SINGLE AND DESPERATE

I got this piece in the mail from one of my friends and this being the season of love and relationships i thought its a different approach to the ever hot topic of single hood especially from a lady point of view and decided to share it with my faithful blog family 😊😊😊😊 after she gave me the go ahead.

Probably you’ve come across loads of articles on the same topic…but this one has some great lessons that jumped out for me and I hope you get to learn a thing or two 🙂 

Here goes the timely piece from Big Sister…..

I am still holding on to my early thirties’ and as a result describe myself as 33 and fourteen months of age. There is something about hitting 35 and still being single that makes me feel like a leaper. Interestingly I find that I know very many women in their 30s and some knocking on 40 and still single and waiting. I think I would describe my late 20s into 30 as desperately single. I say that because I remember convincing myself to date a guy I did not like, in fact his personality annoyed me. I had known this guy for years and I remember he had been so infatuated with me but I did not like him. Anyway he moved on met someone else got engaged and then broke the engagement. Years had gone by this time and I also found myself single again after making some bad relationship choices of my own. I had a dream about him, then inquired and found out about his broken engagement and I was sure this was a sign” (I went through the looking for signs phase for all my situationships), must be the Lord speaking (right). When I was in my early 20s I decided to jokingly set a fleece for this guy in my circle, there was a party and I knew he was out of town so I said, ‘God if you want me to marry this man he will show up at the party’, guess who showed up. The stress I went through for the next few weeks was ridiculous, eventually I found out he was dating someone and that was the last fleece I even cast. Back to this new sign..

I am not a very patient person and I figured after all the rejection I had given him he was not going to come to me so I sent him a long worded email on how the timing was perfect ( sometimes I look back on my actions and I am convinced I experience bouts of lunacy). So we had coffee, zero sparks on either side, it was obvious he was not feeling me any more than I was feeling him. The thing I did not like the most about him was how he would air his family drama on social media. See the way I was raised is that you cover your family, at least in public, you never air your dirty laundry where strangers can see. He also whined a lot (I thought he was such a whimp) and loved to criticize people. The only thing I liked about him was that he loved Jesus, true story. I say this not to bash him, because I am sure he is a nice guy, I just could not see it, but I was willing to marry this man if he asked, hence the single and desperate label.

So he rejected me, and did not even tell me, just stopped talking to me and then I found out from a third party. I have to admit my pride was so wounded, but after twitter stalking I admitted that he was better off with her, because she seemed to think he was ‘all that’ and then some. He deserved better than me and he got it, she really thought he hung the moon while I barely tolerated him.  I felt relief, which was a recurring feeling of all the relationships I had tried to get myself into but had not worked out, relief.

When I was younger and mentally stable (aka not searching for a partner) I prayed earnestly that God would keep me from the wrong man, even if I cried and pleaded in the name of being in love that he would not let me make a mistake of marrying someone he did not intend for me. God is faithful, he has honoured that prayer, and I can honestly say I am single because God is merciful, left to me I would be among the many married and miserable people.

I can now honestly say I understand why God in his wisdom choose for me to be single, and not because of some deep reason about some work I needed to do single, I was messed up and did not even know it. So my first tip to the single and desperate is seek God everyday with everything in you “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”. God is not intimidated by your desperation, he is not going to reward your desperation with a man. Sometimes we throw a tantrum to God like a little child and hope God will give us what we want to make us stop. Sometimes we just need to grow up, he is the parent, and he says no out of love and out of knowledge and unlike our natural parents he has the advantage of never being wrong. Your desperation will impact your faith because you might find yourself equating Gods love and approval to him getting you a partner. God loves you even if you never get a partner (I know I said never). We are not promised tomorrow, desperation for a different life tomorrow keeps you from enjoying today which sometimes is all you are getting. The bible says do not worry about tomorrow for today has enough worries of its own. When you spend your day asking God what he would want for you in that day you will find yourself drawing nearer to him and when you seek God believe me you will find him. The prayer I make every day is for the Lord to turn my heart to things that are his will, trust me, that prayer truly takes that desperation emotion away, miraculously. God’s will for his children is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, fight anything that takes that from you.

Second tip is be honest with God about your fears and your pain “my worshipers worship me in spirit and in truth”. God is not intimidated by our pain. Sometimes I think we internalise the art of speaking positively that we are not honest with ourselves or with God about how we feel. Job’s pain come to an end after he was honest with God about what he was feeling, he laid bare his emotions and God showed him where his thought process had been flawed, and then and only then did his healing begin. My desperation and healing did not end until I was honest with God about my emotions, the good, bad and ugly; my anger, my pain, the rejection I felt from him, how forgotten I felt. Not only did he make me see his love beyond my relationship status but he showed me how flawed my thinking had been all my life. He showed me wounds I did not know I had, wounds that were the driving force for all my decisions. I am the most self-aware person I know and I did not know how much fear I had, how much life had shaped my view of love and relationships and when he was done I thanked him for saving me from myself. Not to say that every single woman has a deeply rooted dysfunction, even though I believe every human being has some level of dysfunction (no one goes through the ugliness of this world and comes out unscathed); what I am saying is that if there is pain in your heart, you will never get it out until you acknowledge it to only he who can heal your heart.

Third trust in God, “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”. I am a control enthusiast (hehehehe). I panic when in situations that lack control, either in my hands on in the hands of someone I trust. Being older and single especially as a woman, and worse still when there is no one suitable for you requires a lot of faith that the God who gave up his only son for you would not keep anything good from you. I suggest telling yourself that whenever you get anxious about Gods timing. I work in an environment where many of the married men are having affairs, some of the married women too, I do not have to turn on the radio to find discouragement in marriage. Statistics on single women, on child bearing age not to mention medical reports are fear’s best friend. In this life you choose what you will feed, your faith or your fears, whichever one you decide to feed will direct your actions and your emotions. Sarah’s fear caused her to give her husband a mistress. In all fairness Sarah’s logic was sound, her fears were based on fact, statistically and scientifically she had reason to lose hope.  God is still in the business of delivering miracles, so put away the clock and trust him. Make a conscious decision to trust him in spite it all, even when it seems like you have been waiting for morning to reach for ten years. Jesus is the electricity that allows you to find light in the darkest of nights, but you have to turn on the light on through your faith.

I am still single, but thank God I am not desperate. I do not have a how to get a man tutorial, all I have is a the message that your right as a Christian is joy, and sometimes you have to fight for that joy, so fight for yours.