There are good days and bad days in being single—but I imagine that is just how life is for everyone, whatever their circumstances. Some days I am glad for the opportunity to sprawl out in my own bed, to have the house just the way I like it, to not have to answer to anyone or cook on demand. Yet there are those days like Valentine’s Day, birthdays, and other special days when I think, “It sure would have been nice to have someone say ‘I love you’ today.” Sure, my family loves me, and my friends are second to none, but somehow they cannot completely fill that longing I have inside. This is a special longing of the heart to be knitted together with another heart, to work through life and problems together as one.
Now that I am a foreign global worker, the security and love of my family and friends are far beyond my physical reach, which leaves me feeling vulnerable and at times alone. And yet, in my vulnerability, I am learning to draw close to God through reading His Word, through forming new relationships, but especially through prayer—prayer focusing not so much on my own needs but on the needs of others and on the needs of the world. Because it is my natural impulse to focus on my own desires, it is a struggle to spend quality time with God on behalf of someone else. However, I am finding that the more I persevere, the more I find creative ways of interceding.
God forbid, but what if He chooses never to bless me with a husband? What else would be my focus, my dream, or my goal? Do I have a plan B? I don’t think I’ll ever stop hoping and longing for a mate, but the reality is that not every single person who desires to be married will find a suitable partner. Just look inside our churches! And so I must find a way to live life to the fullest regardless. I might need to go back to the basics, which is to understand that I will never truly live until I am in the will of God doing exactly what He is telling me to do and truly enjoying Him in the process. In fact, that should be everyone’s focus, whatever our marital status. There is beauty in spending quality time alone with God and helping to pour out other people’s needs before Him, needs that are more important than my own.
Will I be passive in waiting, and close myself off as though I’m living in an abbey? On the contrary, I am going to attack life with the type of zeal that will make anyone around me wish they were me, pouring myself out into the lives of people, being filled with the knowledge of God’s will, walking in a manner worthy of Him, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened and sustained by the power of God, and giving thanks for His salvation (Col. 1). I don’t just want to exist; I want to live!
Let’s reason together, single friend. Are you living, I mean truly living? Do you have a plan B for your life? Sometimes our plan B is really God’s plan A all along. Come on, develop a new zeal for life, and let’s get back in the race together!
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