in the amplified...
"And the unmarried woman or girl is concerned and anxious about the matters of the Lord, how to be wholly separated and set apart in body and spirit; but the married woman has her cares [centered] in earthly affairs--how she may please her husband. Now I say this for your own welfare and profit, not to put [a halter of] restraint upon you, but to promote what is seemly and in good order and to secure your undistracted and undivided devotion to the Lord. I Cor 7:34b-35
I don't know about you, but in college I didn't particularly count being single as a gift. Granted, I dedicated three (whole) semesters to not dating anyone but God...but it didn't keep me from having crush after crush with any guy in my BSU group that followed God in a visible way. I guess I didn't learn my gift of singleness back then...didn't embrace the lack of distraction quite enough...Didn't embrace the freedom to WAIT on God and put my undivided devotion on Him.
So, I get to try again. I have been divorced (sometimes feels more abandoned then divorced, but God is helping me to see that part less) for a year and a half now. I have had time to practice waiting on God with undivided devotion. And I don't feel as if I am any better at it now then I was before. Maybe because I kept being distracted. There are so MANY distractions...and not all of them are bad. There are some really great distractions out there. But they have kept me from being 100% devoted to God and embracing this time He has given me to live more fully for Him.
I have struggled a bit over the last week with what God wants me to do...who He wants me to be...and with fully trusting Him to write my story without my help. He doesn't need my help. He has it all under control quite well on His own and I tend to just louse it up quite a bit. I have learned that I don't have to have a guy in my life to make me whole and happy...but I DO have to have God in it to accomplish those two things. And that even if God allowed everything I know to be stripped away, everything that has brought me so much joy lately, I will be okay because I will still have Him. He is what I most need and the chance of everything disappearing, again, reminds me to keep grounded in Him and keep focused on Him...to the exclusion of all else.
You see, if my focus is on Him...if He alone is the center of my world...everything in the periphery is going to fall into place anyways (heard that on KLove this week and LOVED it!). He has it all under control.
I have no clue what my next step will be. But I do know that today, I am to wait. And I am to continue waiting on God until He has my heart in the place it needs to be for the next step. And in all reality, I don't want the next step before I am ready for it. When I jump ahead and skip steps, it just gets me hurt. (Physically I have proven this one over and over...just ask my doctors. Emotionally, I have been guilty of this as well).
Waiting and patience are so not easy for me. But I am learning. And I am embracing the growth and stretching and correction. He knows who I can become. And becoming who He wants me to be is very important to me. I don't want to waste time having to learn the same thing over and over again because I didn't embrace the needed time to learn it in the first place. I need to be who He wants me to be...otherwise I am just restless and no good to anyone.
To sum all that up...I am single for a reason...this is a season in my life (and only He knows how long the season will last) where He wants me to be able to embrace the singleness and make my life about Him. I was never told that I wouldn't be...and honestly after the divorce that is all I wanted to be...single. Now, that's not to say that I wouldn't love to be married someday to someone that would love me for me and help me to keep growing in the Lord and who would embrace my kids as his own...all while keeping his own focus on God first. But I haven't been told that that was part of God's plan for me. And if God lit up the steps necessary to get from where I am right now to that possibility...it would probably freak me out. He knows I am not ready for that yet.
He showed me a great guy (if I am being completely honest, He has shown me incredible guys throughout my life who are living for Him and I was able to also see Him at work in their lives before and after they married friends of mine...this one just happened to be the most recent one He has allowed me to witness)...one who is living for Him, who has helped me to continue my healing process and isn't afraid to talk the hard things through with me. Who showed me that there are still men out there, that are single, and are living their lives for God. And for that I am thankful! Through this guy...God has shown me a ray of hope...that all is not lost...that the plans He has for me are beyond anything I could imagine. And that there is friendship out there that is amazing...without strings attached. And I hope that I can be the gal that I need to be...that I can be a true friend back...so that he, too, can be free to be the person God has for him to be...right now and in the future. And I hope that he knows how thankful I am for that friendship and for the way he has let God use him to help me.
I may be single...but I am blessed beyond anything I ever would have thought. I am loved by my Savior and He delights in me. He loves that I am seeking Him with all of me. And He wants a relationship with me even more than I desperately need it with Him. Why did it take me 34 years to figure out that being single was a gift?
