I think it’s a common thought for young women; that college will be more than just about furthering your education. College offers a place to meet their best friends, and, more importantly, their future husbands. I’ve read blog after blog where it is the expectation that by the time a girl receives her diploma, she will also receive that diamond ring she has been saving on her Pinterest board for the past four years.
As a senior in this college culture, without any prospects for a groom, it has been easy to feel like there is something wrong with me. In high school I always had a boyfriend; it was my norm. So, when my boyfriend and I broke up the first week into my freshman year I never imagined that I would spend the next three years without.
I was able to fill a lot of the lonely moments with friends, school, work and nights on the town, but after a long weekend, I was always left with a nagging feeling. Where I had been spending 24 hours with my friends for the last three days, was confusion and feelings of being left out when they couldn’t spend that fourth day with me because they wanted (and needed!) to spend time with their boyfriends. Of course, my immediate thought was that I needed to find someone to pass the time with until my friends were ready to give me their undivided attention again. I looked for companionship in the friends of my friend’s boyfriends, in exes and truly, anyone who would give me attention. And yet, I was still not content, I shied away from second dates. Commitment scared me, even thought it was exactly what I thought I wanted so badly.
I spend many long nights crying and seeking comfort from my sister and friends, wondering what was wrong with me, why I seemed to be the only one who wasn’t able to move on from past relationships enough to find “the one.”
I received the best advice from my sister: “You should just pray for God to take away that longing and start praying for your future husband! Pray he doesn’t feel the way you are feeling right now, and just think…you would never trade your past relationships just to not feel this way, its good to know what love feels like.” My sister is so wise.
She continued:
“You aren’t broken and need someone to complete you! You are whole and happy and confident and you are going to attract someone just like that; most boys in college aren’t there yet, and that’s why you can’t find him. I’ve been there, wanting so badly to find my soul mate, wanting the guys I dated in college to be that type of relationship but they aren’t there yet, and you can’t force it. That’s the beauty of love, you can try but it just fails miserably. You have the whole rest of your life to be tied down.”
As all younger sisters are, I am extremely susceptible to my older sister’s advice and it really resonates with me. However, I would be lying if I didn’t still have doubts, or I said I didn’t have days when I found my mind convincing myself that I needed to get ready for work every day, because it might just be the day I meet my soul mate. But, today as I was reading Uninvited: Living Loved When you Feel Less Than, Left Out and Lonely, I felt a moment of clarity. In a specific chapter on rejection, the author, Lysa was at a conference when she was sat at a table with ten empty seats, and she felt she had been sat aside, forgotten. But, because Lysa’s table was empty and quiet, she was able to humble herself and hear God tell her that she had not been “set aside, but she had been set apart.” Though our situations are very different, I felt a little voice inside of me say, “you too Emma.” I shouldn’t feel left out because I don’t have a boyfriend, and I don’t have any idea who I’ll be spending my life with, but I should feel special and set apart, because God is preparing mine and my future husband’s hearts for each other. My destiny is to find a partner in this life whose aspirations are the same as mine, to serve the Lord in all that I do, and it’s okay that I am not ready for that right now.
I know there will always be days of doubt, but I am so thankful for the little reminders that God places in my life.
