Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. – Proverbs 3:5-6
What if you took a break from dating? Do you think you’d be content to simply wait until the right person comes along?
Most people will say, of course you can be happy not dating! They’d probably even say you could be happy being single for life.
But what about those who have a deep ache inside?
Those with a yearning and searching heart for marriage?
Do they really get to feel joy amidst their singleness?
Even if you’re hoping to marry one day, you can be happy being single and not dating.
In fact, dating itself has the potential to be a grueling journey, which was actually a part of my story for three years where I dated men to fill a void and alleviate feelings of abandonment.
The grueling journey involves the restless heart, the hopeless soul and someone who isn’t truly filling their soul up with God instead of the pleasures of the world.
It brings heartache, sorrows, disappointment and disaster to your life. You rarely feel happy because your life isn’t “complete” without someone, right? I discovered the hard way that that’s the wrong mindset to have.
“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.’” — Genesis 2:18
You have a desire to be with someone simply because it’s a holy desire God planted in you.
God ultimately created something as beautiful as marriage to reflect His love story to the world, so it’s not surprising that he created you with that very desire.
Being single for years taught me one very important thing: I had to surrender my love life to God.
This doesn’t mean I stopped hoping for marriage. I simply realized that I was more wrapped up in my own will than God’s.
Dating all the wrong people. Or shall I say… dating all the right people who were wrong for me. All because I never took the time to surrender this area of my life to God.
I can tell you one thing: I’ve never desired to be single for life, but I have desired to only follow the will of my Father in Heaven; whatever that looked like, I’d be purely obedient.
However, the older I got, that marriage desire never went away.
After years of desperation, I hit rock bottom in my singleness, so much so, that I stopped dating.
I fully surrendered my love life, telling God I sought only His love and for Him to be the center of my life. I was fully joyous, not temporarily happy, because I realized my singleness wasn’t a state I was in; it was a season, and I knew God had my best interests in His heart.
I ended up meeting my husband three months later.
“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” — Psalm 37:4
The point I am making is that the journey of singleness can be easy or hard, depending on how we choose to live it out.
Will you surrender your love life fully to the Father? Or will you try to take control of it on your own?
I can assure you that the latter will not make you joyous amid your singleness; instead, it will leave you tired and desperate.
The only way to pure and simple joy is to surrender to God during all seasons of your life and trust what only He knows, and what He will reveal to you in His time.