Dating advice

[debrakay]

I hope you are ready for a long story but I will keep it as short as possible.  As a young girl I wanted my father's love but he did not know how to love a daughter and devoted his time to his first born son.  He was not a believer.  When I became a teenager I was looking for the love of a man and of course gave in to the first boy who paid attention to me and I ended up pregnant at age 18.  The boy was forced to marry me by his parents but it was bad from the start and lasted 10 years with another child born.  After we divorced I gave up on men and then the Lord dropped a new husband in my life.  We were married for 40 years when he passed away last September.  He raised my daughter and son as their father and we had a Christian home.

My son from my first marriage fell in "love" when he was 18 and married her the month after he graduated.  He married her because he knew how we felt about premarital sex.  That marriage lasted 2 years.  At the time others said to me, "Why did you let him marry her?"  Because I knew how stubborn my son was and if I tried to talk him out of it it would have been worse.  Both of them were willingly baptised together a week before the small family wedding.  She was not a believer before then and many years later she told me she knew God had a plan all along to bring her to Jesus through her connection to my son and our family.  My son would have rebelled if I had badgered him about marrying her and who knows what our relationship would have been like.  He did marry a beautiful Christian girl several year later and they have been married for almost 25 years now.  

We can try to help our children understand marriage and the difficulties in relationships after years and years of "togetherness" but they will each need to and will choose their own path.  Just as God gives us freewill so we have to give to our children.  Our guidance and advice can only help when given in a kind and loving way but they will make their choices.  It doesn't hurt to ray a lot and open conversation helps.

I am so thankful for the forgiveness of God for our stupidy as human beings.  

[Starise]

If only we could all just be like Paul and go 100% for Jesus so many problems and issues would be eliminated.

But no, we don't do that do we? This is hard for me to describe, but I think a woman completes a man but she isn't to totally complete him. Does that make sense? And that only happens if she really tries to help and isn't making things worse. Goes both ways.

Lord knows I've made mistakes and maybe you can learn from them. At 20 I thought having a Christian wife would complete me. I paid more attention to "Christian" than I did the actual woman I had married. Gotta look at that whole tamale, because some Christian women will drive a man crazy. I'm not suggesting he look at non believers, just be very careful and watch them over time before you make any committments. I mean, demons can be in church, so a woman in church really isn't anything unless she lives it deeply. That's another thing. Not many young people, as in their 20's are really thinking deeply about anything. " Duh, you wanna get married?" Well we already did it, so maybe we should...not condoning what I just said in any way.

I have seen many of my neices and nephews date. And unfortunately a little experimentation happened there that was quite intimate, so I'm not convinced frequent dating is healthy, especially if the guy has the wrong goals. Intimacy can make a man feel like he is now committed, at least in a 20 year old brain it can.

[debrakay]

17 hours ago, teddyv said:

Don't get into that nonsense of a "soul mate" or that God has that one person picked out for him.

I cringe at the "waiting on God" thing, as it sounds like an empty platitude and not advice. You've got to meet and get to know a person. They will rarely just show up one day with a sign above their head saying "pick me".

That's funny you say "soul mate".  Jesus is our only true soul mate.  I was married to one man for 10 years and barely knew him could not remain with him or one of us would have ended up dead.  I was married to one man for 40 years and knew him pretty well but he would surprise me with stupidy every once in a while. (I know he felt the same about me.)

We had a good marriage, but hey, when you are together basically 24/7, year after year, decade after decade, with any other person they are going to do or say something that irks you.  We are humans and where humans are there will always be trouble at one time or another.  Patience, endurance, perseverance, not saying everything you think, are some of the ways to keep any relationship going.  Marrying your best friend helps too. 

[RdJ]

He was just talking to a girl long distance. He saw her as a good friend. He learns from it. Now I want a good church for him with a good teen group, cause I don't have the idea that he likes to talk about it with his mother lol.

[debrakay]

@Starise Your wisdom is showing.   I love it. 

Young people need to hear our wisdom even if they think they don't.  I remember how smart I thought I was at 18. 

[Starise]

1 minute ago, debrakay said:

@Starise Your wisdom is showing.   I love it. 

Young people need to hear our wisdom even if they think they don't.  I remember how smart I thought I was at 18. 

Well I surely wasn't born with that wisdom, many years and hard knocks as they say

I never really played the game right. The way I met my second wife of over 20 years now, she would blush if I told you how that went down. And it's easy to say , "I shouldn't have done that". The ramifications of bad decisions only complicated things.

The Lord knew what the plan was though.

[debrakay]

3 minutes ago, Renskedejonge said:

He was just talking to a girl long distance. He saw her as a good friend. He learns from it. Now I want a good church for him with a good teen group, cause I don't have the idea that he likes to talk about it with his mother lol.

My 21 year old grandson is the quiet, reserved type.  He was in a relationship for a several of years in high school but her family did not think he was good enough for their daughter.  She treated him very poorly too.  So when the relationship ended our family was happy because he had been very happy. For the past couple years we have been praying for him to find a wonderful, loving young woman who cares about him and likes him and who he is.  Early in the summer he went to Montana to visit a friend and met sweet Christian girl.  Since then they have been texting and talking.  She came out to visit him and now we just found out he is going there to be with her and her family for Christmas.  We are trying not to get too excited but ....... we know it is all in God's hands and he always has a plan for each of us. 

[RdJ]

2 minutes ago, debrakay said:

That's funny you say "soul mate".  Jesus is our only true soul mate. 

When I was 18 I had to have a boyfriend. It was idolatry. I thought about nothing else. Kept asking God when He would send him and got no answer. My mom often went to a guy who gave personal words from God and she asked him if he had one for me and he sent me a letter. He did not know what I asked. So I really expected a: Hi this is God and your Mr. Right comes there and there in 3 months or whatever. Instead it was: This I hope and long for that the relationship with Me will come on the first place for you.

After 2 divorces I asked God: Do You want me to go back to my first ex (which he did not want), 2nd ex (atheist, the whole relationship was sin) or can I marry someone else? Cause I looked up all these preachings about remarriage and really did not know anymore. Lets just ask God. He said: Marry Me. Time is short. They were marrying and giving into marriage. I said: if You really want that I want it to be romantic and I want to see Your Face. That night I had a dream of Jesus and me on a sail ship and He was the Captain and I saw His face through two wooden small planks like a cross.

[debrakay]

2 minutes ago, Starise said:

Well I surely wasn't born with that wisdom, many years and hard knocks as they say

I never really played the game right. The way I met my second wife of over 20 years now, she would blush if I told you how that went down. And it's easy to say , "I shouldn't have done that". The ramifications of bad decisions only complicated things.

The Lord knew what the plan was though.

Yeh, I met mine in a bar.  It's a long story but a great one which we told for years. It was the only place the Lord could bring us together as we did shop at the same stores or go to the same church or run in the same circles.  It's awesome to look back on how the hand of God moves in so many ways!

[Starise]

2 minutes ago, debrakay said:

Yeh, I met mine in a bar.  It's a long story but a great one which we told for years. It was the only place the Lord could bring us together as we did shop at the same stores or go to the same church or run in the same circles.  It's awesome to look back on how the hand of God moves in so many ways!

Well I met my second by bringing her pizza to her house, that was my first mistake. We should have met in a public place. That was quite a pizza dinner.