After a talk with a good friend in early January,
God confirmed His call for me to experience Him
through the freedom of singleness.
I've found most people consider singleness
to be some sort of failure, or a temporary trial
to endure until someone comes along to
cure your awful disease.
When I told my family that I wanted to
spend New Years Eve by myself with my Jesus,
their response was, "is something wrong?"
But I've embarked on a new adventure.
And I now view singleness as absolute freedom.
Not freedom from having a man in my life,
but freedom to discover who I am.
To make my identity in Christ concrete.
And to prepare my heart for my potential future husband.
God has called me to discover and embrace
His ultimate supremacy as much as humanly possible
during this time of singleness.
And my desire has been exactly that all along.
Through the readings of a couple of books:
1. Lady In Waiting by Debby Jones & Jackie Kendall
2. Captivating by John and Staci Eldridge
God has revealed myself to me.
I have found myself.
Not who I want to be,
not what my past has made of me,
but who I already am.
Who I was created to be by my Heavenly Father.
It's nearly impossible not to get weak at the knees,
practically falling on your face in adoration
when you truly understand the depth of God's love.
The way He views beauty, the way He IS beauty.
He cherishes it, nurtures it, delights in it.
He delights in ME.
God has begun to reveal to me
an endless number of discoveries about myself.
He revealed something to me of my past.
Something that seemed so little at the time of its occurrence,
but was found to be responsible for several
hurtful and heart-breaking experiences not just
in my childhood but my adulthood as well.
It was something so crucial to know, had it not been addressed,
would have caused much heartache in my marriage to come.
It made me realize my lack of feminine confidence.
Through this discovery, I've allowed Jesus to heal me.
By learning of His desire to pursue me,
to romance me,
and to satisfy me,
I've learned to let Him in.
And I've experienced what it means to truly be romanced
by the Savior of the World.
When I wake up in the morning,
I sit in front of my open window,
the sun just coming up over the horizon.
I tell Jesus, "show me what I mean to you through Your creation."
One morning,
He gave me golden sunlight.
It pierced through my window and so deeply into my heart,
I could feel the warmth of His love.
Another morning,
He gave me a light fog.
And later on my way to school,
He whispered in my ear, "mystery."
I realized the fog surrounding me, lay gently over creation.
It wasn't a dense fog, but a delicate fog.
And to Jesus,
I am delicately mysterious.
God has also been teaching me about His character.
Through a few other books:
1. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
2. The Bible
As well as teachings from local pastors,
and philosophers strongly believing in morals without God
through my required Ethics/Philosophy class.
I have begun to think in logistics.
I've begun to think as a child would if he/she wanted
to know how a bicycle worked.
I ask questions.
I challenge myself as well as others.
My mind has been opened to the world of Christian Apologetics.
Well-known journalists such as Lee Strobel and former Atheist C.S. Lewis
himself have been great resources to gather information.
All the while, I'm becoming a Christian woman with a backbone for my faith.
I've realized that all my life, my faith has been growing.
It is the strongest it has ever been.
But my faith to other people is just that.
MY faith.
But I've realized and continue to realize,
through the study of Apologetics, Ethics, Moral Law,
and Philosophy, my faith is both logical and sensible.
Not that it didn't make sense before,
but rather than being a single way to theorize about life,
it is constantly becoming the logical way to believe about life.
The latter discoveries are still in the making,
but I have no doubt that God is preparing me
for my time away over seas in the beautiful country
of Ghana, where people are hungry for His name and love.
In the short time 2012 has been here,
my eyes have been opened to two major characteristics of God
through my experiences alone.
His unconditional, beautiful and absolute love for me.
For women.
For us.
OH how He loves us!!
And the logic of His ways.
His creation, morals, teachings,
we cannot even begin to understand their depth.
The human mind is not even capable of comprehending
even a fraction of the complexity and vastness of God's mind.
For years, mankind has spent a countless number of hours
trying to come up with convincing theories to explain the way
the world works and how it came to be.
To explain why we are here.
But even tasting the idea of God's creation,
His plan, the way things work and are supposed to work,
His trust, His peace, His love, His fairness, His promise...
gives me a peace that not only makes sense,
but leaves me free of worry.
I'm physically incapable of worrying anymore.
And rather than spending my days trying to explain things
no one can prove anyways,
I would rather spend my days marveling at the supremacy
of my Creator and all that He is.
I would rather be in awe,
than in the frustration of trying to understand.
Throughout these two discoveries of God's character,
I've learned one more thing.
By allowing Jesus in,
He has completely satisfied me in every way
that I previously desired for a man to fill.
My loneliness,
my insecurities,
my longing for a companion.
It's Him.
It's Jesus.
Although,
before deciding to allow Jesus into my brokenness,
I realized my true reason for my desire of a husband.
It is to have someone to serve alongside of.
To be his ezer kenegdo (meaning "helpmate" - what a woman was created to be for a man.
What Eve was created to be for Adam).
I long for that.
I long to serve alongside another Christ-serving soul
to then further the kingdom of God.
We will flourish as a team.
And because of this desire,
And the knowledge I have that God knows the desire of my heart,
I no longer fear that this new satisfaction I have in Christ alone,
will in turn, grant me singleness forever.
My desires for a husband exist outside of my insecurities.
Jesus has satisfied everything I once longed for
that my husband couldn't have even satisfied in the first place.
I know God is preparing the heart of my future husband as I write this,
for our adventures together, serving for the good of His kingdom.
And now?
I get it.
God called me to singleness,
I said yes.
And I get it.
God called to me at Passion 2012
to know Him through His word,
and now I get it.
He's preparing me for Africa.
And instilling in me a backbone for my faith.
I'm no longer scared
or weak.
I'm no longer fearful
or quiet.
I am bold.
I am fearless.
And I am a woman.
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