A Surprising Gift

In our society, “single” is a dirty word. If you aren’t with someone by the age of 13, it seems that you’ve caught the plague or people start to look at you as though you’re weird. As you get older, it only gets worse. When I was younger, I remember making up boyfriends so that my friends would just leave me alone about why I wasn’t dating someone. Everywhere I turned, everything had to do with relationships. TV, movies, books, music, everything was infested with “love”.

I began to develop this unhealthy view of life having only to find your significant other and having children.

When I entered college, people were getting engaged and married left, right, and center, and they weren’t even 21 yet. Everyone was so eager to date someone, anyone really, or even marry someone. If someone had just gotten out of a relationship, they were quick to get back onto their feet and start searching and playing the field again. I kept thinking to myself, “surely there must be more to life?” Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against marriage, love, children etc. If you asked my closest friends I was once that girl that would talk about nothing else.

But Crazy Thought. What if God wanted us to be single? At least for a portion of our lives? What if He gave us the time to be single as a gift? At least to me, I don’t think it is a “what if”; I believe it is a fact.

For the longest time I believed my life would only start once I got married.

I’d been wanting the fairytale wedding, and the happily ever after for so long, that sadly, I had let so much time go to waste, missing out on opportunities in life. And now, I refuse to believe that my life will only “start” once I am married or start dating my “one true love”. My life started when I was born and my life restarted when I was saved and washed with the perfect blood of Jesus Christ many years ago.

I want to live life to the fullest, and how can I do that if I waste the 20-30 something years that God has given to me to be single? For some of us God asks to wait for marriage for only a short period of time while others a longer time, but whatever the period of singleness, it should still be viewed as a gift and not a curse.

There isn’t a perfect man that is going to come riding along on a white stallion in shining armor. There is no prince charming. And that’s what God had to wake me up from. I had spent so much time wishing I had this perfect somebody, looking at each guy that passed me thinking, “Are you the one?” that I never realized I’ve had my perfect somebody all along. His name is Jesus.

God says in Isaiah 54:5 “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called” and in Jeremiah 3:14 “for I am your husband. I will choose you…and bring you to Zion”.

Jesus chose ME.

Over everyone else, he chose to love and cherish me, and I’ve been wasting this time with Him because I’ve been looking for a man to fill the void in my heart when really only God can fill a void of loneliness and wanting to love and be loved.The metaphor of our relationship with God being like a marriage is used over and over again in the Bible. It’s an accurate metaphor though, because just like a real marriage, there is a give and a take. In order to make the relationship with God work, you have to put in time and effort, give Him all your joys and pains, let Him be apart of your everyday life, not be ashamed of him, and ready to live your life to the fullest with Him, because “[He has] loved you with an everlasting love, therefore [He has] continued [His] faithfulness to you.” Jeremiah 31:3

So why not be faithful to Him?

God has given us the time to be single, in order to give him our undivided attention.

In 1 Corinthians 7:32 it says, “I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs-how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world”.

Once we are married, we will be married (God-willing) for a very long time. Hopefully longer than our 20-30+ years of singleness. So instead of using up all the time of our singleness on thinking about the next 20-30+ years of being married, let’s use this time for God. To Make Him Known.

And honestly I’ve stopped worrying about finding the right someone. I know at the right time God will provide for me what He has provided for those that have gone before me; not a perfect man because there is no such thing but the perfect man for me. Someone that will compensate for my weaknesses and will enhance my strengths. Someone that will never consider me below him, but will consider me an equal. A man that loves the Lord with all his heart and does not lean on his own understanding.

However, if I am one of those chosen few to be single forever, like Paul in the Bible who says in 1 Corinthians 7:7-8 “ I wish that all were as I myself am [single and content]. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another,” then I will be happy with God’s will for my life. Some have the gift of singleness and some the gift of marriage. Most people get the gift of marriage but the gift of singleness really is a gift for those that can remain pure and content in it. With the gift of singleness, you don’t have to worry about the stresses and problems of other people or have to take care of another person, take into consideration another person’s thoughts, ideas and feelings, or even share your whole heart and love with anyone but Christ. He gets to have your undivided attention and love for the rest of your life WOW, what a way to live! You couldn’t just get up and go spread the gospel all around the world and make an impact as Paul did, with another person or even a whole family.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, being single or being married. Our lives are complete in Christ. That should be enough and it really is enough if you let it be.

So hopefully one day somebody’s, but if not, happily eternally God’s. ~Tabitha Thomas