If you know me, or have ever had a conversation with me, or read any of my articles, you know that I am a hopeless romantic. Well, actually according to one of my best friends, I'm a hopeful romantic. I love to love "love"; if any of that made sense. I've been learning in my social psychology class that many people in our society are prejudice against certain types of love that doesn't make sense to us such as age gap couples and interracial couples. It's a sad world that we live in where we, as humans existing with each other, cannot support each other in our journey to find love.

Thus, I've been thinking about this idea of love and what it means to have love, give love, and be loved. While I may only be nineteen and I still have a lot to learn, I've done some research and had my fair share of hard lessons of what love means to me. My whole life I grew up with the "princess theory" where I believed that my Prince Charming would one day waltz into my life; maybe not in the middle of a forest, but something like that. As I grew up I continued with this phenomenon that society allowed me to dream of. Granted, as I entered high school, my peers encouraged me to drop the fantasy and step into the real world of dating and hooking up. During this time I thought I wasn't giving into the peer pressure by not physically acting on it, but my mental state suffered. I began looking for love without even realizing it. I constantly felt the need to be affirmed for who I was by the people that surrounded me. I fell for guys who I thought could eventually be the man of my dreams, but never seemed to measure up. I set impossible expectations by the people of who I wanted to love me.

I actually cringe up writing that because looking back it is so unfair. It's incredibly unfair of me to expect people to love me the way I think I deserve. One of my favorite quotes is from a book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, where one of the teachers explains to the main character that "we accept the love we think we deserve." This is so true in my case. I have this horrible tendency to search for a love that will quench my thirst for true love. What I never realized for so long is that I have already tasted the sweetest of loves: God's love.

While it may seem ridiculous to most, I had a crisis moment recently about whether or not I would ever experience true love. And because I believe that God has a crazy and hilarious sense of humor, the next day in church I sang these lyrics: "I've tasted and seen of the sweetest of loves, where my heart becomes free and my shame is undone." BOOM. MIC DROP FROM THE HEAVENS. God is such a jokester sometimes in our relationship that while I am singing a song that I have sung probably hundreds of times, he just quickly calms my fears about worldly love and reminds me that I've already tasted the most beautiful kind of love. HIS love.

Guys, we are SO loved by our God. We are created to love one another, but above all else we are created to love God. And guess what? You don't have to stay up at night crying with a rose wondering if he loves you or he loves you not. HE DOES. Period. Case closed. It's easy to go through the motions and say "Yes, I know God loves me." But really take time to realize what that means to you. What does it mean that God's story of true love where he sent his only son to die for you and me is the greatest love story of all time?

I mean maybe it's just me, but God loved us so much he put milkshakes on this Earth. If that isn't some kind of crazy love, I don't know what is.