Dating can be such a scary venture for a single parent. For you have not only yourself to think about, you also must consider your children.
Children are remarkably perceptive and can smell a rat much quicker than those of us who have the blinders of adulthood on.
I know one of the men whom I dated was an alcoholic and when he was drinking, he had abusive tendencies. I didn’t let my children interact with him without my supervision because I didn’t trust him.
Yet I exposed myself to his toxicity for close to two years.
My children expressed their concern over the relationship. They said I wasn’t as nice as I had been before dating him. My daughter even threatened to move to her dad’s place if I ever married this man.
For some reason I just couldn’t break away from this man. The relationship was like an addiction.
Then, in the still of the night, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper into my dreams, “You are good.”
This man that I was dating told me many times I was anything but good.
Then the next night, in a dream, I saw a pencil writing on a tablet. “You are what you are.”
This man had consistently made me feel as if I was not good enough for him.
These revelations from the Holy Spirit gave me the strength to walk away from a man who had held me in the bondage of rejection.
This was a bondage I was all too familiar with.
It started when I was just a young girl, being yelled at and told I wasn’t good enough by my mother.
Then getting sick with Viral Encephalitis and losing the ability to walk for several months as an eleven-year old.
This was followed by horrible bullying because of that sickness. I felt as if I was invisible in junior high and high school because no one talked to me or acknowledged me.
I perpetuated the bondage of rejection by choosing a man to marry whom I knew did not love me.
I continued to walk that well worn rut of rejection after my divorce by dating and sleeping with men who only wanted sex. They didn’t have a clue as to how to love someone who had a heart gushing with pain from the past.
The Holy Spirit had warned me about this alcoholic.
I was dating several men at the time I met him. I spit in God’s face and chose the one man he had warned me to avoid.
With every step I walked towards this man I felt the heat of God’s love caressing my back. My friends started getting dreams warning them of the danger of this man in my life.
Yet, I continued.
Until I heard the words, “You are good.” The bondage of rejection was torn in that moment.
Then the next night, “You are what you are.” Those words started me on the path to self-acceptance.
I couldn’t explain to my friends why I couldn’t walk away from this monster. I lost a very close friend because of this; she could not suffer my foolishness.
But now, in hindsight, I know why I couldn’t walk away.
This test, this mistake I made, gave me the assurance I needed to fight the evil that was coming down the path in just a few short years.
If I had not known that God thought I was good, I doubt I would have survived that trial.
Cause I truly felt as if I was fighting the very devil himself.
Have no doubt, “>ALL things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose!