Faith: How to be Single

I have been a single lady for quite some time now; let’s just say years (yes plural). Before I became the fit veggie girl you see today I was the relationship QUEEN. I stayed with a boo. Since turning a teenager all the way until my adult life, I always had someone. That is over 13 years of being a “we.” I was the over achieving girlfriend; being an overachiever worked in my business life, but not in my personal life. Always giving 110% while my partner gave 50% got really old; not to mention it was a hell of my own making. After years of the push and the pull, the tears and the drama I had to just sit down. I even became an over achieving single dater; always manipulating, planning and working behind the scenes to snag the boys I thought I liked. That was when God told me to sit ALL the way down.

I was so focused over feeding my love life that the other areas of my life where bone dry. I had no fruit professionally or spiritually. I hadn’t even begun to understand the purpose of my life. I was so worried about feeding my love life that I over fed it and it drowned. I had to back off, and that was so HARD! In our busy microwave society it is hard to be solo. Everyone is so focused on getting somebody, keeping somebody, breaking up with somebody and then looking for the next somebody. We now have love at our finger tips. Social media and dating websites make it easy to be on to the next one while sitting next to the old one. We are so busy and unfocused that by the time we look up and know who we really are it is 10 years later plus one divorce and two kids.

I needed to stop. I needed to find out who I was without someone else. I needed to clean out all the old baggage that I kept schlepping from person to person. My baggage took the form of expectations. “Well I need you to be affectionate because that is what I am used to” or “Where is this relationship going because I don’t have time to waste.” I was tired from lugging all that around for years. I learned to be by myself. I don’t know why I had dreaded it, because I am a pretty cool person to spend time with. For the first time in my life I was able to think, without wondering what someone else was doing. I was a like a diamond in the rough and I needed time to be dusted off. I began to understand what my worth was as a person not just as a girlfriend. I became an athlete, cook, writer and volunteer. I had no clue I was so amazing.

Now looking at where I am today, I am astonished. I am so thankful that I didn’t settle while I was myold self because that person wouldn’t have fit my best self. I am so thankful for my close relationship with God and for the discernment, wisdom and knowledge he has given me.  Honestly this period of “sitting down” has gone longer then I initially thought; however, it is not about my time but God’s time. Even when I try to do little things to speed the process along my plans always fail. So when the time is right and this season is over, someone will know me and recognize me as wife and I won’t have to lift a finger.

Don’t pay attention to the fear and urgency that society puts on us to find someone. What God has for you is for YOU! Are you in a season of singleness? Have you always dated someone your whole life? What have you learned while being single? Share your thoughts and comments.