Singleness: The Fatal Disease

Have you ever felt like that? You can’t be single in America and not have someone at some time give you the feeling you’re not well. (-: Our society is entirely wrapped up with this idea of relationships. And it starts young! I remember feeling the pressure to pick out which boys I thought were cute… brace yourselves… in KINDERGARTEN! “Well I like him because he’s nice and doesn’t make fake burping noises, and I use to like him but then he puked on the floor and it was yucky.” Seriously, that was my criteria and a kid really did puke on the floor!

Now this might just be me, but here’s how the story goes. In kindergarten you start scouting your options, by Jr. High you don’t dare tell any of your friends who you like because they desperately want to be match makers and “set you up”, by high school everyone’s comfortably paired off but you figure this season is all superficial anyway so it couldn’t hurt to wait. By 20 the panic starts to set in, I know I’m young but my parents said I could start dating at 16 if they approved the man and now it’s been 4 years and no one has even noticed me! By your mid-twenties you feel it’s all over, you’ve entered spinsterhood and you fall to the floor in hyperventilation, as you invasion yourself living out the rest of your days a lonely old woman! Then as you lay paralyzed on the ground someone walks over, looks down at your pathetic state, and says, “Snap out of it!” They offer you their hand and you sit up. After gathering yourself you begin to scan the scenery around you. The beauty causes you to slowly rise and explore the world you find yourself in. Next thing you know, you start to have… dare you even think it… fun. Suddenly you begin to wonder what was so awful about being single? Our whole life we are taught by media and the society that “singleness” is the fatal fate of the “undesirable”. And thus we fight so desperately to NEVER be numbered among them.

But why is it this way? What’s wrong with embracing every minute you’ve been given? What’s wrong with being single and LOVING it? Sure I want to get married someday, but recently, the more I talk to my friends about wanting to meet someone the more I get this picture in my mind of myself standing on the corner, wearing a cardboard sign around my neck that reads: DESPERATE. The more I see this picture the more I dislike it. I don’t want to be that woman because I’m not. Even though the world would look funny at me for saying it, I love my single life. The longer I wait, the more beautiful the Lord’s story becomes. All the more shall I know His faithfulness.

The world tells me I should be bitter and unhappy because I’ve been deprived of life’s true joy. But I beg to differ. There is joy in love, but whose love? 

 

¹⁰ If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

¹¹ “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

John 15:10-11

Now some at this moment may be rolling their eyes and marking me as one of “those” people, who thinks Jesus is better than any worldly relationship. Well yes, I do think that Jesus and His love is better than any worldly relationship and I’m not ashamed of the truth. I’m also one of “those” people who believes with all my heart that the Lord has one man out there for me. I don’t care if you disagree with me; I’m speaking to someone else right now. To that person who’s wondering what’s wrong with them because they love being single, the one who wonders is its truly possible to love their single life now, and yet still be so passionate about their married future,  and for the sake of my siblings, I want to say: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU! You don’t need another person or relationship to validate your worth! Your beauty! Your life! And to choose to be single now, does not mean you’ll always be single, it just means you are receiving the gift the Lord has given you. The great gift of TODAY!

For he will not dwell unduly on the days of his life, because God keeps him busy with the joy of his heart.

Ecclesiastes 5:20