When Love Doesn’t Go as Planned

Sometimes love simply doesn’t go as planned.

If you’re like me, you’ve watched enough movies and every romantic comedy known to mankind, and at some point you subliminally acquired the notion that love is your right, and that without it you won’t be happy.

Unfortunately, most people’s love lives don’t follow a Hollywood script. Some people never find the big love. Others find it only to lose it all too soon. Yet others find it, marry it, and soon find out that it makes funny noises and doesn’t do the dishes after dinner.

If you find yourself disillusioned about love, whatever that reason may be, I hope you’ll carefully read these 3 principles for survival when your love life doesn’t go as planned:

1. Accept what you can’t change.

When it comes to love there are some things you simply cannot change. You cannot change your personality. You cannot change your age. It may be high time for you to look in the mirror and tell yourself some hard truths. You haven’t found Mr. or Mrs. Right yet, and you’ve just celebrated another birthday, reminding you that you may be getting too old to have kids. You were just painfully dumped. It doesn’t matter what your situation is, some scenarios simply hurt. But sooner or later, in order to find peace, you’re going to have to surrender your perception of what your love life should have been and accept the fact that God has His best plan for your life. His plans for you are good. He is for you and not against you.

2. Change what you can.

But there are some things you can change. You can change your haircut. You can change the way you think about love. You can change dating methods. But most importantly you can change your expectations: Stop believing the Hollywood lies that have been shoved down our throats about love and sex, and start believing the truth about God and His plan for your life.

3. Turn to the Lord.

You may be working on changing what you can and accepting what you can’t, but you still feel a void in your heart. God’s plan for us isn’t to simply forget about love. Find true love in Him. No matter where you are in the spectrum of love, today is the day to turn to Him and tell Him how you feel. Pour your heart out to Him. There’s nothing He can’t handle. There’s nothing He doesn’t know already. And as you turn to Him, here’s what you may hear: Your story is not over yet.

When love doesn’t go as planned….

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that we don’t need love for our lives to be complete. Quite the contrary! I believe it’s all about love—the right kind of love, a love that sets us free to love no matter what our love story is here on this earth.

This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God (1 John 4:10, MSG).

Now that’s true love, and I hope you have already found it!