Romance and Arrows

Lately I've been thinking about people from my past, acquaintances, who I wish I would have made more of an impact on. They are just your average person, nothing majorly different about them, but I could have done a lot more to spread Christ's love to them. Take the girls on my high school cheerleading team, for instance. They were great girls, but they were also very hurt girls. For so many of them, I felt such a pain for the way the thought they had to live. It always confused me to know that almost all of them had a home church, grew up in it, but still chose to live their lives in a manner that did not honor God at all. I didn't get it then, but now I do.

It's all about the great Romance and the Message of the Arrows. I'm reading a book called The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, and it brings up this topic. Everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves, hence the great Romance. The Romance tells you that you're special, that you are worth a great value, and if you give your heart over to something bigger than you, that your heart will flourish. However, the Arrows are those things in life that contradict all that your heart longs for and pierces it with the greatest intensity, causing you not to trust anything to do with your heart.

I now realize that with these girls who I never understood before, they had experienced the Arrows that told them not to trust their hearts to anything or anyone because they would be sure to be sorry later. So, their great Romance was found in the painful lifestyle they chose which choked the life out of their hearts. The life of your heart is hope, and these girls had lost all hope for a better way. And, for girls as young as these, all hope can be lost as soon as they hear someone call them ugly, fat, undesirable, worth nothing, or when they experience their parents not care enough about them to monitor their comings and goings. Their only way to fulfill these desires was with things that only pushed the sound of the Romance further away and embraced the Message of the Arrows. The reason I used the term "choked" was because hope being withered away doesn't happen with the first arrow, or the second. It is a process of being hit with one after another, and having no one there to show you how to pull them out carefully and let the wounds heal.

Now that I understand this, I so badly wish I could have been more of a help to these girls. But, at the time, I was entirely to self consumed. Since I feel like I have been hit with a few more arrows, I can definitely see how you could lose all hope if no one is there to reassure you of what the Romance is telling you, rather than being reassured of the Arrows. Thank God that my parents and family were always there to revive hope in me and let me know that it was not all lost when hope seemed to far away.

I think that hope is what this Christmas meant for me. My family had no idea, but I guess I always anticipate receiving arrows around Christmas time to taint the joyful season for me a little bit. At least that is what has happened the past five years. Some years, the loss of hope was larger than others, and this year I felt like I was holding my breath going through the holidays. However, this year, my family not just restored hope, but gave life to my heart during this season. That's what I now pray will happen for these girls I once knew who seemed to not know that there is a story bigger than themselves to be a part of, that they are given life to their broken hearts.