It’s one in the morning and you’re laying in your bed, tears staining your cheeks, staring up at the ceiling, your heart broken in a million fragments. You’re wondering what you did wrong, where you messed up, how you could have let a boy step all over you once again. You tell yourself, this one was the last one. You’re done for a while. You block him on social media. You try to go to sleep. But you flip back over and reach for your phone again, running through a list in your mind of who you can text. The cycle starts over again.
You wear your heart on your sleeve and always let your emotions get the best of you. You fall quickly, and you let your mind race to the future way too fast. You always say “this one is the one!” or “we are going to be together forever!” But by the next month, or even the next week, that boy has long escaped your memory and you’re onto the next one. You post selfie after selfie on your Instagram, waiting for the attention of that one specific person, or waiting for the approval you’ll get in the comments. You make sure that all your friends know when things go wrong, because you need to hear them tell you it’s all going to be okay. Your days are full of seeking acceptance and trying to be “enough”.
I know who you are, because I used to be you.
You think that happiness will come when you finally find someone who will stay. You go to extremes to attract his attention, and this almost always leaves you embarrassed. You’ve earned a reputation for yourself that doesn’t have a positive connotation. You’ve maybe lost some friends. You might be overwhelmed by the rumours that are being told about you. You may feel dirty, bruised, damaged. So you run to the next boy who seems interested, and you try to heal a burn from an old flame by igniting another new one.
And all that I want to tell you is, stop.
You don’t need the attention of that boy in your bio class who’s family is loaded with cash.
You don’t need the attention of that entire hockey team.
You don’t need the attention of another’s girls boyfriend.
You don’t need the attention of a few boys drooling over your Instagram.
You don’t need the attention of countless boys who are older than you.
Because your worth is not decided by how many likes your selfie gets, or how many boys are placing bets on who will get to ask you out, or on how many guys are snapchatting you at any given time. Your worth is not decided by the number of dates you go on or if the hottest boy in the school likes you. You may think that it does, but it absolutely does not in any way.
You think that this attention will validate you, but it will never fully satisfy you. Because the root of all this is an insecurity, or an emptiness in your heart, and the only thing that is going to fill this spot in your life is Jesus. The key to happiness doesn’t rest in finding a boyfriend, the key to happiness is found within building a relationship with the Lord first and foremost. You need to find this all by yourself. You need to learn how to be content on your own before you ever consider sharing your heart with someone else, and if you are constantly jumping from boy to boy, you won’t have time to do this. But the thing is, it isn’t easy to be alone. I can assure you that it is very tough to pull back and turn your focus away from relationships. It’s the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
But the rewards.
When you are constantly trying to force a relationship to happen with whoever is available, you give tiny pieces of your heart to each of those people. In the heat of the moment, it doesn’t matter to you, but afterwards? By always giving your feelings to careless boys, you are opening yourself up to so much damage, so much baggage, and so much guilt. I wish someone would have told me that the way I was acting would leave me feeling the repercussions for a very, very long time after. I wish that I had known that what seemed like carefree flirting when it was happening would still haunt me from time to time in my present relationship. I wasted so much effort and tears on boys who couldn’t have cared less. When you hand the realm of relationships in your life over to God, you can avoid so much heartache. You build this incredibly beautiful relationship with Him.
There is nothing better.
And when you hand your relationships over to Him, He molds them. He is the Author and Creator of love, and He wants you to have a beautiful love story! But if you are always taking matters into your hands, you don’t allow Him to do this, and you end up having a lot more heartache than you ever need to.
One day, a boy will come along, and you won’t need to ask for his attention. You won’t need to flirt excessively or drop hint after hint or try to lure him in by using your body. You won’t need to get his attention, because he will freely give it to you. He will take every negative thing you’ve ever thought about boys, and cause you to forget them. And the truth is, he won’t be your happiness. Because when you learn to love yourself and you learn to be content without someone, you will find that this happiness is all inside of you, and this boy is only an extension of the happiness that you already have.
But in the meantime, allow your heart to be filled with the love that the Saviour has to offer. He is the source of true, all consuming love. You never have to ask for His attention, and you are always wanted by Him. In Him you are enough. In Him you’ll find true happiness.
♡ Britt
Letters From Britt 