I’ve got this guilty love affair with sugar and The Bachelor on a Friday night, especially this season when Mr. Single status is representing my home state.

Sadly, I get sucked into the vortex of other people’s love lives; emotions are high, and the entertainment value even higher. Romance unravels, hearts get broken, and thankfully, it’s not mine.

With a carton of coffee caramel ice cream in hand, my heart securely single and the final three love struck ladies left on screen, a shocking elimination silenced living rooms around the world (maybe that’s a bit dramatic).

As the girl getting the goodbye swept away tears, her painful profession reverberated in my ears, “The whole reason of putting my guard up was to deflect this feeling that I’m feeling right now.”

The harsh truth shuddered my skin and skidded all over the tarmac in my mind.

That night alone in my house, a spring of tears erupted and rushed over me like a levee had broken. A sense of sadness over the reality of staying single collided with the grace of a guarded, grieving soul.

I understood her pain. I too had been wading through long seasons of loneliness just so I didn’t jump into a disastrous marriage on lame legs. And then I had deducted that when you’re the only one holding your heart, hurt can’t rip it out.

I had the equation for life all wrong.

The concept of Christ is giving your life over to love and trusting God to raise dead bones from the grave.

Staying single seemed wise to a girl with deep wounds. Year after year, I called it being brave. Yet, I think sometimes we clothe sheepish fear in a big, bad wolf costume and call it courage when it’s really just a coward’s heart dressing up.

Sometimes we get so used to struggling in life that we’re crippled when the striving stops. That woman’s words cut through my comfortable core and struck seeds of control, fear, and shame.

We hold back our hearts with the past, but God wants to rebuild better than before.

As I sat there processing the pain and honesty, it began to tangle in this big knot called hope.

Chances are, you have dug a hole and hid some things too.

In the Parable of the Talents, the guy who buried what he was given got nothing at the end of the story (see Matthew 25: 14-30). Those who walked the line of risk with their treasures were returned double the portion.

Shaking my head. Kingdom transactions don’t make earthly sense.

God’s healing power takes broken, disappointed, desolate places and makes them stronger, encouraged, full – and free!

This should be all the more reason we use everything we’ve got.

So what’s holding you back?

Don’t let the past prevent you from accepting that God mends to multiply in dividends that will satisfy the desires of your heart.