long blonde hair and deep green eyes were naturally beautiful without even trying.

There was equally an attractive vulnerability to her. When I looked at her, I saw a longing in her eyes. She smiled nervously as she met and talked to men she hoped would love her.

These are my early memories of my mother. The years would prove difficult for her, and I would see the slow changes in her once beautiful and hopeful face. Most of her challenges and difficulties came from her own choices. Nevertheless, it was difficult to watch and even harder not to be influenced by her.

My mother fell deeper into deception each year as she leaned in her own understanding and her heart became hard. So did her face. She began to get tainted in her view of herself, her body, and those around her. Her belief in others dimmed, and she sold out to the thought that someone could genuinely know her or want to know her. Her heart turned rebellious, and she began to treat others the way others treated her, thinking only of her needs without consideration for others.

I watched, took mental notes, and put the distorted lies deep into my mind. No man will ever love you. All they want is sex. You might have a chance if you give sex first, and maybe, just maybe, they will fall in love with you.

I followed in my mother's footsteps. I had hope for a man's love. I believed in love and wanted a beautiful story with a man who would see, know, and love me. I desired both to be loved and to love another.

Even in my last marriage, I began by telling my husband that I longed for a love story others would see and admire. Each time he looked at me with a smile on his face, I felt loved. Sometimes he expressed it with words, but more often it was conveyed through his smile and the way he held my gaze. I finally found it—a tumbleweed I no longer needed to be. He was home, and I would find rest in that.

I took security from his words and reassurance. I trusted and put my hope in him rather than see and study scripture to find out God’s wisdom on love. I woke up with love before it’s time.

Today, at 61, I am alone once again.

Three times in the book Song of Solomon, the writer gives instruction and an urge to the daughters of Jerusalem.

The New Living Translation says, "Promise me, O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and wild deer, not to awaken love until the time is right.

I trusted in my own beliefs. Why wait? He loves me, and I love him. He wants to marry me one day, and our marriage will be my long-awaited love story.

I didn't give much thought or concern if he viewed marriage the way I did and ignored early dating signs that my needs would be challenging for him to acknowledge if he didn't share them.

It was a brutal marriage. It was a hurtful marriage, and soon, my love story collapsed into ruins. I was once again faced with divorce and faced with having no love from another, as I had desperately been searching for.

Here is where my love story begins—the only true love story between the daughter of the highest King, a Father eager to teach His children thoroughly, a safe Father who never lies, and is without deception. Unlike our earthly parents who often fail and easily influence us with lies, they believed themselves.

During the last part of my marriage, I accepted Christ. I fell to my knees with such a clear understanding of my sin and my separation from God. I saw how I was living autonomously and trusting in my own choices. In an instant, the blinders lifted, and I could see how this life of mine was purely selfish and destructive. I knew I desperately needed a Savior, and He was right there offering Himself and His ways to me. By His grace, I had faith to believe.

Over the next several months, I began to change within my desires. I didn't want to watch certain movies or shows I used to watch with my husband. I didn't feel good about some of our intimate times or about the lack of emotional connection that I thought would grow out of our sexual connection. I wish I could say I handled these changes and challenges biblically and gracefully all the time, but I lacked wisdom and maturity, and I often acted out in fear.

What God was teaching me was life-giving. I was beginning to see my value as a daughter of the King. Soon, the lies and the darkness made no sense to me. Although I didn't know how to understand or make sense of my husband's claims of being a Christ follower, resisting this newfound value within myself because of Christ, I knew with certainty that Christ was doing the work I needed in my heart. I wanted to see the love from my husband to stand by my side as Christ revealed my worth and my value. I wanted my husband to learn along with me and come to an understanding of what biblical marriage was designed to be. 

I wish I could tell you I got that love story of redeeming work inside that marriage. I wish I could tell you I found a safe place with my husband to grow in understanding and maturity in Christ as He did his work in me. But that isn't the ending to that story. Divorce was the ending, and I became crushed when he got tired of being told to learn me and my story. To see me, to know me, and to love me in the way Christ loved us. Instead, he bailed and did what I didn't want to happen. He filed and divorced me.

Over the next several years, God would comfort me with the loss and confusion. He would stay with me during the nights I cried out “why, Lord! Why, why did I have to lose the man who I wanted so badly to be the one who would care for me.” I knew the gift Christ gave me to open my eyes and desire to be shaped by Him, I prayed and held tight to the desire Christ would do that for my husband as well, therefore sparing me pain and loss from a divorce. 

I plead with you, reader, whether young or old, hurting or searching for answers, to not trust in the world's view of love and what you have to do or not do to get it. 

Refrain from chasing after love and searching for it in all the wrong places,  instead, search for Christ. Search for Him in Scripture and learn what He says about life questions. Trust that He is trustworthy with your desires. Trust Him in the waiting. Profound heart work will begin to take place in your heart,  and in your maturity.  He will prove enough, and you will find rest in the waiting.

You, daughter of the Most High, will shine with a radiance and begin to live in a calm confidence in your Savior.  You will learn to be content in all things, and when and if God leads you to a man, you will be drawn to someone who deeply loves Christ and will deeply know your value. He will see to it to not awaken love before it's time. This man will know you belong to Christ and are not his to have.

O daughter of Jerusalem, don't rush love. Instead, draw from the Living Water and allow God to lead you to a strong and mature, others-seeking man of God. Until then, stand in the confidence that Christ is enough.