40 & Single - The Reality

Sometimes in the church I feel like I am looked upon as lesser, because I do not have a husband or children.  But other times I am esteemed like many other single missionary ladies of the past and present.  I would have to say that I am happy with my life and singleness about 80% of the time.  However, I do not believe that married women are happy with their lives 100% of the time either.  It probably works out about the same.

[caption id="attachment_139" align="alignright" width="183"] Singleness is a not a state of mind[/caption]

The single journey really began for me, when one night at a Bible study with 4 of my favorite girl friends, we committed to becoming the Godly Women, that would be ready to meet that special man, when the time came.  For me that was in my early thirties.

Little did I know as I undertook trying to discern and live a life that would lead me to that goal, that I would end up as a missionary.  In my life missionaries were those old guys in fat ties, (when skinny ties were popular) who showed slides and told stories of people very far away.  How could that possibly be relevant to me?  Kind of the same way I wondered how the verse that talks about never eating food offered to idols worked in day-to-day life.

But when I was 34 I read Jeremiah 33:3, which says, “call out to me and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”  It is so very true.  Here I am nearly fourteen years later, living in Cambodia, being fairly confident of the fact that if I had married, I would never have found my way here. This has been the greatest adventure of my life.

The hardest thing to do was to let go of finding a husband and trust that to God and his timing.  Sure there are times when I have been lonely, and wished someone was there to walk with me on a day-by-day basis.  But it is in those times God, has proved his faithfulness. I always think about the song, In the Garden, which starts like this:

I come to the garden alone


While the dew is still on the roses


And the voice I hear falling on my ear


The Son of God discloses.

 

And He walks with me,

And He talks with me,


And He tells me I am His own;


And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

 

As I look forward and listen for God’s voice, I wonder what mystery he will unravel, where this journey will take us next.  Singleness is a box on a form, not a state of mind.