by Allie Marie Smith
Lately, I’ve been having some real, raw conversations with my single girls. While I am happily married you should know that I am a huge advocate of the joys, trials, lessons, and adventures the life of a wise single girl offers. So if you’re doing life “solo” as you will, here are four lessons (or ramblings) I’ve learned from my own journey and from doing life with my single friends.
Your significance isn’t rooted in whether or not you have a significant other.
One of the greatest lies we as girls believe is unless our Facebook status says “In a relationship,” “engaged” or “married” we’re not good enough and can’t be content, secure and fulfilled. You plus God equals enough. You plus God plus the man He chooses for you also equals enough. With Christ you are complete. You are significant. Your dreams, your passions, your quirks, talents and hopes.
Soak up the season of singleness. One day you very well might miss it.
Shortly after Paul and I got engaged, my friend Ashley gave me some unexpected advice that totally shifted my perspective. She shared that while the engagement season is one of celebration and bliss, it should also be a sweet time of mourning over the loss of your singleness. That thought rocked me, but she was so right. Never again would I have such personal freedom and greater dependence on and intimacy with the Lord.
As a girl who absolutely loves being married, I am somewhat envious of my single girlfriends who are having wild adventures across the globe – backpacking Europe, surfing waves in Australia, doing extended mission trips, having the liberty to flirt, going on occasional dates and living in a house with some of their closest girlfriends.
The most emotionally fragile girls are those who jump from relationship to relationship.
I believe this is the “red-flag” if-you-will of a girl who is not secure in her worth. Chronic dating, emotionally promiscuity and sexual intimacy before marriage cause major scars. Giving bits and pieces of your heart to guy after guy is draining. And giving your body away to guy after guy (or any guy other than your hubs) is the surest way to leave your heart shredded, bruised and broken. If you find yourself going from relationship to relationship and fearfully avoiding dateless nights without a guy to flirt with or talk to, I challenge you to courageously savor a season of uninterrupted singleness.
Seek the Lord. Travel. Read the Bible. Write down your dreams. Volunteer. Take up a new sport. Make your single life a glorious adventure and guard your heart beautiful for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23). Then when you are secure in your true identiy as a daughter of God and content, the one chosen for your just might come along. But don’t let that be your life’s hope and until then stop searching and start living – just you, Jesus, your family and your dancing queen girlfriends.
One of the best gifts a girl can have is a long uninterrupted season of singleness.
After my first and only “boyfriend” (besides my husband) broke up with me at the fragile age of 14, I entered into what seemed to be a perpetual period of boy-less-ness. Looking back, I know now that my dateless Friday nights were one of the best gifts God gave me. They forced me to wrestle my insecurities head on, write my own dreams, and safeguarded my heart. After my world-shaking God-encounter at 18 when I chose to live passionately after Jesus, my season of singleness provided me with the opportunity to build my value and worth in Him alone and experience profound intimacy in a unique way marriage doesn’t offer.
What do you think about my 4 ramblings? Let your thoughts, dating disasters, and single-girl lessons be heard…
