First, I apologize for not writing much in November. It was a difficult month for me, since four years ago in November I found out about my husband's affair; two years ago in November we were hammering out our divorce agreement; and this November my ex-husband got remarried. I didn't expect his remarriage to bother me, and I thought I had put all those other things to rest, but I was wrong.
On the plus side, at least it lets me know that I am still soft-hearted enough to feel something.
Which brings me to my topic for this post.
I have talked to several divorced friends recently and I have seen an interesting phenomenon. When the first dating relationship after the divorce ends, it is almost more devastating than the divorce itself. It feels like someone has torn open the divorce-wounded heart and roughly rubbed salt in that bleeding wound. Eventually, the pain lessens, but the divorced person is left with yet another scar on his or her heart.
How many scars can a heart have before it becomes hard and unfeeling?
This is exactly why I don't want my teens to play the dating game! Each break-up a person goes through will leave its mark on their heart, and we all know that scar tissue is tough and knotty and ugly. I don't want my children's hearts to be like this. I want them to be able to give a soft, vulnerable, loving heart to their spouse on their wedding day.
To tell the truth, I'd like to do the same, but it may be too late for me. And even if it isn't, people in my generation only know the dating game. We have no experience in the lost art of courtship, so we continue to risk our hearts by dating.
In my perfect scenario, I would meet a man, we'd become friends, our families would play together, work together, and worship together. As time went on, we'd gradually realize that our feelings for one another were growing into something beyond friendship. We'd see that our families fit together, that we played and worked and worshipped well together, and we'd make the decision to become one family.
Can that happen? I don't know, but I do know that the dating game comes with the risk of a hardened heart.
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