It’s engagement season once again (when is it ever not) and yesterday, my baby brother and I got into a passionate argument about one of social media’s most popular hashtags, blessed. 

We couldn’t help but roll our eyes over the latest child of God who got engaged to the man of her dreams in the best way possible and crediting it to her surrendering this desire to God. Again, nothing wrong with that but excuse me to think that God is God no matter what. God is not a puppet who will do what we please if we only do things right. Just because you surrendered all your dreams to God and did all the “right” things (and let me just say, we can never be truly right with God without Jesus, period) doesn’t mean you will get to marry the man of your dreams in a church filled with Christians.

Sometimes, you surrender to God and life doesn’t initially turn out the way that we want. I think this mentality, especially on social media, is a way of making others people feel less than because they don’t do things the way you do. It’s a holier than holy approach to dating and leaves church girls thinking that they deserve the better men because they have been “pure”. It’s an unspoken standard. The good church girl gets the guy because she’s “holy, pure” instead of simply acknowledging the fact that God is good and without our help, he blesses us with good things.

So what happens to those who refuse to make the same choices? Do they deserve the bottom of the pit? There’s no one solution to life and that includes relationships.

As a disclaimer, I used to be this annoying person on Facebook. Out of the enthusiasm of my youth, I was always the first one to post about how good my God was and while there was nothing wrong with it, there might have been a few screws loose about the theology behind it. I used to proclaim that He was good because I thought I was. I thought I deserved better treatment because I was hello, better than everyone.

While I think these people mean well (you know, believing the best), I couldn’t help but feel that they post mightier than mightier things simply because they think they are mightier above all because they did everything to the core. Like a rule book if you may say.

You see, the reality is, and I would like to begin with this is this: God is good no matter what. Whether or not we are good, clean, or whatnot, God is good and will bless us because of who He is and not because of what I have done.

I guess all this post is trying to say is this: you are loved even if you haven’t done things perfectly. You are cared for, you are not forgotten and God has given you new life and new opportunities every day. You are not counted out and you deserve a story of redemption as well. Don’t let your past count you out, fight for what God has given you and overcome.

This post is a highly sensitive topic for me and can’t wait to write more about it.