All the Single Ladies

Last week, I found myself in a conversation with four single women discussing my experiences with dating and waiting before I got married.  As we talked, I was reminded of two things:  the incredible frustration that can come as you wait on the man God has for you, and the fact that I still know more about being single than I do about being married as I did not go on the first date with my now husband until I was thirty-four.  So,  I'm going to share some of that conversation with you, at least my part of it, in the hopes that it can help some of you out there who are still single.  I was going to say that I can't claim to be an expert, but I think 15 years of being single (I start counting from age twenty and count up to the wedding day) actually gives me some pretty solid credibility. 

The reason I start counting singleness from the age of twenty is because that is when you are officially no longer a teenager.  Now, most twenty-year-olds don't identify themselves as single.  I know I didn't, but I think it qualifies.  The funny thing about being single is that you don't feel single right away.  Ironically, most of us don't identify ourselves as being single until we are painfully aware that we are not yet married.  Up until that moment, I was a content young adult, happy to enjoy the freedoms that came with being on my own in the world.  It really did feel like someone flipped a switch on me one day when I was about twenty-six and suddenly the "single" light came on over my head. Not a light so much as a flashing neon sign that screamed to the world, "table for one!"  It was the time in my life when weddings stopped feeling like a party and started feeling like an exercise in pointing out how alone I was, seated at the dreaded singles table with the other desperate folks as I calculated my plan to be in the bathroom when the bouquet toss came around.  Beyonce's "Single Ladies" came out the year Maurice and I were dating, so I didn't have the fun, girl power anthem for my years of bouquet catching.  Oh no, I was single in the years when snarky DJ's liked to play songs like "We Are Family" or "I Will Survive" for that glorious moment.  The former's chorus of "I got all my sisters with me" only served to emphasize we were  a bunch of girls with no guys in our lives, and the latter pointed out that we'd all been dumped.  Awesome. 

Yes, when the feeling of "single" became real, I was acutely aware that my carefully formulated schedule for my life was close to veering off course.  I "planned" to be married by twenty-seven and having my first baby by twenty-eight, so I only had a year to get with the program.  Fortunately for me, by then, I was in a relationship with Christ, so I knew that I was not to grab any guy that came along, but wait for the one He had for me.  In fact, when I became a Christian at twenty-five, I spent the first year and half with no interest in dating.  I was growing closer to God, and knew a man would be a distraction. I read a book that suggested a six month hiatus on dating while you worked on such things, and I happily made the commitment, even saying to myself and Jesus that I probably needed a year, with my past mistakes.  So, at twenty-six,  I felt like I had done some good work on me with the Lord's help, and I was ready for my knight to appear.  By the time I was approaching my twenty-seventh birthday, I began to grow a bit restless, and found myself taking an evangelistic approach to dating a guy I'd met at work.  That's when you date a guy who doesn't have a relationship with Christ, but is willing to go with you to church sometimes, so you convince yourself that God has brought you into his life to lead him to Jesus and then marry him. Yeah.  That doesn't work.  What it led me to was sin, personal failure, and a whole new bucket of junk to take to the Lord for healing and forgiveness.  I slipped from my re-commitment to sexual purity and it felt all the worse, because this time I knew without a doubt that it was sin.  To make matters worse, I had prayed for God to take me out of the relationship if it was not right, and He gave me several clear opportunities to get out, including having the guy attempt to break up with me, but I did not take advantage of them.  I felt foolish and suddenly realized that I might not be able to trust myself to make the best decisions when dating, so I prayed a high risk dating prayer.  

At the age of twenty-seven, I prayed that the next guy I date be THE guy and that I would not have any more casual dates or boyfriends.  I was ready to wait for my husband. I really was.  Of course, I didn't know that would mean seven years without a date.  SEVEN YEARS!  I know that Jacob had to work seven years for Rachel and the Bible says it seemed like only a few days because of his great love for her, but I didn't have Maurice to look at and get to know over those seven years, so it felt like a few decades to me!  Seven years of solo time.  Seven years of New Year's Eves with no one to kiss.  Seven years of holding no one's hand outside of prayer time and babysitting.  Seven years of take-out for one and movies by myself.  Okay, I still go to movies by myself because you aren't supposed to be talking to anyone during the movie, but that is not my point here.  SEVEN YEARS!

However, what took place in those seven years was more than meals alone and hiding in the bathroom during the bouquet toss (yes, I really did that).  During those seven years, God called me into full-time ministry. I left my friends, family, and church to move to Dallas and study at seminary.  During those seven years God led me to Fellowship Church where my ministry skills were honed and developed.  During those seven years, God revealed to me my gifts as a speaker and teacher of His word.  During those seven years I made some of the greatest friendships of my life.  During those seven years, God directed me to Christian counseling where I worked through a great deal of my past sin and guilt and began to truly allow the Lord to work on my heart and change me for His purposes. During those seven years I sat under teaching about marriage and relationships and began to develop a biblically informed view of what I needed most in a husband.  During those seven years, I learned how to be a better steward of my finances.  During those seven years I got to travel to Europe with my sister and New York and Boston and D.C. with my friends.  Most importantly, during those seven years, I learned to put God first in my life. I became wholly dependent on my relationship with Him, which made me whole.  

In that conversation last week, one of the women asked me how I knew Maurice was the one.  To be honest, I didn't know right away. What I knew right away was that he was a Christ-follower, and I knew it not because he said it, but because he lived it.  He'd been at the church for two years before he ever asked me out and I'd seen him serve faithfully Sunday after Sunday.  I saw him attend bible study classes whenever we had them.  He was often one of the last guys hanging around helping clean up after events and did so without ever having to be asked.  The only thing I really knew about him when he asked me out was the sincerity of his relationship with Christ and his servant's heart.  It was after we began dating that I learned he was funny and witty, intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, athletic, and smart with his finances.  The most important quality that I knew I needed in a man was a strong, individual relationship with Christ.  I had a long list of other qualities I wanted, but that was at the top and at first that was all I was sure of when it came to my guy.  

So what is my point? I have several.  God's timing is better than your timing, so trust Him to bring your man to you at the right time.  God wants you to work on you right now so do the work: read His word, pray, seek Christian counseling, go to church, and submit yourself to that work.  I'm not telling you that your man will come when God is done working on you, because God is NEVER done working on you.  I'm just telling you that you can't put the work on pause while you wait for a man.  The work starts with the relationship with Christ, so get working and keep working.  Also, you have a life to live while you wait, so live it.  Take trips, make friends, try new things, don't save it all until you get married or you'll be missing a lot!  Learn everything you can about being married God's way from the Bible, your church, your married Christian friends, etc.  You won't even realize how much you are taking in and being prepared until after you get married.  Finally, I have to tell you the old adage is true.  Run towards Christ and then one day you'll look to the side and see a man running alongside you towards Christ, and he will be the man for you.  This is vital because to stay married you'll both have to keep running towards Him.  Trust God to bring the right man into your life at the right time, because you will have to trust Him to keep your marriage together for the rest of your lives.  The exercise in faith that is being single and waiting is merely preparation for the faith required to stay married for the rest of your lives. I'm just sayin'!