This is a guest post from Peri Koussa - a fourth year PharmD student at MCPHS University in Boston. Aside from being a future health care professional, Peri is also - in her own words - "a closet poet and strong believer in the power of words." You can see more of Peri's work by checking her out on SoundCloud. And if you too are interested in guest posting on my blog, please visit my Guest Post guidelines for more info.
Here I am, a young girl in her twenties, drowning in the waves of a community I struggle to understand. It is a community that boasts of an ultimate feat: finding a soulmate.
Everywhere you go there seems to be some sort of indication that it is time to start the search for 'the one'. Whether it is in romantic movies, T.V. commercials, sappy love songs or just in happy couples on the train (look up, you'll see them). And you wonder: why can't that be me? What am I doing wrong?
So you set out on a frantic search to try to find something similar to what these movies, T.V. commercials or happy couples have. You set out to try to fill a void with what you think is the answer, romantic love.
But what if I told you that the world has it all wrong? What if I told you that you're looking for your soulmate in all the wrong places?
What if I told you that:
Your soulmate can't be romantic, yet He loves you.
Your soulmate can't hold a conversation, yet He hears you.
Your soulmate can't be seen, yet He never leaves you.
What if I told you that the void you're feeling isn't loneliness, and that it is God whispering: "Come find Me." In-fact, that desire of your heart - the need to fill the void - is a gift from God that reminds you that nothing in this world can satisfy you like He can. In Jeremiah 24: 7, it is written, "I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart."
So when your whole heart is free or broken or seeking something more, it is at this moment when God's whisper becomes a deafening cry that you cannot un-hear; it is at this moment that your whole heart is seeking Him.
Don't get me wrong - there is no shame in seeking romantic love but I feel as though the world has lost sight of who your souls companion must be. The world has lost sight of what a soulmate is. Somewhere along the way, we became more obsessed with finding 'the one' and we left behind THE One.
So stop trying to find love in all the wrong places and take advantage of the fact that your heart is empty; fill the emptiness with God's everlasting love. And pray that your future partner is doing the same. Because once you are full of God's love, there is only more love left to give away.
Someone once wrote, "Find God, find yourself, then come find me," and I couldn't agree more.
So find God first and foremost and your soul will no longer need a mate; your heart will no longer need to be filled, and you will be looking for a partner to complement you rather than a person to complete you.