By JMathis

“Never chase love, affection or attention. If it isn’t given freely by another person, it isn’t worth having.” –Unknown

I have a friend on Facebook who is a serial quoter. Every day she puts up a new quote that usually has zero significance or interest to me. I love her dearly, but sometimes all of this quoting just drives me bonkos. I mean, if I wanted to join the “quote of the day” club, I would have done so, right? (She will kill me when she reads this, by the way. Gulp.)

Yet, the other day, she posted the quote from above, which really caused me to stop and reflect about the entirety of my life (thank you, FB friend). I sat down and thought about all of this “chasing” that we do as women.

Chasing after men, chasing after kids, chasing for acceptance, chasing to please. It’s all so meaningless sometimes, as King Solomon would say, and yet a good chunk of my day is spent in the chase.

Like AbbyA, sadly, most of my pre-marriage days were spent in the chase of affection from men. I could write a telenovela screenplay about those days, but I’ll refrain (for the moment). Now, as much as I try to squash the impulse, most of my days are spent in the chase of pleasing ‘man’–not ‘man’, as in the male species, but ‘man’ in the generic sense–chasing the vanities and worries of humankind. Chasing the American dream, chasing the Parent of the Year award, chasing cars.

When Gary Lightbody, the frontman of Snow Patrol, was asked about the meaning of their song, “Chasing Cars”, he said that it was the “most pure and open love song [he’s] ever written.” The title, “Chasing Cars”, is actually a reference from Lightbody’s dad, who mentioned it to his son when Lightbody was obsessed with the affections of a certain girl: “You’re like a dog chasing a car. You’ll never catch it and you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you did.”

Ouch. Is that what we’re all doing everyday? Chasing metaphorical cars?

The heartbreaking thing is that we chase everything but the One Person who gives us love, attention and affection freely–the One Person who is actually worth the reward of a chase. We’re in the chase for everything, but yet at the end of the day, we’re in the chase for absolutely nothing of true meaning and eternal significance.

Meanwhile, our Heavenly Father waits. Waits patiently for us to embrace Him and all that He has to make us whole and complete.

He waits for us to stop running, to stop panicking, to stop vain pursuits, to stop worrying, to stop the cycle of hurt in our lives.

He sits there just waiting.

Waiting for us to stop…chasing cars.