I want to tell you a love story...

I want to tell you a love story…

Honestly it’s a story I never thought I’d share as it’s so personal…It had left a scar and was incomplete…that is until now.

It is the true story of my first love.  For such a long time I did not know the WHOLE story (both sides). I only had my one-sided, skewed version which had left me with a bitter taste…not forgetting to mention it’s not the story of me and my ex-husband…

But I believe God had another idea and has brought about a wonderful chance for healing and for a proper ending resulting in peace…Yes, He can work ALL THINGS TOGETHER FOR OUR GOOD…including our major mistakes and heartaches that He would rather spare us from in the first place.

I think I was fifteen and was helping keep time at a local football game my younger brother was playing in.  This was not a regular occurrence for me as I was usually occupied with dance lessons…I was there with my neighbour and her sons and have no memory of why I wasn’t at dance lessons that day! 

I do remember however there was a young man who caught my eye. He stood out, but that was probably because he was the boundary umpire all in white! But seriously, ALF (Australian Football League) gear does show off the physique of young men…So yes he stood out…in his prime physique of fitness at the age of seventeen. Somehow we chatted that day and yes, he ended up also being quite charming.

Not long later I was travelling home by train from a beautician appointment in Melbourne city when sitting nearby was the young umpire and his friend…How I mustered the courage to say hello back then still surprises me…But I did find him very attractive, so I said hi.  Yes, I had to remind him who I was…We exchanged numbers and that was the beginning of our romance.

Some people don’t believe you can fall in love quickly…but I’d have to disagree because that isn’t what happened for me. He not only wooed me but he loved me…we loved each other.

He was charming and treated me like a young man should.  He walked nearest to the curb, held my hand and was always proud to be by my side.  I always felt safe with him and I felt in his arms was where I was meant to stay.  I simply loved him and encouraged him. He gave me my first ring…a gold ring with a purple amethyst stone in the shape of a heart, because my favourite colour then was purple. He showered me with bouquets of flowers and teddies.

Unfortunately I had been told some bad advice in regards to God’s design for sex and marriage.  I had been told that because God joins two people together in the union of sex, that if you love someone and planned to marry them it’s okay to have sex prior to marriage because you would be joined in God’s eyes…The marriage ceremony then only being a piece of paper.

I thought I'd met 'The one'...So I gave him all of me…

I knew I loved him - I had no desire to ever be with anyone else.  He also was making an effort and was talking about a future together. So I truly believed we’d marry when I was eighteen, and although I did not have total peace with sex before marriage, I believed what I’d been told and thought that things would be okay because I loved him – That God would protect me and my heart in this relationship and that we’d live happily ever after. In my mind he was to be everything to me my dad hadn’t been to my mother or me…

Then came a truly sad day which seemed to come from NOWHERE…

We’d been going along, what seemed so strongly, and then my younger brother over heard him speaking to a mate in a crude way about me…I was hurt, needless to say.  My mum found out and told him that he was never to see me again…and he never did; so I thought that he didn’t really love me or want to be with me anymore.

I was shattered…absolutely heart-broken.

I lost my love…the one I thought I was going to marry…the one I had given my whole self to.

I wasn’t an adult, so I couldn’t track him down of my own accord and talk things through. My mum was determined he wasn’t good enough for me…No-one would speak ill of her daughter...He was not to come near me.

I felt used and rejected and lost.

I carried this baggage into my latter relationships.

Yet, we reconnected today and I was able to hear his side of the story.

I was able to learn that yes, he had made a stupid immature mistake speaking crude; but that he had loved me and was actually heart-broken too at being told never to see me again.  What a light the truth from God sheds…

It is important for young people to know that yes, they can love another person, but it is truly God’s design for them to wait for sex UNTIL marriage to protect their hearts because that official PUBLIC declaration in front of family and friends does matter!

Being spiritually joined to another person through sex and then to have them torn away from you with nothing legal to bind you, causes so much personal damage – I am testimony to this.

People matter…their stories matter…their hearts matter…

God truly cares about our hearts so much…He doesn’t give us rules to obey for no reason, it’s so we stay protected.

I have learnt break-ups are so much easier and less damaging when there is no spiritual tie through sex.

I am so grateful to God that today I can now write and share this story; sitting here knowing I am not only FORGIVEN for my fornication but that I also have peace with my first love – that all these years later, The Lord has brought about a chance for us to speak again…to forgive each other and have peace with each other!

Living life with Jesus is truly awesome, as it is the way for forgiveness, peace and reconciliation with both God and others.  He protects and heals like no other can…

In His love, Melanie :)