I just finished reading a post by a friend of mine, a girl, who posted on some of the horrors of divorce and commented that one reason why she remains single is fear of the what ifs of divorce. What if she got married and her husband just up and left her? How would she go on with the man in her life missing? Her fears, sadly, are legitimized by a great many statistics and personal stories. However, in my opinion (and I say this more to any men in my audience than women, I suppose), if any woman finds her husband has given up and walked away, she need not really wonder what she must do now that she no longer has a man in her life: in my opinion she didn't have a man in her life to begin with. A man would not walk away--at least not any man worth the name.
I suppose it's rather impetuous of me to say something like that. After all, I'm single. I always have been. I don't know the pressures of a relationship or of a marriage--not firsthand--and so who am I to judge those who have and find them too much for them? The answer is this: I am a man with a tenacious heart. I am a man whose ideal of nobility is something like a picture of the Alamo, where 180 volunteers held out for three days against an army more than 10 times their size--volunteers who fought even knowing that the battle was lost before the first shot was fired. My ideal of nobility, of masculinity, is a heart that does not let go, that refuses to walk away, the costs be damned. When I hear a man recite his vows and say, "Till death do us part," I expect he means it literally. Death may overtake him or her suddenly and part them, but if any other force threatens to part them, he would rather die than yield.
You may say I'm young and naive. Overly optimistic, overly idealistic, and completely unrealistic. Maybe I am, but that is who I am. It is not just an ideal I have put up on a shelf in my mind to be forgotten. It's something I live even in small ways. It's this sense of the nobility of tenacity that has me writing this tonight. It's one o'clock...well, one-thirty. I worked a full day today, standing every minute of it because I'm a cashier. Halfway through I felt ready for a nap, but I wouldn't rest then and won't rest now either. I have something I have to do. I've set my heart on finishing this blog entry (and another one, actually, mercifully brief) and I'm tenacious about it. My legs may be cramping just a bit and I will definitely feel like cursing my name tomorrow morning when I have to wake up--possibly to have my entire life here turned upside down by evacuation orders--but my comfort and my sleep are expendable. Something ought to be said about having tenacity of heart and I'm willing to suffer a bit to make it so--even knowing that this post will probably be viewed a grand total of 2 times, and those by random visitors from South Korea who get redirected here by some ad on a dating site (don't ask me! I'm just reading what it says on my blog's stats!).
Like I said, I haven't ever been in a relationship, but I have demonstrated it in similar ways. In the rift that developed some months ago between myself and some of my friends I expended a lot of energy and shed a lot of tears trying to mend or hold on to the relationship which was, in retrospect, a lost cause. I held on so long and so hard that I let the strain of it damage me at the deepest level: my relationship with God. I remember literally pitching a screaming fit at Him during the heat of things, and (as in a previous post) it would take months for me to discover and heal the scars. Even now, I would seize the chance to mend the rift, if it were to present itself. Though it was in vain, I held on beyond the point of merely hurting myself and only let go when I literally had no other option--and this was a friendship where no vows were involved.
I knew during this ordeal that God wanted to use me to portray Himself, how He would love and pursue. I think I understand now what He meant by that. He wanted to show me that He is Himself tenacious. Many times I have thought, I've done it now! Surely after that, God will throw up His hands and walk away from me! But He never does and He never will. He has a noble tenacious heart. To hold on to me, He literally sacrificed His life, enduring the most brutal death of human history, to save me. Even if I were to somehow sever myself from Him (were it possible), He would willingly welcome me back. He never gives up! He never walks away, and when I find my dream girl and make my vows, I want to be as tenacious as Him. I know I am not perfect, and that my blunders will probably endanger the relationship as much as anything else, but with God as my help and my model, may I never give up!
I suppose it's rather impetuous of me to say something like that. After all, I'm single. I always have been. I don't know the pressures of a relationship or of a marriage--not firsthand--and so who am I to judge those who have and find them too much for them? The answer is this: I am a man with a tenacious heart. I am a man whose ideal of nobility is something like a picture of the Alamo, where 180 volunteers held out for three days against an army more than 10 times their size--volunteers who fought even knowing that the battle was lost before the first shot was fired. My ideal of nobility, of masculinity, is a heart that does not let go, that refuses to walk away, the costs be damned. When I hear a man recite his vows and say, "Till death do us part," I expect he means it literally. Death may overtake him or her suddenly and part them, but if any other force threatens to part them, he would rather die than yield.
You may say I'm young and naive. Overly optimistic, overly idealistic, and completely unrealistic. Maybe I am, but that is who I am. It is not just an ideal I have put up on a shelf in my mind to be forgotten. It's something I live even in small ways. It's this sense of the nobility of tenacity that has me writing this tonight. It's one o'clock...well, one-thirty. I worked a full day today, standing every minute of it because I'm a cashier. Halfway through I felt ready for a nap, but I wouldn't rest then and won't rest now either. I have something I have to do. I've set my heart on finishing this blog entry (and another one, actually, mercifully brief) and I'm tenacious about it. My legs may be cramping just a bit and I will definitely feel like cursing my name tomorrow morning when I have to wake up--possibly to have my entire life here turned upside down by evacuation orders--but my comfort and my sleep are expendable. Something ought to be said about having tenacity of heart and I'm willing to suffer a bit to make it so--even knowing that this post will probably be viewed a grand total of 2 times, and those by random visitors from South Korea who get redirected here by some ad on a dating site (don't ask me! I'm just reading what it says on my blog's stats!).
Like I said, I haven't ever been in a relationship, but I have demonstrated it in similar ways. In the rift that developed some months ago between myself and some of my friends I expended a lot of energy and shed a lot of tears trying to mend or hold on to the relationship which was, in retrospect, a lost cause. I held on so long and so hard that I let the strain of it damage me at the deepest level: my relationship with God. I remember literally pitching a screaming fit at Him during the heat of things, and (as in a previous post) it would take months for me to discover and heal the scars. Even now, I would seize the chance to mend the rift, if it were to present itself. Though it was in vain, I held on beyond the point of merely hurting myself and only let go when I literally had no other option--and this was a friendship where no vows were involved.
I knew during this ordeal that God wanted to use me to portray Himself, how He would love and pursue. I think I understand now what He meant by that. He wanted to show me that He is Himself tenacious. Many times I have thought, I've done it now! Surely after that, God will throw up His hands and walk away from me! But He never does and He never will. He has a noble tenacious heart. To hold on to me, He literally sacrificed His life, enduring the most brutal death of human history, to save me. Even if I were to somehow sever myself from Him (were it possible), He would willingly welcome me back. He never gives up! He never walks away, and when I find my dream girl and make my vows, I want to be as tenacious as Him. I know I am not perfect, and that my blunders will probably endanger the relationship as much as anything else, but with God as my help and my model, may I never give up!
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