Tonight our youngest daughter is going to her first sixth grade dance and our oldest is going to her first football game as a high school freshman. Thankfully neither one of them show signs of being overly concerned about boys or having a boyfriend at this point. One of my deepest regrets from my high school, college, and early twenties years is the focus I had on boyfriends and dating. With having a sister, two daughters, and being a girl myself I tend to have a better understanding of the girl viewpoint, but this blog can be for both male and females. The regret now is that I lost valuable time with Jesus. My focus and self-esteem weighed far too heavily on boy relationships. It is obvious looking back that I had parents praying for God to lead me to the right spouse, but I put far too much time and energy into being concerned about it. Definately not enough prayer time of my own for God to lead my life. You see the deeper our relationship is with Christ the greater our self-esteem in who God created us to be is. In a deeper relationship with Christ we don’t need the world telling us we are beautiful or giving us attention especially inappropriate attention. The road was full of broken heartedness leading to my dear husband and best friend Mike. There were so many lessons I learned the hard way. Alas God did lead me to a man that He continues to show me how He divinely planned us for each other. One of the most recent clues was our family vacation. The plans changed a few times as to who would be coming along with us on our adventure. In the end Mike was the only male. He had myself, my mom, his two daughters, and two of our family friends teen daughters. Yes he was surrounded. Girls age 11, 14, 15, 17, 41, and 64. Female hormones from one spectrum to the other. He handled it with masculine grace!! He truly is my teamate in life. I say teamate because it requires the both of us working together and giving one hundred percent to make our relationship work. The greatest warning signs I learned through my experiences were to beware of selfishness, conceitedness, boys that wanted to change me, power hunger, jeolousy,and control. A marriage can not work well if either side has an issue with these.

My prayer for my girls and all young people in my life is for them to guard their hearts. If their heart and focus belong to Jesus then they will remain under God’s hedge of protection. When we give our hearts to the wrong people and make them the idol and focus of our life it often will lead to poor decisions, heart ache, a destroyed self-image and self-esteem.

Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.