Hope

I found a wonderful article on singleness at Boundless by Elisabeth Adams entitled One Single Day. I really would like the topic of marriage and singless to NOT exist, but I find that it follows me everywhere. I can never get away from it in my heart. I want to be married, and yet, I am not. I want the desire and the glaring lack of it's fulfillment to just go away, but at the same time I don't because I really want to get married. Oh my. Thankfully, with God's help and with the *years* of experience I have at being single I'm able to manage my unmarriedness without routinely wanting to jump off a bridge because of it. Pretty much, I have no choice, I must resolve myself to being single, nearing 30, with no end in sight. Now that I'm done sharing my very sad and sorrowful life, I'll share with you a quote from the aforementioned article.

Hope is inconvenient. It is paradoxical. It can be painful. It can search my heart and motives to the very bottom. I don't ask for hope, and often I don't actually want it. What I really want is for the desire to go away, or be granted. But by His grace, I hang onto hope anyway.

I may not have the 58 years of companionship that my grandparents had. It's unlikely that I'll have the eight children my parents had, and I will never be the young mommy that I had. But as as time goes on, it grows more clear to me that while my waiting years are irreplaceable, they are not wasted. Ultimately, it's not because of some great adventures they are giving me, some great benefit to others, or some great work I am doing. It's simply by knowing His outrageous love that I'm able to take something that's happening to me against my will — and mark it "Freely given to Jesus."

When Mary anointed Jesus' feet with pure spikenard, she gave something costly, something precious to her, something irreplaceable. It was others who said "Why this waste?" To the one who gave and the One who received, it was pure joy.

He never wastes what is precious to us! Not one single day.

My 20-somethings are gone. I will never, ever be married or have kids in my 20's. It is something I would NEVER have chosen. It was my dream to be a young mother and wife. And that will never happen. That chance is gone.

And, I do not believe things always happen because God is doing what's best for me or because He is trying to refine me and make my desire more focused on Him. I won't deny that my extended singless hasn't been very refining or cause me to draw closer to God (because it has!) but sometimes I think God allows things to happen or not to happen simply because He is, and was, and will always be. Simply because He can. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He spoke the stars into existence and calms the seas with a word. "Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases" (Psalm 115:3). And THAT is an awesome God. That is the God we serve and we worship.

May I bring glory to the God who is 'in the heavens' and 'does whatever He pleases'. And may I also be 'able to take something that's happening to me against my will — and mark it "Freely given to Jesus."'