Find the Secret Cure for Aching Hearts
Discouraged?
If you follow conventional wisdom and current dating practices you will likely be spending unfortunate time with toads while missing your prince. You might find your heart shredded in the process. However, there is hope.
The nuggets of truth and insight in Finding Your Prince in a Sea of Toads will leave you encouraged and optimistic. You will find a fresh, informed and realistic approach to relationships that will empower you and ease your anxiety. If you are fully satisfied and confident with your path to a happy lifelong relationship, this book may not be for you. You might, however, be naively ignorant of some of the long term effects of your short term actions.
Since this topic is probably one of your top issues in life, I encourage your to invest the time to read this book and carefully consider if it makes sense. It can seriously change your life.
Feeling Alone?
Loneliness or fear of future loneliness are huge issues for single women and can drive you to depression or panic. Loneliness is addressed head-on with practical suggestions that will make a difference if you follow through on them.
Loneliness or fear of future loneliness are huge issues for single women and can drive you to depression or panic. Loneliness is addressed head-on with practical suggestions that will make a difference if you follow through on them.
Already Shredded?
Hearts are fragile. To enter a relationship, you must expose your heart to risk. In the course of dating and exploring relationships, your heart will get jostled and bruised even if you do everything I recommend in the book. Getting your heart shredded, on the other hand, is not a given. It can be avoided.
Hearts get shredded either because of something you do or something someone does to you. A shredded heart means serious damage that may require help to be healed. You may need a good friend or a professional to help you work through it. Although counseling is important, it is not the ultimate solution...
Hearts are fragile. To enter a relationship, you must expose your heart to risk. In the course of dating and exploring relationships, your heart will get jostled and bruised even if you do everything I recommend in the book. Getting your heart shredded, on the other hand, is not a given. It can be avoided.
Hearts get shredded either because of something you do or something someone does to you. A shredded heart means serious damage that may require help to be healed. You may need a good friend or a professional to help you work through it. Although counseling is important, it is not the ultimate solution...
Abused, Used, Confused, Rejected, Dumped, Ignored, Regretful, Humiliated, Angry, Disappointed, Lonely, Frightened, Numb, Discouraged
Choose all that apply.
Your intense emotions are understandable. As I discuss in the book, relationships and sex have great potential for pleasure but equal potential in the opposite direction for causing pain. Are your negative emotions controlling your life? How do you plan to move on? Although your emotions may be entirely justified, will they haunt you indefinitely? They don’t have to.
Obviously, I don't know what you have been through or what you are experiencing right now but I know a solution that is the foundation of recovery. It's called forgiveness. You may need to forgive someone else or forgive yourself or both. The difficulty is that forgiveness doesn't make any sense. It is the opposite of our natural inclination to cling to offenses or seek revenge. The offending person doesn't deserve it but I am suggesting that you forgive them anyway. By definition, forgiveness is giving someone something they don't deserve. Ironically, you benefit the most by forgiving the man who wronged you. Unless you forgive, you allow them to steal the peace and joy from your life. If you want your peace and joy back, forgiveness is your only option. A counselor can help you work through the difficult process but it is worth the effort.
If your pain is a result of your own poor choices, perhaps you need to forgive yourself more than someone else. Living with guilt or regret is unhealthy and unnecessary. You can't ignore them. You must do something with them or they will eat you up. Forgiving yourself is the answer.
Your intense emotions are understandable. As I discuss in the book, relationships and sex have great potential for pleasure but equal potential in the opposite direction for causing pain. Are your negative emotions controlling your life? How do you plan to move on? Although your emotions may be entirely justified, will they haunt you indefinitely? They don’t have to.
Obviously, I don't know what you have been through or what you are experiencing right now but I know a solution that is the foundation of recovery. It's called forgiveness. You may need to forgive someone else or forgive yourself or both. The difficulty is that forgiveness doesn't make any sense. It is the opposite of our natural inclination to cling to offenses or seek revenge. The offending person doesn't deserve it but I am suggesting that you forgive them anyway. By definition, forgiveness is giving someone something they don't deserve. Ironically, you benefit the most by forgiving the man who wronged you. Unless you forgive, you allow them to steal the peace and joy from your life. If you want your peace and joy back, forgiveness is your only option. A counselor can help you work through the difficult process but it is worth the effort.
If your pain is a result of your own poor choices, perhaps you need to forgive yourself more than someone else. Living with guilt or regret is unhealthy and unnecessary. You can't ignore them. You must do something with them or they will eat you up. Forgiving yourself is the answer.
The Answer
If you have not been forgiven yourself, you may find it difficult, confusing or impossible to offer forgiveness to someone else or yourself - especially if you were seriously wronged. The good news is that you can experience real forgiveness yourself first hand any time you want - if you choose. Regardless of how many men you have slept with or how nasty you have been, "there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still" (Corey Ten Boom - Holocaust Survivor from the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp and author of The Hiding Place). God has seen it all and certainly he has seen worse than you. God's main business is rescuing messed up people like you and me - not shaking hands with supposedly good people. To obtain God's forgiveness, though, you'll need to know Christ.
Finding Your Prince in a Sea of Toads does not talk about God, Christ and forgiveness. It was written for all women, regardless of your faith or lack of faith. If you want to learn more about knowing God personally, I suggest you talk to a Christian friend, a Christian counselor or a pastor. A great book to read is The Reason for God by Tim Keller.
Perhaps you already know Christ and you are still discouraged or lonely. Believers certainly experience the full range of emotions - the good, bad and ugly. If you believe that your happiness depends on finding your man, you have made “a god” out of your manhunt and you are certain to be let down. It never works to look to a false god for our happiness because false gods have no power. If you look to the true living God for your joy and purpose in life, your singleness or married status can take their more rightful and realistic place in your life. If you do not trust that God really cares about every detail of your life, you have forgotten who God is. Your happiness depends on your spiritual status - not your marital status.
If you have not been forgiven yourself, you may find it difficult, confusing or impossible to offer forgiveness to someone else or yourself - especially if you were seriously wronged. The good news is that you can experience real forgiveness yourself first hand any time you want - if you choose. Regardless of how many men you have slept with or how nasty you have been, "there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still" (Corey Ten Boom - Holocaust Survivor from the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp and author of The Hiding Place). God has seen it all and certainly he has seen worse than you. God's main business is rescuing messed up people like you and me - not shaking hands with supposedly good people. To obtain God's forgiveness, though, you'll need to know Christ.
Finding Your Prince in a Sea of Toads does not talk about God, Christ and forgiveness. It was written for all women, regardless of your faith or lack of faith. If you want to learn more about knowing God personally, I suggest you talk to a Christian friend, a Christian counselor or a pastor. A great book to read is The Reason for God by Tim Keller.
Perhaps you already know Christ and you are still discouraged or lonely. Believers certainly experience the full range of emotions - the good, bad and ugly. If you believe that your happiness depends on finding your man, you have made “a god” out of your manhunt and you are certain to be let down. It never works to look to a false god for our happiness because false gods have no power. If you look to the true living God for your joy and purpose in life, your singleness or married status can take their more rightful and realistic place in your life. If you do not trust that God really cares about every detail of your life, you have forgotten who God is. Your happiness depends on your spiritual status - not your marital status.
Empty Inside
Pascal, the brilliant mathematician and physicist who gave us Pascal's triangle, said, (paraphrased) "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator." If you try to fill the vacuum with anything other than God, (a man, a marriage, children, career etc.) you will find that nothing else really fills the void and therefore emptiness and uncertainty remain.
Knowing the truth, knowing your purpose in life, and living free from guilt and fear will help you replace your discouragement with optimism and a new outlook on life.
Pascal, the brilliant mathematician and physicist who gave us Pascal's triangle, said, (paraphrased) "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator." If you try to fill the vacuum with anything other than God, (a man, a marriage, children, career etc.) you will find that nothing else really fills the void and therefore emptiness and uncertainty remain.
Knowing the truth, knowing your purpose in life, and living free from guilt and fear will help you replace your discouragement with optimism and a new outlook on life.