Loving & Living, not Waiting

The other day a friend shared a link to a blog post with me. A post titled: “I don’t wait anymore” The first couple sentences said, “When I was 16, I got a purity ring.  And when I was 25, I took it off.” This woman wasn’t saying she gave up on being pure, but she did express that she wasn’t waiting on love, but embracing the love of Christ. She confronted the Church’s part in misleading many young women to believe that God just asks us to follow a recipe for receiving a husband. She confronts the misrepresentation of God and His character in the lives of many young adults. You can read more of her post here. This post led me to think about my own life…

As I stare at the “true-love-waits” ring that has found its home on my left ring finger for the last 6+ years I began to wonder what it really means to me now. In the moments after reading that post I was tempted to take my ring off in a surge of emotion. Yet, I stopped and calmed myself down to think and pray over the feelings that had risen up within my heart. These aren’t all new thoughts and feelings. In fact, they are thoughts and feelings that I have trudged through with God over the last year or two.  In the process of accepting God’s call to serve Him overseas I had to face the fact that this would greatly diminish my chances of getting married anytime in the near future.

Through much time with God, in the Word, in prayer and in much, much surrender; I am now able to truthfully say that I trust God with my single-hood. I have chosen to surrender my desire for a marriage because it is far from the top of my “most-important” list. I could name many things that rise above getting married in my mind. To name a few: serving God with my life, sharing the salvation that comes through Christ with others, teaching about the love and truth of Christ, and loving the friends and family God has already placed in my life are among the most important desires of my heart.

What I’m realizing more and more is that while I’ve worked through a lot of my feelings and thoughts with God on this whole matter, my friends, family and fellow believers do not understand the journey of surrender I have chosen. Throughout my journey of raising support and sharing my vision of ministry in Romania I have been frustrated by the responses of many believers. More often than not, responses from believers point to my lack of a husband and/or their prediction that I will find some Romanian husband while I am there. It’s as if they view me as incomplete because I don’t have a husband. It’s as if I haven’t truly arrived into a mature Christian adult because I’m not married.

It is depressing that my fellow believers are more concerned about my marital status (or lack-there-of) than they are about the people in Romania who have never heard of the love of Christ. They seem more concerned with the lack of a rock on my left ring finger than they are about the lack of food on the tables of my friends in the Roma villages. I keep asking myself: why do so few of them ask about the people and the ministry? Do they really think I’m going to Romania to find a husband? Do they think I’m only serving in Romania because I think I’m an old maid who’s given up on marriage?

To put it simply,

I’m not waiting on love; I’m living in the love of Christ!
 
I’m not waiting to serve a husband and family; I’m living to serve Christ!