When I get a text message from my best friend, I never know what she’ll say, usually she asks some type of thought provoking question. This time it was about deal breakers:
“What would you do if your lover said he was jealous of your relationship with God?”
Whoa. A deep one.
Before I decided to freak out and start flipping tables, I asked for clarification:
“It depended on how he said it. Jealous like he’s trying to get like me or jealous like he wants some of that attention?”
She responded:
“The attention God gets from you.”
I had permission to go all the way in.
“Gurl, that’s crazy. That almost sounds like something a potential abuser would say. I would be tempted to be done. But first I would tell him he should never expect to have more of my attention than God does. Everybody–and for real everybody in your life– will leave you voluntarily or involuntarily at some point. Why would I neglect the one ‘person’ who is not only the reason for my existence by who will never leave me all for some rusty behind dude?!? It don’t make good sense.”
Now for the record, my friend wasn’t talking about anyone she was dating personally. She was talking about someone else. And yes it was something he really said to the woman. This woman is abstaining from sex for a month as a form of sacrifice to God. And apparently, he’s having a hard time dealing with their lack of intercourse which is what led him to express his ‘jealousy.’ He even took it a step further. The favors and kind gestures he used to make towards her, he’s stopped since she’s been abstaining.
In my initial response I said I would be tempted to be done with him but after further reflection, I don’t know how a relationship with this type of person would work. My relationship with God is a nonnegotiable. So if you’re going to be jealous of our connection, how is this supposed to progress?
It probably won’t.
A man who would say something like that and then attempt to punish me for my spiritual connection is someone who is manipulative and honestly grossly ignorant about what it means to be connected to God. I know some people can date those who don’t believe in God. But at least, they should be sympathetic. God has to come first.
But just as I getting righteously indignant, I heard a small voice ask me, ‘Do you always put God first in your relationships?’
This is what I mean about the importance of having a relationship with God. He’ll check you or ‘get you right’ in a minute.
I’ve definitely been in situationships, particularly new ones where thoughts of that person consumed my mind. I spent hours on the phone talking to dude only to pass out before saying my prayers. I’d sit in church completely zoned, daydreaming about him. Or I’d keep checking my phone in between choir selections to see if he’d sent a text message.
These weren’t conscious decisions I’d made. If someone were to ask me, I’d proudly tell them that God was first in my life. But my actions didn’t necessarily say that.
And while we shouldn’t deal with a man who couldn’t accept our relationship with God, my friend’s question ultimately made me reevaluate myself and my own life.
Have you ever found yourself becoming consumed with thoughts of a man and what to do to please him more than God?
