My mother’s favorite topic, y’all. I’m sure you’ll be thrilled at what I have to say, momma!
Singleness. A subject almost every woman despises (I’m making a generalization here, I don’t actually know if that’s even remotely accurate). I’ll be honest with you, going into college, I definitely thought I was going to find my husband there. I thought we’d get married immediately after graduating. I thought maybe my fictional husband and I would own a house by now. I thought we’d probably have at least one child by now, if not more. That’s the process of life, right?
1. You meet your husband in high school or college
2. You both get nice 8-5 jobs
3. Have at least 2 kids
4. Buy a nice home that has a yard for the kids to play in
5. And now have you made it in life
I can’t tell you how incredibly thankful I am that none of the above is true. I wouldn’t even be sitting here typing this to you if it were, because I wouldn’t have the responsibility of maintaining a blog. Which really means I wouldn’t have a blog, because I would have never started one on my own. More importantly, I wouldn’t be going on the Race.
What would my life look like if I always got what I wanted or expected? Let me tell you, it wouldn’t be anything close to what the Lord has for me. It’s laughable to remember back to what I wanted two years ago and to sit here now, realizing how much better this is. To realize that if I would have known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have even flinched at the rejection I felt during that season of my life. And here I am, smiling at the thought of the freedom God has given me to be able to drop my American life and go tell the world about Jesus. Y’all, NOTHING beats that. Nothing.
I’m sure a good percentage of you saw the title of this post and legitimately rolled your eyes, and that’s okay. I know; it’s a predictable topic these days. However, it’s a topic I feel strongly about. I’ve wanted to post about this since I learned that blogging was part of the process when on the Race. And a big part of the Race is singleness. If you weren’t committed to a relationship before accepting to go on the World Race, you agree to not start a relationship until you are back on American soil. PRAISE. I absolutely love that rule. So many people have joked with me that I’m probably going to meet my husband while on the Race (LOL). Hey, maybe that could happen, but I’m definitely not banking on it. And if it did, nothing would come of it until after the Race. I definitely wouldn’t want the beginning of a relationship to be breaking a covenant I signed and agreed to (doesn’t sound like a worthy start of a potential marriage, if ya ask me). Regardless, that’s not even the point of this blog post.
Singleness is a blessing, not a curse. I really wish we’d stop looking at it that way. There is such a uniqueness in how God uses His single sons and daughters in a way that families just may not be capable. Like flexibility, for example. I remember listening to a podcast series on dating, and the speaker told a story of when a natural disaster hit another country, his single friend just picked up and flew to that country within a couple days. He was able to go easily and be a first responder for people in desperate need. The speaker went on to simply state how he wasn’t able to do that. He had a wife and three kids. He couldn’t just leave them without a second thought. He wasn’t coming from a place of wishing he were single again, but emphasizing the beauty and level of freedom to obey God and just go, because in his singleness, he easily could.
In scripture, Paul literally says that if you can exercise self-control, it is good to remain single (1 Corinthians 7: 8-9). Granted, most of us do have that desire to be married, in which case it is good to marry. The point is that marriage isn’t the end all, be all. Our identity can’t be in whether we are worthy enough to have a husband or wife and thinking our end goal is met once we’ve found the person we will marry. No, just no. It has to be in Jesus.
So, cheers to being single until at least 2025 (if not for life) and having the opportunity to proclaim the gospel around the world!
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