Why do we settle?

I've been thinking a lot and looking back and over analyzing everything- not just in my circumstances, but in the lives of others as well, and I noticed such an alarming thing. We settle for less than what we are worth. Yeah, I know that I often say that I'm a dirt bag and undeserving of the love that God has given me, but there comes a point when you have to separate humility from the value that God has placed on you. And He bought us for a pretty little price- um, like He kinda gave up His entire life and thought that it was worth it to suffer humiliation and death just to have us be called His kids, so obviously we are worth a lot to Him.

This being said, yeah, we're pond scum, but we are worth a lot to God, the creator of the universe, so why do we settle for less than what we're worth? I say this with all due respect to my ex-boyfriend, but he was seriously my intellectual/emotional/spiritual/mental-health/cultural/grammatically correct/pretty much everything except maybe my musical/mathematical inferior. And I put up with it because I thought that maybe if he were with me that God would change him into the ideal man. I was so blinded by my own loneliness and need for attention and affection that I overlooked his ineptness. I ignored and enabled his behavior when he was being ignorant and selfish because I didn't want to offend him because I didn't want to lose him. But why was I holding onto him in the first place? Why did I settle for so much less than a godly, exquisite man?

Because I doubted God. I doubted God's goodness. I doubted that God would provide the right man at the right time, and I felt a void and a deficit that needed to be fulfilled right then and there, and hey, this guy seems to like me and wants me to be his girlfriend, so why not? I can change him, and God will change him if he's with me. Wow, what kind of logic was I coming up with? If he wasn't right for me already, then why did I expect God to change him as soon as he was with me? My own pride in my abilities to change him took precedence over God's will for his life, and now I am licking my wounds from my follies.

Thank heaven for redemption. Thank God for forgiveness and mercy. Thanks be to Yeshua that I did not give myself away to this undeserving, incompetent man! I am a lucky girl! No, I take that back: I am protected by the shield of angels and it is nothing short of miraculous that I have suffered very little damages to my purity and my passion for the Lord.

Thank you, Abba Father. Help me not to settle ever again!!!