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I recently (ok, recently as in 2 months ago, I’m a bit late with this post), put up a Valentine’s Day post on my Instagram.

 

Did you see it? It gives some context for this blog, so I’ll give you a few minutes to go check it out…

Dum dee dum dee dum...la la la…

Oh, you’re back! Did you find it?

Oh, no? Hmm. Were you looking for a picture of a couple? Or a picture of flowers and chocolate? (or let’s be honest, if someone were dating me...lattes and sour gummy worms?)

We so often associate Valentine’s Day with these images, so I can’t blame you if that’s what you were looking for.

But the post is actually of me jumping off a boat in Panama, with my arms in the air, and my ponytail flying behind me.

 

 

Now to some, this may not seem very “Valentine’s Day”. But let me explain.

 

When I look at that picture, I see a girl who no longer allows her life to be on-hold because of her relationship status, or the last eight Valentine’s Days she’s spent alone (Yes, I counted for dramatic effect). And I think that’s something worth celebrating.

It’s worth celebrating because for so many of us, we limit ourselves in our singleness. We feel that our lives have not yet fully started, nor can they begin until we leave our single days in the dust.

 

I know because I’ve been there.

 

I distinctly remember five or six years ago, sitting around with some girlfriends discussing our futures. I remember talking about travel, and moving, and buying a house, and I also remember every time one of us said “when I have a husband” before it.

We had limited our dreams to only becoming realities if this yet-to-be-identified man came first because that’s how we had always planned it would be.

So what happens to those dreams if that person isn’t in the picture?

 

Enter: Our self-proclaimed “season of waiting.”

 

Waiting not only for a husband, but to do anything at all until he arrives. Why? Because we believe reaching for our dreams and walking in our purpose without someone by our side will feel less valuable. It’s outside of our ideal. And we would rather wait and do nothing, than risk finding out what it would be like to do it on our own.

 

But the truth is that God never intended our singleness to be a “season of waiting”.

 

At least, not in the way that we approach it. Sure, it’s a time of “waiting” for a husband, but that does not mean He intends for our entire lives to stop and wait. After all, we are always waiting on something in life. We rarely have exactly what we want at the exact moment that we want it, and for anything else that we were hoping for, we would rarely pause our lives altogether until we got it.

 

But we treat waiting for a husband differently.

 

We live our lives as single people, freely, and pursuing our purpose and what we want to do, until an age where we think we should be married. And then BAM. Everything comes to a grinding halt.

So after years of being single, and circling in this self-imposed holding-pattern, I got fed up. It didn’t make sense that all my hopes and God’s plans for my life were just meant to fall by the wayside because I was checking the “Miss” box a little longer than I planned.

 

I finally realized that God does not have a star next to my wedding day as the day my life will begin.

 

He didn’t hit pause. I did. And there’s one simple truth that made me realize it.

It’s the ultimate, hands-down, knock-out-drag-out, couldn’t-beat-it-if-you-tried reason why singleness is not meant to have us waiting for a husband like we’re waiting for the bus.

And here it is:

You’re a living, breathing human being, intentionally placed on this earth by the creator of the entire UNIVERSE, and He has a plan for every day of your WHOLE life.

Period.

God gave us breath the day we were born and laid out a plan and purpose for our lives. Getting married may be one part, one chapter, and a vessel for our purpose, but it is not the only plan He has.

 

He never intended for us to live our lives up until a point, and then entirely stop until he brought us the next chapter that we wanted.

 

To put our lives on hold because God has not given us the circumstances that we wanted, is actually like telling God he has just plain screwed up. Like “Sorry God, I can no longer continue on this journey because you forgot to give me a husband when I wanted one. So I’ll just sit here and wait for you to correct this.”

We don’t trust that He can equip us to carry out His plans for our lives without a husband by our side, and we don’t believe that what He gives us and what we work for is worth anything without a ring on our hand. We’d rather look at Him and say “Without a husband? No, thanks.”

 

But as believers, we know this thinking is false.

 

We may fight it, as I often have, and sometimes still do, but in our heart of hearts we know the truth.

The truth is that God is fully, and abundantly (infinitely!) capable of bringing our dreams and His purposes for our lives to fruition, even if we didn’t have a single soul by our side. And while we often ruminate on the fact that the way that it might come about is not what we had pictured, the alternative, of missing out entirely on all that God has planned, is a far worse reality.

So please, in those moments where you’d rather wait than move, when you’d rather have nothing at all than something different than you pictured, remember...

 

You’re alive. As long as there is breath in your lungs you have purpose. And you have a God-given right and capacity to chase your dreams and realize all that God has in store.

 

He has planned an entire life for you, including everyday until you get married, and every day after.

I pray you won’t miss out on the entire story waiting for one chapter.

You are made to do so much. And there is no time to wait.