Friday, September 14, 2007
Yet another singleness thought
I think one of the hardest things about being single is how permanent it feels to the one who is in it. In a very real way it feels like it will always be this way. However, every else besides the single person believes wholeheartedly the opposite. They might say to me don't worry...you will find someone. He's out there..just be patient. Don't lose hope. But when it's you in your own head you think "this will take a freaking miracle straight from God to get me out of this!! I don't care how hot I am in this red shirt!!"
3 comments:
one experience that I always held on to when I was anxious about not having a significant other in my life (or even occasionally now when I wonder what would happen if my girlfriend were to be taken from me by God) happened during my second summer in Kenya. I remember talking with Nick and being incredibly super-excited about frontier missions, but then thinking how that might be incompatible with my strong desire to get married. And then I realized that if I went for the rest of my life being permanently single, God would give me other things-- like frontier missions where I couldn't have a family-- that would fill me with passion. So that was helpful for me in dealing with the scariness of the whole thing being potentially permanent (well, sometimes. I'm not going to pretend like I was always magically content with where I was, most of the time I was far from content.) But hopefully that can be encouraging for you.
Matthew, I do appreciate your thoughts and I think what you said is true and encouraging. However, being 28 and having many friends who haven't gotten married into their 30's and some who are still not married and are in their 40's, it just presents a different set of struggle that you have to work out between you and God, with the help of the church and the body of Christ. I do think that God does hopefully give all of us a calling to be passionate about, however, I don't know if it's realistic to think that your calling would completely replace other desires, such as one to be married and have a family. I also do think it's important to be grateful for things in your life no matter where you are. I hope that makes sense.
I was single until I was 33 years old and so many times felt just the way you described in this post. However, I feel like I never know what to say to my single friends to encourage them even though I walked a similar road. So many times people said the total wrong thing to me and expected somehow that I would be encouraged (I promise someone said this to me one time when I was single and feeling like it might be permanent : "I know someone who was single until she was 65"...um...that wasn't very encouraging to me!) Since my words may fail to do the trick, I will pray that the Lord would send some encouragement your way and that He will show you a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.
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