Waiting-When We Don't Want To; For the Girls, Part 5: Singleness

I hate waiting. I hate waiting for a new book to come in the mail or the next Netflix DVD to arrive. I hate waiting for the cookies to come out of the oven or for vacation to start. Despite my dislike of waiting there is nothing I can do to make time move faster. The cookies won’t bake faster just because I want to eat them and the next DVD won’t come in the mail just because I wish it to be so. Like it or not waiting is a part of life I can’t avoid or make go faster. Time will plod on or zip past at its normal speed no matter what I do.

Patience has become a lost art in our culture. If we want a mocha latte we hop in the car and drive down to the nearest coffee shop to order ourselves one. If the movie rental place doesn’t have the movie we want we can easily go online and order it through the mail. In a day or two we’ll be in front of the T.V. enjoying our latest selection. 

Almost anything we desire can be found online. Want a bluetooth lock for your front door? Just head on over to Amazon and order yourself one. How about information on the indigenousness people of Australia? Well, Google’s got about 1,323 pages of suggestions for you. Almost anything we question or want can be found by typing a few keywords into the search engine of our choice. 

Instant gratification is one of the reasons waiting on God’s timing is so hard. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself with fingers hovering over the keyboard trying to think of a way I could word my query so Google would tell me where to find my future husband. Obviously, Google can’t tell me where he is and neither can anyone else, but it’s been so ingrained into me to turn to Google with my unanswered questions that my brain automatically directs me there.

Despite my desire to trust God and wait on his timing I still struggle with why he is making me wait. If he hasn’t made Sally, Michael, or Beth wait, why must I? I think it’s a question that lies heavy on the hearts of many of us. We’ve been faithful, we’ve waited, and we’ve obeyed even when it’s been hard, and yet we’re still single while the rest of our friends date, get married, and have children.

I’ve come to the conclusion that God keeps us single for a reason. I look back on the years that have past and I can clearly see, had I been married at a younger age, I would have matured differently. I would have been shaped by my husband as much as he was shaped by me. I believe the twenty-seven years of the singleness God has sent my way have shaped me for a future only he can see. I’ve been set upon this path because the character and personality I am molding today is needed for the future he has planned for me. Despite my longing for a companion along the journey of life I know his plans lead to sweeter places than I could dream up on my own. His way is always better than my own.

There was point in my life where I tried online dating. It was horrible tortuous affair. Not because of people on the sites, but because deep down I felt as though I was pushing my agenda over God’s. He’d prod me to listen, but I was lonely and tired of being alone, so I’d find ways to justify keeping my account open. Things like: since there’s no eligible men here I guess my only option is finding them online, or, I’m getting older and I need to find someone soon. However, God slowly poked holes in all my arguments, and even though I didn’t necessarily want to, I reluctantly closed my account (since then, I’m immensely glad I did).

I’m not saying online dating is bad, but I get the feeling that many of us use it as a way of circumventing God’s design for our lives. In effect, it’s us stating that God isn’t powerful or all-knowing enough to send us the correct mate. And if he’s not powerful enough to send them along, then we need to go out and find them ourselves. If we believe God can send the perfect person along then it shouldn’t matter if we're living in a hut in Africa or the heart of New York. Where ever we are, God is faithful to send the right person along, at the right time, if it’s within his plan for our life.

At some point, while in college, I was given the impression I was still single because I hadn’t yet learned to be fully satisfied by God. If I wanted to get married, I needed to grow closer to him and learn to be completely and fully satisfied by him. Once I reached that fabled point God would finally grant me a husband. 

I think most of us have been fed this lie.And yet, I know, no matter how hard I try, my relationship with God will never be perfect. It will never reach a place where I feel I no longer need to grow. Each day I grow closer to him only amplifies the fact that I still have so much further to go. It shows me how very much I still need him and how very far I am from being fully satisfied in him. And I bet, if you asked any of your married friends, you’d find none of them felt they had the perfect relationship with God before they were married (or after) either.  It’s a continual growth process that will last me until old age and beyond.

                I can choose to see my years of waiting as blessing or a curse. I can bemoan my single state or I can learn to see the beauty of it. If I spend my single years angry, depressed, dissatisfied, or always waiting to live my life until my spouse shows up I’m going to miss out on all the opportunities God has placed before me to serve him and the blessings that go along with them.

                I’d rather live out my single years, whether they last one year or fifty, living for God and falling deeper into his heart, than sitting by waiting to live until I’m married. Should he never show I’d have lived a wasted life, and even if he did, I’d have still lived wasted years waiting for him. These years of waiting have been given as gift and I must choose to accept them with grace and joy or disdain and ungratefulness.

                There is something inexplicably precious about getting to know the Lord with just you and him. No spouse to distract you. No children to put first. Just you and him and the chance to know each other intimately. So precious a gift is often missed when we pine for future things over the gift of the present.

I leave you with the beautiful and convicting words of Elizabeth-Ann Horsford,

“One of the greatest advantages of the single life is freedom -- freedom to come and go as much as we please without having to consult with husband, wife or children.... But freedom does have responsibility. One day I shall have to account for how I used my freedom. Have I been selfishly indulgent, living to please myself, wasting my time? Have I spent my time wallowing in self-pity about my single state or about some problem? ... One of the keys to a fulfilled life is a willingness to give ourselves for others. Jesus said, 'For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.' ”

The Key; For the Girls, Part 1

In every life there are defining moments. Moments, when looked back upon, you can say there, there is when everything changed. These moments either thrill us or devastate us, but one thing is certain, they forever alter the patterns of our lives. I’ve had moments like these within my own life. Like the night I became a child of God, the year my parents chose to have more children, the day I headed off to college, or the summer I chose to work at a camp eight hours away from everything I knew. Each event crept up on me. None were made with deliberate effort in advance, and yet, in each of the moments I can see God’s hand at work, shaping me for a future I couldn’t see. Amongst these moments sits one (apart from the night I accepted Christ as my Savior) that has changed and molded my life in more ways than I can possibly explain or even understand.

               

 I was twelve that summer. I remember it as one of the best summers of my childhood. My friend and her family had just moved back to Minnesota from Virginia and they were staying at her grandparents for the summer. My brother and I spent almost every day that summer hanging out with her and her younger brother. We swam, rode bikes, watched Star Wars more times than I could count (I’ve never seen the Death Star blow up as many times as I did that summer. The boys loved to watch it blow up in slow motion over and over again), ate so many warheads that our tongues went numb and raw, collected pop bottle caps in hopes that we’d win something (of course we never did), and even did school (we were homeschooled) and I didn’t even mind! We built houses out of cardboard boxes, looked for household items in the JCPenney catalog, and cut out scrapbook paper for the wallpaper. I think we even planned out vegetable and flower gardens. It was a glorious, sun baked, laughter filled, friendship cementing, memory making summer. It was the type of summer where, looking back, you wish you could live it all again. 

                It was in the midst of these moments that something extraordinary happened—although at the time it seemed completely ordinary. There was no way I could have known that one simple decision would have a rippling effect that would slowly change and shape my life over the next fifteen years. 

                I have always a passion, boarding on obsession, for reading and it was no different that summer. My friend and I probably spent half that summer either at the library or reading what we'd checked out. The one series I remember most vividly was the Christy Miller books by Robin Jones Gunn. We instantly fell in love with them and spent years afterwards reading and rereading the books. I remember long phone conversations where we would sit forever just talking about them. To this day they hold a special place in my heart.

                The series followed the life of a girl named Christy through her high school and college years. At the beginning of the series Christy’s relationship with the Lord isn’t the greatest but her relationship with him slowly grows through each book. By the end of the series she has transformed into a young woman who loves the Lord and desires to follow his will no matter where it might lead her.

                In book twelve Christy is in Europe on a mission trip with some of her friends. Halfway through her friend Tracy shares a poem with her that she had written years ago for the guy she liked. 

Within my heart a garden grows,

Wild with violets and fragrant rose.

Bright daffodils line the narrow path,

My footsteps silent as I pass.

Sweet tulips nod their heads in rest;

I kneel in prayer to seek God’s best.

For ‘round my garden a fence stands firm

 To guard my heart so I can learn

Who should enter and who should wait

on the other side of my locked gate.

I clasp the key around my neck and wonder if the time is yet.

If I unlock the gate today,

Would you come in? Or run away?

                The poem sits heavy on Christy’s heart and over the next couple of chapters she begins to think about what it means in relation to her relationship with God and guys. In one of the very last chapters of the book she prays this prayer: 

“Lord Jesus I want you to hold the key. I want You to decide what should happen
in my heart’s garden. I want You to let in or send out anything or anybody You want. Especially with guys. I don’t want to ever unlock that gate again. I want You to open it only when the right man comes along. Take the key, Lord. Take all my keys. I’ll wait for You.”

Christy’s decision resonated within my own heart and I found myself praying the same prayer. I don’t remember the exact words I used, but I remember handing the key over to God freely giving up my rights to the key and the door to my heart. I didn’t know it at the time but that simple prayer changed my life forever. There are days when I wonder if I would have so willingly given up the key had I truly understood what I was giving up and what it meant for my future. However, looking back, I am immensely glad my teenage-self made that promise. It may have altered my life forever and led me down paths I would never have chosen for myself, but it has also deepened my relationship with God and set me on an amazing journey I would never have traveled if I hadn’t given up the key.

                I’d given up the key but I still fully expected to grow up and get married quickly. I had always believed I didn’t need to date until I was at least eighteen because the relationship couldn’t go anywhere until then. However, I’d also believed I would date at eighteen or shortly thereafter. I hadn’t planned on going to college or living by myself. No, my dream was to grow up (18 or 19 being grown-up), meet the man God had for me, get married, and we’d start our lives together. Only thing was, in the midst of my dreaming I apparently never stopped to ask what God’s plan was. 

                Eighteen quickly passed and then nineteen with no prospects in sight. I left for college and expected to meet someone. Twenty came and went as did twenty-one. Twenty-two quickly followed with twenty-three close behind. Still there was no one and I began to wonder what God was doing. 

Years passed and never once did God even hint he was going to open the gate. At some point I began to imagine the walls surrounding my heart resembled the walls of the garden from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Overgrown with ivy and hidden from the world. The gate, previously easily found, now seemed to be firmly concealed by solid inches of green foliage. 

I’m not going to say I understand what God was doing or that I fully accepted it at times. In fact there have been days and nights over the years where I have ranted and raved at God and there have been many, many, many tears shed over his decision, but each time God has calmly held out the key and asked if I would like it back. However, despite the days when I bemoan my single state, I’ve never wanted possession of the key. I want to know that when the gate finally opens it was because God chose to open it not me.

                Despite my reluctance in God’s plan from time to time I’ve always had the reassurance that should he ever open the gate it would because a guy cared enough to search for my heart in God and all the pain and questioning in the world could never measure up to this knowledge.

                Twenty-six years of life have passed without a single hint of God moving to open the gate. I’ve never been in love. I’ve never even had a crush on a boy. Oh sure, I’ve thought boys where cute and I wouldn’t mind if they decided to look my way, but I was never hurt when they didn’t. There are days when I’ve wondered if I’m normal. If my lack of feelings means there’s something wrong with me, but I’ve finally come to the understanding that I am perfectly normal, only God has locked up my heart and when the time is right he’ll know. I know it sounds funny, but somehow I know I’m just waiting for his permission to finally fall in love.

                I don’t always like sharing my story because people cast me funny looks when I tell them and look at me as though I’m a little crazy. It’s easier to just let it be and let people think I’m really picky or prefer to be single, but God has placed a burden on my heart to share my story. Over the past two years he has been demonstrating how he is lover of my soul and the relentless pursuer of my heart. He wants me to understand all I need is him and place him first within my life. There is nothing that I should long for more than him.

                Two years ago I read Captivated by Grace by Dr. David Jeremiah followed by Captivating by John and Stacy Eldredge. What God showed me there was absolutely, life-stopping, astounding. From those pages I began to see a God who desired me above all else. A God who’d spent every moment of my life pursuing me, looking for my attention. I’d always wanted a man to notice me, to love me, and to pursue me. As a woman this something God has engrained into my heart and I’d spent my life searching for it when all along God was whispering What about me? I want you. Notice me.

My female heart longed for someone who would go to the ends of the world for me. Someone who would fight dragons in my name, bring me flowers, call me up just to say he’s thinking about me, and brag to everyone he knew that I was his girl. I have yet to find an earthly man who will do these things for me, but I have found someone else who will. Instead of bringing me flowers he makes them sprout just for me. He never has to call me up because he never leaves my side. Angels rejoice because he calls me his. And he really did go to the ends of the world and fight dragons for me. His love is incomparable and I am covered in it.

And that is what this series is about. It’s about the God who wants you more than life itself and will fight death just for you. His love is immeasurable and overflowing. Make no mistake he’s not passively waiting for you; he’s actively at work pursuing you just waiting for the day you wake up and notice.