A Precious Season

This is such a precious season for me. Singleness. Sigh...it's so precious. And as much as I am ready to begin a life with someone else, I am so thankful for the graciousness of God to give me the gift of living on my own for now. It truly is a gift.

These moments alone with Jesus, I savor. His presence is so exquisitely delightful and fulfilling. As I press deeper into who He is, He meets me and takes my hand and we journey TOGETHER. There is no sweeter moment than when He quiets my heart and breathes precious whispers of love into my spirit. At the risk of gushing, I'm a woman hopefully, desperately in love. I treasure His every word, His every movement, His every heartbeat. I watch with breathless anticipation to see what He'll do next and jump on the opportunity to serve Him.

How I cherish this love! His guidance is inexplicable. I am tangibly loved and romanced and satisfied. He knows my deepest heart's desire - and it happens to be Him. Oh, how He smiles as I dance and sing before Him. He's not concerned with how I do my hair or if my outfit is cute, but He does enjoy the pleasure it gives me to dress up for Him. In His eyes, I am perfectly lovely - even when my mirror doesn't reflect that. And yet He has been giving me eyes to see myself as He sees me. How sweet.

May I always quiet my heart before Him and allow Him to sing and rejoice over me. Thank you, Lord, for your precious presence in this season of singleness.

Single Awareness

I can't quite seem to start this post. Every time I do I erase it thinking I sound trite or ridiculous. So perhaps I will just be blunt.

I LOVE being single. I truly, truly do. There is simply nothing like it. I can do what I like when I like. If that means drinking out of the two-liter bottle (very unladylike!) then so be it. :) If that means going on a spontaneous roadtrip with my friends - well, being single is really the only way to go.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to be married or at least in a committed relationship, and I doubt I would turn down the right guy right now. But I also find so much joy in this precious season of singlehood. Precious because this is my chance to experience all God has for ME - not US. Yup...it's my chance to be selfish. Selfishly aware that God adores me, completes me, and loves me me me.

And on the flip side of that - it's my time to pour out ALL of my love, adoration, service, devotion, and commitment on God and God alone. There's no one calling me "Mommy" or asking what's for dinner or hypnotizing me with his deep, dark eyes. Again - excited for that season! And so excited for my current season.

I think often when we think "Single Awareness" we think of how lonely we are, how incomplete we are, how defective we must be. When I am aware of how single I am (like it has degrees or something!), I mostly reflect with joy at what a wonderful gift God has given me right now. He loves me so much that He wants to pour out His love and grace and mercy and abundance on me alone - teaching me to trust in Him for everything, like self-esteem, finances, direction, and motivation; teaching me to love Him so deeply and thoroughly and ardently; teaching me to revel and rest and relax in His love; teaching me to walk in faith, speak the truth, lavish forgiveness, and rejoice in His strength!

You can't enjoy that when you are depressingly stuck in Single Awareness.

And you know what? Not only is the Single Season a time for you to revel in God's specific love for just you, it is also a time for you to learn about being in a marriage relationship, because you are married whether you know it or not. Married to God. In a marriage relationship with God. An intimate marriage relationship. There's no better training ground for your earthly marriage than to engage in your heavenly marriage! There's no better investment than to spend your earthly singlehood in a heavenly relationship that will pour out blessings on your earthly marriage!

Oh yes, I'm aware that I'm single. And I love it. I honestly, truly do. There is no better lover than God. :) THAT'S the truth!

Interlude 1: Things They Don't Tell You in Fairy Tales

They leave a lot out in fairy tales, don't they? I don't just mean they never seem to eat or go to the bathroom! There a lot of blanks to be filled in. For instance, as proved by "Enchanted," they meet, fall in love, and get married the next day. They skip the whole dating/courting stage. Jasmine gets a ruffian of sorts, but do they ever tell you if she's worried about him looking at other exotic women? Cinderella's prince searches her out, but are there or have there been other girls he chases on the weekends? Snow White's prince kisses her the second time he sees her. How many other girls has he kissed? Prince Eric refuses to find a girl until Ariel finds him. Why won't he leave home? The Beast is angry, aggressive, and selfish. Who's to say he's not abusive and possessive as well? Prince Philip seems to be the only commendable guy, yet he's still a guy. What isn't he telling Aurora?

The fairy tales and movies we grew up with lead us to believe that you find a prince, he fights for you, woos you, defeats the dragon or witch or genie, and then you kiss and live happily ever after. Even though I know it's a fairy tale, even though I've heard people warn me not to expect that, I've still always believed it would come true for me. I'd find a guy who would sweep me off my feet, show me a whole new world, defend me, kiss me, marry me, and then live happily ever after with me. And maybe that will happen. But what they don't tell you is that Prince Charming's got his own baggage. He is not as perfect as we are led to believe. He has a past. There are things that every guy struggles with. And princesses just aren't prepared for that.

Because of this, because we are human, because our future husbands are human, I believe that we need to pray and pray hard for men of God to rise up and take hold of the call on their lives. We can not sit idly by, wishing and waiting for the perfect man. The truth is that he is just not out there. The men that we should be seeking are the ones who are striving to be as much like Christ as possible--the only Perfect Man. I want a man after God's heart, someone who is pressing forward into all that God has for him. I won't settle for anything less. I will wait for the man who has laid down his baggage at the foot of the cross, never to pick it up again. A princess can handle that!

Chapter One: Everyone's Engaged!

How many times have I said that? It seems so true! Everyone is engaged. Or at least they will be soon! Logging onto facebook is a near nightmare for the single girl. The news feed is always announcing someone’s engagement or, worse, marriage. I find photo albums everyday of weddings I didn’t even know were supposed to take place. And how does that make me feel? Me, a single girl with no prospects and crushed dreams? Lonely. Utterly lonely. After all, I want the white dress and the giggling bridesmaids, too. But more than that, I want a strong, handsome, kind man to look me in the eyes and tell me he loves me more than anything in the world.

We all have that “Ideal Man.” For some, he’s tall, dark, and handsome, with dreamy eyes and an inclination to be poetic or melancholy. For others, he’s the dashing James Bond, blonde hair and blue eyes, who can conquer anything. Maybe some dream of the sweet, romantic, sweep-you-off-your-feet, green-eyed guy with a voice that melts every heart and sings for you alone. Whatever the case, we all dream of a man who will love us completely and make us feel safe and secure.

And how can we not dream of that? Our whole lives we have grown up seeing sixteen year old princesses meet their prince and sail into the sunset in silken pearl glory! Those of us over sixteen are beginning to feel like old maids. We have heard fairytales and seen chick flicks and looked at bridal magazines that all seem to be saying the same thing: I have to be married to be happy and I’m not married so I’m not happy—good luck trying to find a husband!

The depressing news is that we buy into this. In college, you hear of “Ring By Spring” or the “Senior Scramble”, both silly traditions that say you must be engaged by the end of your senior year. At the two small, conservative colleges I went to, it seemed like every girl was there for her MRS degree. In my first semester of college there were six freshmen girls who got engaged. Six! I had not even had a boyfriend before!

The worst thing about that school was it seemed like everyone expected you to be engaged by the time you graduated. If you weren’t, you had essentially failed. You may have a great degree, but without a fiancé, forget it! Of course, this wasn’t true, and no one sincerely said that, but it certainly seemed like it. Especially given that so many girls were wearing diamonds as they accepted their diplomas.

So what about those of us who are still praying for a husband? Those who have been in relationships that looked promising and then fell through? Those whose hearts have broken in silence while smilingly holding the bride’s bouquet? Are we supposed to “be content” as so many people tell us? Have you ever noticed that most of those people are married? Easy for them to say! “Be content just a while longer and your prince will come.” But what if it seems he isn’t coming? How long must I wait in silence while my heart aches and my friends are happy? Could God really give me such a loving heart and then not give me someone to love?

It is my belief that God has so much planned for each and every one of us. He longs to bless us in anyway He can because we are His daughters. And yes, I think that one of His greatest gifts is the love between a man and a woman. It's all in the timing. I am right there with you when it comes to struggling to trust His divine plan.

It is hard to look around me and see so many happy couples. Sometimes I don’t even care if they are happy or not--I just want to be a couple! I am envious of their happiness and the companionship that they share. I sit and mope, sad and angry that I cannot be a part of something so wonderful. I spend my time wishing that I had someone to love me, fight with me, make-up with me.

Then one day it hit me.

If I spent as much time loving and serving my God as I did wishing for someone to love, what would happen?

If I spent as much time learning who God is and studying His likes and dislikes and much as I did spying on my crush and figuring out how to attract him, what would happen?

If I consciously entered into a love relationship with God instead of dreaming of a mystery man, what would happen?

I’ll tell you what would happen! I’d be so consumed by the One who truly loves me that nothing worldly would matter! I’m not saying that my desire for a relationship would go away. No way. But maybe my mindset would change. Instead of looking for a husband I could love and serve, I’d be looking for a husband who would love and serve God with me. I would be spending time with my Creator, the One who has called me Beloved, instead of breaking my heart over men. Not that my desire for a man to love me would go away, but I’d have a new desire: that I’d find a man who loved God more than he loved me (but still loved me of course!).

I could become so attune to the heart of God that my heart ache wouldn’t be so dramatic. I could find peace and joy in God rather than wallowing in misery and self-pity. I would be on fire with a passion for God that could change my world rather than waste my life pining for someone.

Do you hear what I am saying? I could be in love with God!

Now I know we have all heard this before. “Go to God” has become such a trite and unsatisfying answer for so many problems. It seems as if the person saying it just doesn’t understand where you are coming from. They can’t possibly realize that they are just adding to your pain and heartache by saying it, because after all, if God is a loving God who will fill my emptiness, then why doesn’t He send me a husband?

Because He already has.

Go with me on this one. God created us to worship Him. He instilled love in our hearts so we could love others and Him. He knows our innermost, secret desires. He knows how we ache with loneliness. And He mourns for our pain because He has already healed us and we refuse to see it.

We as single women have refused to see that God is our ultimate lover.

Why? Because we want tangible evidence of love. We want someone who can hold us and whisper sweet things to us. We feel like saying, "God is my lover," falls short, like somehow God is not enough.

I am here to say that God IS enough. In fact, He is more than enough. No man will ever complete you or fill the emptiness in your heart. He can’t; he is just a man. But God can. He designed us so that only He can fill us and complete us. He loves us just that much.

God is our ultimate lover, healer, holder, and bridegroom.

We are the Bride of Christ. And it is time we women of God realize and embrace that.

So is everyone engaged? Yes. We are engaged in the greatest love story you will ever have: the one involving you and Jesus Christ. Embrace that truth.