Cries of My Heart Answered: When Is It My Turn?

When I was a kid, my ultimate goal in life was to be married. Singing was my passion and I thoroughly enjoyed math and science, but getting married was what I felt would make me complete.

So in junior high school when my classmates started to date, I felt left out. I was the one who had wanted a boyfriend since I was 5 years old, yet I still didn’t have one who felt the same way about me. They broke up and had new boyfriends/girlfriends within only a few weeks sometimes, while I watched wearily and enviously from the sideline.

“When is it my turn?” I couldn’t help wondering. “When can I have a boyfriend – the one thing I really want?” My mom told me I could date when I was 16, so at 13 1/2 I started counting down. “Okay, 2 1/2 more years and I can have a boyfriend. Good things come to those who wait.” It gave me hope.

Plans yield to the glimmer

In the next year and a half I had minor crushes that only lasted for a few months, as normal young teenage girls do. I had plans to start liking a certain boy in my class at the start of my freshman year of high school. I knew him from the “East campus” of the school and thought his personality would complement mine well.

Those plans changed when I experienced “the glimmer” with one of his friends. I knew him also, because it is a small school and students from both campuses were pictured in the same yearbook. He was quirky and I respected that about him, being weird and proud of it myself. But until the moment of the glimmer I had not thought of him as a potential significant other.

Suddenly, it was like the heavens had opened and shined a light on him. Like he was the one who could make my dreams come true. All he had done was show a little common courtesy, but the gesture touched my soul.

Three years and countless tears later, I wondered again when I would be able to enjoy requited love. “Where is the wish come true I’d expected to take me by surprise?” I wrote in a song called “Not Much of an Ending.” I was only 18 but I felt weighed down enough to have lived 40 years.

Trusting God’s way

Thank God that wasn’t the ending! It was only the end of the most difficult time in my life. He called to my mind Proverbs 3:5-6, Romans 8:28, Isaiah 55:8-9 and other verses that encouraged me to trust God’s way is best. I was inspired to write a song about trusting Him and letting Him heal what is broken in our lives. “While it’s hard to see beyond our own desires, sometimes we must get up and build a brand new fire.”

I still wanted with all of my heart to have mutual, true love, but I was learning to give that to Jesus. If anyone could change my desires, if anyone could be my everything and never let me down, it was Jesus. He kept me close and reminded me to keep my eyes on Him. Old habits die hard and it took years to fully let go. Nonetheless, it was possible because all things are possible for Him, and in Him I am complete.