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Are you boy crazy? Well, take my little test to find out. Have you ever...

•Ditched a friend for a guy?

•Prayed endlessly that God would make a certain guy notice you?

•Changed your relationship status before you knew how he felt for sure?

(Should I keep going?

How about:

•Posted a profile picture that had just a touch of the porn look?

•Posted a profile picture that had an obvious porn look?

•Had more than one guy in the mix at a time?

•Daydreamed about what your life would be like as Mrs. (fill in the blank.)

•Dated someone your parents disapproved of?

•Cried because you’re single?
•Expected something from your husband that only God can give?

•Filled your journal with more thoughts about guys than God

If you said yes to one or more of the above...baby, you have the craving.

The violent craving.

You have it. Your friends have it. Your mom had it. Your grandma had it. Your great grandma had it. It’s been around a while.

Thousands of generations of woman have experienced it.

The craving is a part of the Curse, which means it dates all the way back to Eve. After she and Adam sinned, God showed up to explain that things would never be the same. To Eve, he talked about the craving. Genesis 3:16b reads:

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

The word desire is critical here. Two respected theologians  once said that the Hebrew language evokes a “desire bordering on disease.” They also said that the desire might best be called a “violent craving.”[i] In the original language of the Bible, God used some pretty expressive wording to describe what women would experience in relation to men after The Fall. We simply hunger for them.

Feeding The Craving

There is hope. I’ll share it with you in my upcoming release, Get Lost: A Girl's Guide To Finding True Love. But first, to quiet the craving, you’ll need to recognize how it’s manifesting in your life. The craving makes us all insatiably hungry for the attention of a guy, but each of us feeds it in a slightly different way.

I asked college-aged women who follow my blog to share how the violent craving has shown up in their life. I think you’ll agree that that feeding it hasn’t helped them:

I have felt the violent craving expressed as jealousy toward my peers that have boyfriends. How foolish I felt, to feel jealous instead of happy, when a friend started dating a guy I DIDN’T EVEN WANT TO DATE..

“… elementary school to high school, I didn’t get the attention I wanted. I was the chunky monkey that everyone went to for a good laugh. It wasn’t until I got to be around 16 I got the attention from guys, and it got the best of me and took one of the most valuable things from me—my virginity. I lost it to a friend who liked my sister and respected her, but thought I would be the easier choice. And he was right.”

My main regret would be that I haven’t spent my time enjoying my singleness.

That “violent craving” led me to pornography, which is definitely a regret I have in my life. It controlled me for years and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t beat it.”

My craving started at the age of 12 when my dad passed away. I longed for a man to notice me. I wanted that attention. I dressed to attract men and wanted a man’s approval.

They shared countless such stories, each expressing a sense of “eureka” at finally having a name for their ailment! Of all the voices who offered examples of how they express, deny, loathe, live in, and ache from the craving, it was a sweet seventeen-year-old girl whose experience mostly closely described the effects of the Genesis 3:16 curse. She wrote:

I’m seventeen. Raised by a very liberal mother and an extremely conservative father. That marriage didn’t work out. It ended when I was seven. Since then, I’ve always been very angry about marriage and cynical of love, due to it causing much pain, loneliness, and anxiety in my life. I swore I’d never marry. But even with all that confusion and anger, I still desperately wanted to be noticed and passionately loved by a man. I wanted someone to see and know me. The first guy I had any real relationship with, I clung to for four years, desperate for his attention and love. During those four years, I made many mistakes. I gave him everything I could physically and emotionally just to keep him around (except the actual act of sex). He was a need. A necessity. But why? I hated marriage, yet wanted a man.

She “hated marriage, yet wanted a man.” I believe that’s the modern-day aftermath of the Fall. The consequence of Original Sin—and all that’s been done by women since then to rebel against God’s design— results in both a hatred of God-designed marriage and an insatiable longing for the presence of a guy. (The craving may not cause you to actually hate marriage, but you may hate God’s specific design and purpose for it.  A lot of us are struggling with that!)

But Song of Songs reveals the antidote for what ails us.

Solomon and the Maiden demonstrate that love restores balance and brings healing that transforms the very nature of the desire.

Dr. Daniel Estes asserts that in this scene “their intimacy has progressed to the extent that it functions to counteract the damaging effects on marriage that were introduced by the curse.”[ii]

Love Crushes The Curse

In the closing scene of Songs we find a, powerfully haunting reference to the ultimate result of the Curse: death. And agape’s ability to crush it.

From the day that little piece of fruit was plucked from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all of humanity has been destined to know and experience death. Because we sin. We choose to act against God’s intended design for creation. Lying. Greed. Jealousy. Mean girl moments. Laziness. Porn. Cutting. Pride. Those sins result in death, in separation from the God who created us and loves us.

But here, at the end of the story, we find relief from even that.

“Love is as strong as death,

… as fierce as the grave.”

(Song of Songs 8:6)

What? You should be saying to me. You’re suggesting that human love can overturn the sentence of death that came through The Curse? Nope. Not at all. In her song about Solomon’s love, the Maiden is actually describing a greater reality. She points to God as the true Source of this love she has found in Solomon. Let’s look at the broader context of her song:

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the LORD. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”

Song of Songs 8:6,7

She finally sees that her love for Solomon and the love she receives from him are flashes of fire from the “very flame of God.” Let me be clear: they are both so rooted in God’s love that their love is an extension of it. This girl has gotten so lost in God that only a guy seeking Him could find her heart.

You have these choices before you, and I want you to actually CIRCLE one in this book so you can remember what you’ve chosen.

A.)  You can fight the craving for a guy with legalistic, rule-based methods. I think God’s gentle spirit has nudged me not to specifically name any. But you’ll know legalism by its taking away of something (dating, for example) without replacing it with something that can fill the hole. It’s defined by withholding—losing something.

B.)   You can feed your craving. You’ve probably been there and done that. Did it work? You physically gain something, but not what you were really needing.

C.)  Or you can give the craving to God and let Him satisfy you with Himself. If He gives you a guy too, then you’ll know how to fully appreciate the gift! If he doesn’t, you’ll be OK.

If you have chosen C, you’re ready to Get Lost. Watch for my book in April!


[i] Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commenatry on the Old Testament: Genesis Chapter 3, [1857-78], at sacred-texts.com, retrieved September 27, 2012

[ii] Fredericks & Estes, 397