"Cause this is real and this is good
It warms the inside just like it should
But most of all
Most of all it’s built to last
It’s built to last
It’s built to last"
Melee, Built to Last
I just love this song. Plus the music video is a pretty cute reenactment of every over the top romantic gesture we secretly loved in the movies. The jangly opening, the completely optimistic lyrics, the celebratory way the lead singer belts out that chorus - It just grabs me, makes me want to dance and puts a silly smile on my face. It's really nice to know that song writers in this age can still pen hopeful love songs that are so remarkably old-fashioned. After a slew of booty-callin', get down and dirty type of 'love songs', this one just stands out.
I first heard it at a wedding: it was played during one of those obligatory powerpoint presentations of the bride and groom's childhood pictures. Somehow that song stuck in many of the guests' heads. I guess everybody is looking for an old fashioned love song as well. :)
I ended 2007 and am starting 2008 thinking seriously about what it takes to fall in love, stay in love and have love last. How do you build the foundations of a relationship that can see two people through friendship, courtship and finally marriage? I never had to think about it seriously before because it just wasn't in my field of vision. I never thought I would have choices this way.
I have stayed single for 30 years - at first, not out of choice but over the years, I did come to realise I did have a choice and I was sticking to it. I made a promise to myself and to God: stay single until the right one and the right moment appears. There have been opportunities to start something romantic and completely unwise that would definitely have ended in hurt and loss. It has been incredibly tempting and it still is tempting to cross the line that has been drawn in the sand. And every time I tell a guy about that line in the sand, part of me feels how right it is, part of me wants to kick myself for basically cementing yet another year as a singleton.
Last year was a strange year. It was the year where I felt suddenly more sure and comfortable with what made me an attractive woman. It sounds odd - but it's just not something I was ever at ease about having spent much of my teens and university years wrestling with insecurity after insecurity. Then suddenly in my late 20s there was a turning point - I am not entirely sure how I got there, but I did by God's undending grace and unflinching truth.
In late 2006, when I was 29, I wrote this. Now when I look back at my friend's prophetic words to me, I understand them anew. Then, the words transacted through the cool medium of email still brought tears of hope smeared with a bit of fear and disbelief.
Now, I read these words and I am moved by how they gell with the truth I am living now.
"now, He's undoing… and He will fit it all back together again
… it wasn't a mistake, just that it's out grown it's present purpose, function, which is a great thing
… and piecing together with other parts to fit together into something new."
I have recognised the fruits that have been bourne from being unattached through all the crucial formative years of adulthood. I see the providence of lessons that I could only learn when I learnt to walk by myself with only God to hold onto. I find a strength, resilience, wisdom and discipline within me that is not of my own creation but seeded there by God's gospel.
And I am really grateful that he took me and transformed the person I was into who I am today. I am not the same woman I was when I first knew Him. And such deep change cannot happen by human will - not mine for sure, which was definitely weak and backbone-less.
Proverbs 31 sits in from of my computer, held by a little yellow binder clip. There are words in there, phrases that shed light to what kind of woman I want to be someday. I have always found the description in there of
"An Excellent Wife" profound, difficult but ultimately - moving.
I hoped but never used to actually believe with a whole heart that the womanly traits in there were traits that modern men would find beautiful. But last year, I found two who affirmed that for me. They encouraged me that those traits in Proverbs were traits men did find deeply attractive even amid all the noise. They were traits well worth fighting for, well worth preserving and aspiring to keep. They were old-fashioned traits that would never lose their lustre to those who knew what they were looking for.
When I was in my early 20s, like a fool, I thought I would be happy if I was prettier and skinnier.
It was such a fruitless and angst-filled struggle to achieve and I never did make it.
At the cusp of my 30s, I don't need to make it that way any more. It's like an old, tacky outfit I realise I never want to wear anymore.
There has been a new paradigm of womanly beauty that has been revealed to me that is far more worthy to try and achieve.
"Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."
says Proverbs 31:25-25
From beginning to end, that will be something really worth trying a lifetime to achieve - single or married.
The future is not set in stone and things may change as the Lord gives and takes away.
I am secure in who I am by myself, with God always as my Saviour but I do look forward with joy and anticipation to the possibility of someday sharing my life with a good husband created, shaped and transformed just for me.
I want nothing less than a marriage worth waiting for.
Something real. Something good. Warms the inside like it should.
But most of all, most of all, Built to Last.
