This is coming from a girl well acquainted with heart breaks [too acquainted]. I’ve cried for many boys, but I’ve had four true heart-breaks (two coming from the same guy).

My first major heart break would make it’s debut before I was even considered a teenager. I was in fifth-grade, during my highest season (sixteen boyfriends in one year), when I met the brother of the boy who would break my heart a year later. His name was Joel, (the heart-breaker’s brother), and I’m saddened to say he was infatuated with me. It’s sorrowful to recount, but I actually dated Joel, and like the fifteen boyfriends I had that fifth grade year, I dumped him like a hot potato–maybe gave ‘em two weeks, tops, before another boy caught my eye–his older brother. When I met JC it was Halloween. He was (up until that point), the cutest boy I’d ever seen; big hazel eyes, dirty blond hair, tight bod (for a thirteen year-old at least). This Puerto-Rican cutie-pie honestly resembled a young William Levy. He had a girl-friend, but that wasn’t an issue for me. Girl-friends or girls who liked the same guy as me were hardly an obstacle (or at least they weren’t before). So, I invited him to my twelfth birthday party. I was in sixth grade now, and he was in seventh (always had a thing for older guys). He came, and my, was he the topic for discussion for every girl at my party, even my sixteen-teen year old sister and mom! [I'm tellin' you, this boy was a looker!]. We slow danced (my dad got it on tape), to Ginuwine’s “Differences” and Usher’s “New Relationship” (my mom, knowing he had a girl-friend, asked the DJ to play it). Everything was going great, this guy was totally into me! (so I thought…) Shortly after my party, maybe a week or so, he dumped his girl-friend and asked me out. I was ecstatic!–for two weeks. He dumped me after some drama that took place with his ex (this girl literally walked around the school in her cheerleader uniform with a two by two foot poster saying I was a slut, so I did what any goodie-good twelve year old would do: did the same thing but with meaner labels. Sidenote:I wasn’t always a Christian). But I discovered from my bestfriend that this was only a reason to get rid of me because he really dug her cousin who had attended my party, but left early. Boy was I broken to pieces. JC left Miami and moved two hours away the same year. I cried for him for over a year, torturing myself with the song, “You Got it Bad.” I did have it bad, and I was only twelve! But that wouldn’t be the last time my little heart get’s trampled on.

I had a few mini heart breaks after JC; one in seventh grade, another in eighth, and then in tenth. I was now sixteen, and had met a new boy that surpassed my like of the rest, yes, even of JC. Chris, we’ll call him, was now the most beautiful guy I’d ever seen. This guy resembled James Franco in his prime (my friends and I would come up with code names for the guys we liked, his was, “J. F.”). Brown eyes that were never opened all the way, giving them a mysterious squint, always having a glimmer in them, even in the darkest of lighting. And his smile, oh his smile; pearly white against visibly soft thick pink lips. He had a good height for a sixteen year-old; 5’9, and everything from those squinty eyes to his deep and raspy voice was mysterious. But I’d quickly come to find he and I were on two very different walks in life. He was into drinking and smoking weed, I was not. So he relayed to me, right off the bat, that he wasn’t interested in “good girls.” I should’ve heeded the warning. Two weeks later he was dating a girl with basically the female version of his name, “Christina” we’ll call her (in real life the names were even closer). I was really hurt, because I’d researched this boy’s MySpace page up and down, had a three hour conversation with him over AIM, and convinced myself that he was perfect for me and that I too was perfect for him. I would believe this, albeit somewhat secretively, for two years before he’d finally give me the time of day.

His relationship with Christina lasted surprisingly long; over a year. I found out later that he had lost it to her and the fact that she was having sex with him had much to do with it. I also heard that he eventually dumped her because he got tired of her, and she became a bit crazy for him. This didn’t bother me too much, because I saw beyond his reputation. I was a virgin myself, and believed a good girl like me could change him. (Food for thought: you can’t change a guy, at least not permanently. Only God can change a person for good, and only if they WANT to change).

I was a Senior when we got reconnected, and he started to fall for me (well actually, under the stars one night, he confessed indirectly that he’d cared about me all along). This boy also believed that he could change for me. He told me he was willing to abstain from sex (even though for me, it wasn’t an option to begin with), and wait for me, no matter how much it killed him inside. (Ever hear that one, ladies?) Anyways, he waited all right, for two weeks! He blamed the break up on family issues, but he had another girl-friend not very long after, and then another, and later on that year, a week after hooking up with me again, I ran into him at the mall and guess who he was with? Christina!

Well, he broke my heart: I lost seven pounds in less than two weeks. My poor bestfriend, Marilyn, had to suffer through the pain with me (being that we were practically connected at the hip). But a final heart breaker would enter my life a month after the break-up (which by the way, was on Valentine’s Day): Dace.

Dace and I worked at the same dance studio. I taught (still do), Musical Theatre and he taught Acrobatics. Funny, I’d seen this mysterious and quite-frankly, weird, acro teacher a few times, but didn’t think much of him (except that he was kind of strange). But one day, after going out with a few mutual friends (his friend, David liked me), I became attracted to him. We started “exclusively dating” (not officially), that same week. It would be two months until he’d ask me on prom night to make it official. I was on cloud nine with this boy–until he revealed another side of himself (literally). This boy was more confusing, conflicting, and complicated than any guy I dated before him. He was truly a nice guy, but had lots of unresolved issues that broke us apart. He couldn’t give his heart over to me as I had so willfully given him mine (I was ready to finally lose my virginity), but he denied both my goods (we did, however, do other things sexually, which I regret), and my heart, and this time, I was broken for real. I was done. I had made this boy, unbeknowest to me, my god. I loved him more than anything, thought about him more than anything, and was willing to give up all I had to offer, just so I could be with him forever. And this, was a problem. 

See, I had set my heart up for the shattering. I thrust my heart into the hands of boys who couldn’t handle it with care and who definitly couldn’t open up their hearts to me. Whether it be paternal issues or some other family issues, they had been sinned against, and these unhealed wounds disabled them from moving on and loving freely, without doubt or fear.

The Bible says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” I didn’t know this while in relationship with these boys, but they were incapable of loving me, because fear had crippled them, and the only way they would ever be able to love me completely, was if and when Perfect Love cast it out. Do you know where Perfect Love comes from? God.

The Bible says, “God is love,” and that, “We love because He first loved us.” If we want to know how to love, the best example of love that ever walked this earth was Jesus Christ Himself. He said that everything He did, He’d seen the Father do. He said that He and the Father were one. So God came down, in the likeness of man, so that we can know Perfect Love, in hopes that we would not only emulate it, but embrace it.

So what am I saying?

Lovely lady (or even gentleman), reading this blog, if you have given your heart over to another human being, so much so, that you think about them at least 95% of the time, you are setting yourself up for heart break, because there is no human being on the planet that can love you perfectly. I’m married, and my husband loves me, and although it’s lightyears better than any guy before him, it’s definitly not a perfect love. It get’s better and will continue to do so because He is a man of God and wants to obey God’s commands on how to love and Christ lives in his heart, so He has the capacity to love me immensely and display it beautifully, but only God can love me and does love me with utter perfection. There’s a term in the greek for God’s love called “agape” it means, ‘God’s unconditional love.’ He’s the only one that knows every single sin you’ve ever commited and even the ones you will later, and yet, loves you unconditionally. He knows every thought you’ve ever had, and still loves you. He actually formed you, gave you the gifts and the passions you hold. He’s so in love with you, He watches you every second of the day. He knows everything you do. He seeks opportunity to knock on your heart, to whisper in your ear, to let you know He is there, in hopes that by His love and grace, you’d acknowledge Him and want to pursue Him in return. Some people don’t believe in Him, I’d boldly say it’s because they’ve willfully turned a blind eye to His presence. They deny and deny Him until their hearts are so hard, they really cannot see Him in their life. The Bible calls it a veil. But Jesus can remove it, if they so choose.

God’s love is for everyone, the Bible makes it clear, but it also makes it clear that love is a choice. We can choose God’s love or we can deny it till our last breath. And then God’s critics balk at hell. If they want nothing to do with Him while here on earth, why would they want to go to heaven where they’ll be in His presence for eternity? What I’m saying is, love is a choice, and even hell is a choice. You can choose to give your heart to God, or you can give it to someone or something else. But in the end, that road leads to destruction. (Trust me, I’ve been there, and know plenty others who have been too).

So my prayer for you is that you give your heart to God. That you would simply say aloud to Him, ‘God, I open my heart to you now, and I invite you inside. I’m sick of the heart breaks and disappointments, I want someone who won’t let me down, I want You to be my God now.” But there’s one thing you have to understand, “He who has the Son, has the Father, He who does not have the Son, does not have the Father.”

‘Member how I mentioned earlier that Jesus said Him and God were one? Well, if you deny Jesus, you’re ultimately denying God, and love itself. Because Jesus died for us, this you may have heard, but what you may not have come to understand is that He did not do it in vain. He died because every person on this planet has broken some, if not all, of the Ten Commandments. We’ve basically broken God’s law. Whether it be by lying, lusting, hating someone, envying, taking something that doesn’t belong to us i.e. stealing, we’ve all broken it. And God as the Just Judge cannot overlook crime, just as an earthly judge would be considered unjust if he let a criminal go with no price to pay. But what does God do? He says, “I love this world so much, I don’t want them to have to pay the price which is eternal separation from Me, because I’m perfect and holy, and I cannot have criminals dwelling with Me. So this is what I’ll do, since I’m the only one who has never messed up, I’ll come down to them, in a form like theirs, and live a perfect life. Then I will die on their behalf, so that ‘whosoever’ chooses to trust in My Son, will be forgiven and have everlasting life.” This was Jesus’ message, and He made it very clear. I pray you choose the Son, choose life and forgiveness, and best of all, eternally perfect agape.