So many times in our lives we look back on our choices that we made. We take off our rose colored glasses and see situations as they truly were: mistakes. While the pain of those mistakes and the consequences of our actions are both still very real, we find so many valuable lessons from them. Our past has a way of teaching us more anything else, even though the pain. Experience, as they say, is the best of teachers. I know that the Lord has taught me so much from my past and my mistakes. He has used those things to draw me closer to Him.

This is also true in regards to mistakes that the Lord does not even give us the opportunity to make as well.

Perhaps we can best see this in a relationship that didn't work out. Perhaps you were in love with someone who never loved you back the same way. You couldn't help the feelings you had for the person, and you tried everything to make your affections known. You maybe even tried to ask the person on a date, or give subtle or overt hints to him or her about your affections, all to no avail.

You wait around, wondering if God will perhaps change the other person's mind. You maybe even go through a phase of self loathing because you can't seem to shake your desire for that person. You might even reach a point of frustration with the other person, so that you convince yourself you are better off without him or her and that you were ignorant in the beginning for liking him or her in the first place. You make yourself mental lists of all of the reasons you should move on and stop having feelings for the person.

Unfortunately, your heart doesn't care. It simply wants what it wants.

All of these thoughts circle in your head like a never-ending carnival ride until you get so dizzy that you are sick. Sick with yourself for being so gullible and sick with the other person for not feeling toward you as you feel toward them.

This battle will go on until you wake up and realize that perhaps this situation of unrequited love is a blessing. Perhaps you are being saved from making a mistake that would wreck you even more in the future than you already are now. Maybe, if you had been with this person, you might just have missed a great opportunity at a relationship with someone else.

Or it could be that you realize your priorities are totally wrong in the first place, and that you should really be focussing on the Jesus and His love for you that is sacrificial, unending and unconditional.

Perhaps, instead of pining over some love that doesn't respect you or love you back properly, you should be pining for the One who so desperately desires your heart and your good. Once you've found Jesus's true love, you may just find a love in someone else that at least attempts to mirror His love for you.

"But God commands his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."- Romans 5:8

Don't waste your love, time, and energy on someone who doesn't appreciate them.

Instead, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth."- Colossians 3:2

Thanks for reading!