Singleness blog - Teenage drama queen
I’ve written this mini blog series over the past year, sharing an honest glimpse into my experience of singleness. I’ve come to recognise that singleness is a God-given gift and a blessing to the church. At the same time, I’ve wrestled with the pain of an unfulfilled longing for marriage.
What I’ve learned most is that—whether married or single—we are all learning to trust our faithful God with desires and circumstances that are not always easy. And, most importantly, remember that marriage and singleness are both wonderful ways to glorify God.
I hope this offers a helpful insight for you.
With love, Hannah
The emotional toil of being single and desiring marriage often goes unspoken about. It is hidden behind a fear of judgment and embarrassment. If singleness is a gift, then I am supposed to be happy about it. If God is good then I’m supposed to trust Him. But, I am human. God created humans capable of complex emotions. We weren’t all created like Ron Weasley with “the emotional range of a teaspoon” (my apologies to those who are not Harry Potter fans). I can be both happy about the gift of singleness and, at the same time, struggle with being single. Likewise, showing emotion is not a lack of trust. The Psalms of lament give us permission to come to God with our complex, mixed bag of emotions and be completely honest with Him. The Bible gives us permission to question the things that we don’t understand and gives us permission to wrestle with our thoughts. The Bible gives us permission to cry.
Pursuing marriage in today's world is hard. It provokes a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. It's not surprising that we show a little emotion from time to time. But, sometimes, I just feel like such a teenage drama queen! How can I be a mature 30 something and still experience the same emotions an immature teenage girl would feel? Emotions are good, but they are not God. How do we know when it’s okay to allow ourselves to feel and when it’s time to tell ourselves to “stop being such a drama queen!”?
At Gateway we have a saying; it’s okay not to be okay, it’s just not okay to set up home there. I think this is a really helpful starting point when it comes to dealing with our emotions. Emotions are good and it is okay to feel them, but it is not okay to camp out in our negative emotions. Emotions can help us pray, like the psalmists, coming to God with honesty. Emotional prayers are designed to bring us closer to God and not away from Him. Emotional prayers lead us into a place of deeper trust. Emotional prayers can raise our faith again and lead us to praise and worship. When we turn to God with our emotions, He recentres our focus back off ourselves and back onto Him.
Trusting God’s will and His desire for my life is accepting that things won’t always go my way. It'll go God's way. This means that sometimes I won’t find it easy. Being single gives me so much joy, it is a wonderful gift, but it’s okay to admit, I find it hard sometimes.
Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash