"The List"

One of the things Professor Brandt (my youth ministry professor) has told my class several times is not to set out looking for the right person to marry, but instead to seek to become the right person. It's profound.
I have a list that contains all the different qualities I want in a husband. The list was large and growing ever more whenever I thought of something else I believed would make a man worthy of my love. It was so petty. I envisioned the perfect, ideal man, and I fully believed I would find him, fall madly in love, get married, and live happily every after. I dreamt in fairytale colors. But love isn't like that. Love is profound and beautiful, but it is sacrifice and selflessness... it is transformational.
I've changed my list. I wrote a new one without looking at the first list to inspire me. I dug into my hearts deepest desires and developed a list that is truly profound (at least to me). It contains only three "qualities" and my heart desires nothing more than what is there.

First, I want a man who has a real and personal relationship with Christ. What a beautiful thing, someone who knows Christ and knows Him intimately. Christ needs to be the foundation and center, not of anything, but of everything. We live and move and breathe for Him.
Second, I want a man whom I can work alongside in ministry. It has been my hearts desire to be 'ezer kenegdo', as God has created me to be. And because I believe very firmly that God has called me to minister to youth, I also believed that the person I marry must be someone with whom my calling can merge with.
Third, I want a man who views me as and treats me as an irreplaceable treasure. And then everything else will fall into place.

Even though I've created this list, I'm not sure I want to be in a relationship at this time. Of course, I have fleeting thoughts about it, and I look forward to maybe being blessed with marriage someday, but I realized how overwhelmed I am right now. It was just this summer that I realized my call to youth ministry and finally feeling like I have a clear and direct purpose for my life gave me the desire and the drive to do really well because I'm taking it seriously. I want to be in my youth ministry classes, and I want to learn the material, and I want the insights and teaching because I want to be effective. If God were to put a man actively into my life, then so be it, but right now I feel like one would be a distraction. I think it's just that I realize that a relationship, especially a dating relationship (since I don't plan to marry before I graduate), would require a lot of me. There is so much I would have to deal with emotionally, physically, spiritually... and I especially don't want to deal with the sexual temptation right now because if I fell to the tempation it could jepordize... everything. Just when I'm so close to graduation and everything. I know it will be a tempation later in life too, but I believe that God is still working on me. And I'm also still working on myself, trying to lost my excess weight and overcome obesity. I have a year and a half before I'm done with college and I'm excited because I have the opportunity to concentrate on other things that I want to do before I get married.

*sigh* Would you believe this entire post started because I was thinking about a person.

Oh well, I'm getting pretty sleepy and it's pretty early in the morning. I'm going to curl up under my blankets and sleep.

Amanda