Niana Marie.

²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

So, funny story this morning. Do you ever forget how to spell a word and scribble it on your hand to see if you were spelling it correctly? Well I did last night while I was doing some homework.  It was 2 am and I couldn’t remember how to spell “emphasizes.”  (It’s what happens when you stay up too late to do these things.) Well, I woke up this morning and while I was in the shower I looked down at my hands and I forgot what I had written…  At first it looked to me like it said Ephesians 5:22, then I remembered my semi-conscious attempt to avoid a spelling error the night before.  Either way, I took a mental note to look up Ephesians 5:22 when I got the chance.  (The shower is not a very safe place to pull out your bible.)

So, as I’m getting dressed I was in my room listening to a worship playlist and talking to God.  I was thinking and praying a lot about my new found singleness, and the biggest thing on my mind was the feeling that, looking back, my “ex” seemed to have no concept of what it really meant to love someone. He knew how to make me feel loved, but to actually love me? I don’t know… To God, I was saying things like, “I would have fought for him through anything.  It wasn’t just about feelings for me, I loved him because I chose to love him.” And believe me, I had to make that choice to love him against certain temptations and distractions on more than one occasion.  I felt like I was finally understanding what it meant to love someone. But I guess he hasn’t gotten there yet.

I looked down and saw my hand again and decided to biblegateway the verse I saw.  I looked up Ephesians 5:22, and how fitting.  It read: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” God really has a sense of humor lately…

So this is what God is telling me to do; to submit to a man.  And like I said before, I feel like I am ready and able to do so.  I want to submit to a man, but I want to submit to a MAN.  After reading this scripture I started writing in my journal and this is what came out:

“I was ready to give my whole heart to him. I am so ready to give my whole heart to someone, and know what it feels like to be in mutual love and love in its truest. I want to lay my life down for someone and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would do the same for me. I want a man I can fight for until the end, who I know will fight for me. Someone who will choose to love me, not based on how he feels, but based on the fact that he believes God when He says about me that I am worth it. These things speak so much louder than cute words, phone calls and fuzzy feelings. These things mean so much more to me than serenading me with words from someone else’s heart.”

So, gentlemen, do me a favor and be men.  Learn how to love like a man.  Because I can’t submit to someone who doesn’t know how to love me first.