Taffy....is a woman in love!!!

My eyes are still teary, I took an hour’s break from work and went to sit in the garden and continued to read Francine River’s Redeeming Love. God began to speak tenderly to me and I couldn’t stop weeping, How He could ever love me in my broken state I cannot fathom.The character Angel in Francine Rivers had never known what love was, the result of an unwanted pregnancy from a woman’s adulterous affair with a married man, Angel eavesdrops on her father saying that He does not want Angel but only wants her mother..Eventually her mother dies and she is sold off as a child prostitute at eight and is abused by the people who own her until Michael Hosea sees her and obeys God’s word to marry Angel despite her profession and past. The struggle for Angel to receive Michael’s love made me weep even harder because I have not been letting God love me fully…Almost like expecting God to treat me like the people who raped me , molested me as a little girl and the people who used and abused me as an adult. God tearfully looked into my eyes and I saw the love …He loves me. The King of Kings loves me, I am a Bride of Christ. He loves me, as flawed as I am. I am sorry Lord that sometimes I have fallen in love with your creation instead of you…I have looked for love in the wrong place but now I know you are my source. I have been pursuing romantic relationships and this has been keeping me from pursuing Jesus wholeheartedly. Right now I just know that I am in love!!!!!!!!

Yesterday's message at the conference was about love being one of the two keys to unlocking the Kingdom.The pastor shared from Romans 5:3-5
"3Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance.
4And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of [a]character (approved faith and [b]tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] [c]joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation.
5Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. "(Amplified version)
He then exhorted us to pursue love and said that our hurts and painful experiences create a love and a compassion for other christians. Then he took us to Corinthians 13, and made us replace the word love with our names for example my name is Tafadzwa so I had to say Tafadzwa is patient, Tafadzwa is kind, etc It was an awesome revelation of how God sees me.

As for the undefined friendship with Archie its been defined...Last night I went to a conference and I got a lift from Archie. He then told me that there is someone he met and who is the one God has chosen for him. They are not yet together as she is still resisting. It was such a blow but I am grateful that God had begun preparing me for the bombshell. I am glad that God has defined our relationship and I know I am going to be blessed by the friendship because Archie edifies me and encourages me in my walk. Part of me, which of course is my flesh still thinks that we are going to be together, because our views, dreams and some experiences are identical!!!!!!!! and Archie believes in having a big family and I desire twins and he has siblings who are twins so it would have been perfect. So Tafadzwa is having to die...I want to be in that place where I can genuinely be happy for my friend and brother in Christ Archie if he does marry someone else..this is not an easy process right now though but I still want to pursue emotional purity and I know this is the first test so yeah the sand castle that I had built is being washed away....and it hurts.
I know that maintaining emotional integrity will allow the greatest amount of freedom in my friendship with Archie and other godly young men. Archie shares quite a lot with me, he really opens up a lot to me but I thank God that unlike what I have done in the past I haven’t spilled everything about my past and who I am to him . I intend to continue sharing only what is important because I intend to make that type of deep connected relationship only with the man I will marry when we are courting…so I am quite pleased with myself in that regard.