Fellow TSGs I have some good news for ya…this plague we suffer from is not incurable. 

As I mentioned I’ve been dealing with this for a long time and I always felt the need to fight it.  I’ve been told to embrace it, but I’m just not willing to do that.  My approach to this fight has been to just put it out of my head.  Force myself to stop daydreaming about my life with a complete stranger.  Tell myself they are already married with 8 kids.  Tell myself they’re a weird-o or that they would think I was a weird-o.  Anything that would get that crap outta my head.  Turns out I’ve been going about this all wrong.  I’ve been fighting off lies with more lies.  And let’s be real…if I could just force myself to stop thinking about it then it wouldn’t be a plague.   

But I found the cure and I thought it was only fair to share it with the rest of you.  You ready?  Don’t erase….replace (catchy huh?  I have to admit I ganked that from a TLC song…sorta…90’s what, what!).  Instead of trying to put it out of my mind I should be replacing it with something better.  A cuter guy you ask….no, that’s not exactly what I mean. 

Let’s break it down.  I am passionate about marriage.  Not about being married, but about marriage.  That sounds weird right?  The reason I’m passionate about marriage is because it’s a picture.  It’s a picture of Christ and his bride…the church…the body of Christ…you…me.  God did not look down at marriage and think "hey, that would be a good picture of what I’m talking about."  He created marriage for that purpose.  And marriage is a temporary thing.  There will be no marriage in heaven because once we get there we’ll have the real thing and we won’t need the picture anymore.  So marriage is for this life only…and it’s main purpose is to paint a picture of the relationship that exists between Christ and His bride.  

So being obsessed…dare I say worshiping…the idea of marriage is like marveling at a ray of sunlight as it dances on the ground and never looking up to see where it’s coming from.  

One of my favorite quotes is by C.S. Lewis.  He says "…it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.  We are far too easily pleased."   

Believe me I’m not trying to infer that marriage is a mud pie…cause I still wanna a slice.  But my point, TSG’s, is that we are far too easily pleased.  We gorge ourselves on fantasies and dreams of the created thing without ever considering the Creator that they were meant to point to.

Marriage is a story…a beautiful story in which some of you get to communicate to the world how Jesus loves his bride.  But not all of us get to tell the story in that way.  We get other ways.  But that doesn’t mean that we missed the boat.  God says in his presence there is fullness of joy.  Fullness…He doesn’t say there’s a whole lot, but not as much as you would have if you were cool enough to be married…fullness…all of it.  

So the point of this long rant is to encourage my fellow TSG’s and to let you know that there is a cure for our plague.  And it’s not to train our minds not to think about guys, it’s not to ignore them, it’s not to beat ourselves to a pulp for thinking about them in the first place, it’s not to desire less…it’s to desire more.  The answer is to see the longing for a husband for what it is…just a reflection of our longing for the true Bridegroom.  

I pray this over and over throughout the day as I battle the plague.  "Satisfy me this morning (afternoon or evening) with your unfailing love that I may sing for joy and be glad all my days."  I pray to be satisfied with His love above all else.  Because it is a battle…the cure is not so much a shot in your butt as it is a round of antibiotics.  You’re gonna have to give it some time. 

So, TSGs…put down the mud pie.  Pick yourself up out of the dirt and go put on your best dress.  Cause we’ve been invited to a holiday at sea…and I sure would hate to miss that.