Risk a Little... and Date

I’m going to step out on a limb here to be a little vulnerable with you and write about a topic I’d been avoiding… dating.

I spent much of my time in university taking lots of unnecessary risks with guys. I was seeking to know my worth, asking random guys, not so much in words, to answer my deepest questions of self-worth. Looking back, the trail of footprints on my heart looks pretty awful.

Somewhere along the way, after I had had enough of breaking and being broken, I think I must have made an inner vow that sounds something like this:

“I will not let myself be fooled again. I will not let myself be open. I will build a wall so that no one can make me feel that way again.”

Have you built a similar-sounding fortress?

Subconsciously, I held onto this without even realizing it. Great and holy and God-fearing men would later come along and ask for me to be open to relationships and I would date them but never let myself actually date them. I would date less suitable suitors because I knew they would never go anywhere.

This past December, I was blessed to attend the annual CCO Rise Up Conference. One speaker, Jake Khym, said these words, “You can take risks because you have a Father who loves you.”

This poured over into my prayer time. You can take risks because you have the secure love of a Father. You can take risks because you now know your worth. You can begin to take down the walls you built.

Heather King in her book, Shirt of Flame, writes, “We will not be so gullible again, we tell ourselves. The world will not walk over us. We will not be chumps. To choose not to shut down, but to open yet further, takes tremendous purity of heart. To choose to remain vulnerable, knowing that vulnerability inevitably invites further suffering, takes tremendous courage.”

For Christmas, a friend gifted me with a beautiful and simple, wooden crucifix. I hadn’t had time to hang it up, so it lay upon my bedside table. One morning, it caught my eye. I stared at Jesus lying upon the crucifix in the most vulnerable of positions—His open arms a display of His open heart; the most vulnerable of postures. I didn’t realize that we have a model of that vulnerability and courage in Jesus’ death on the cross. It was a clear invitation for me to open up a little and to risk.

“We love because He first loved us.” – 1 John 4:19

Don’t get me wrong, I am not inviting you each to be holy doormats and gamblers this year, nor to be reckless in dating. There are some risks we should never take. And if we do not know our worth or who Christ really is, no guy or girl will ever answer or satisfy us. We will always be left wanting.

However, if our hearts are secure in the Father’s love, if we truly know our worth in Christ and are in pursuit of Him, then maybe, today, we can choose to open our arms and risk a little. We can choose to live out of a place of openness, and vulnerability. It will be a risk, I know, but we have a Father who loves us!

Read more articles on dating here.