Blessed are the Lonely

I love Jesus.  I'm single.  I am surrounded by beautiful family and friends, and I am so grateful and blessed.  I trust fully that God has a plan for my life that is far better than anything I could imagine.  That does not mean that I never cry myself to sleep after I spend a day holding a friend's baby.  Or that I never believe that voice that tells me there must be something wrong with me.  It does not mean that I never feel so sick with loneliness that it's hard to move.  I'm still terribly human and broken.  In the past few years, God has taught me a lot about himself and me and love and being single.  Here's some of that story.

"Singleness is a blessing."
Three years ago, those words hurtled at me from a friend sitting on the other end of the couch in her cozy living room as her loving husband and two beautiful children were playing in another room of their apartment. I was in a very raw and painful place in which getting out of bed in the morning everyday felt like a victory. I bit my tongue as I thought, "Thanks but no thanks."

It's not that I didn't believe her, but I wasn't ready for truth.  Something about people telling you stuff like that makes you feel like they're pressing their dirty thumb into a lacerated heart as an attempt to stop you from bleeding to death.  If that's the best you got, please, let me bleed out in peace.

As time went on, I would cling more desperately to Christ, and he taught me what it means to worship "when there's pain in the offering," and it is the truest and most beautiful to worship God because He is God even when everything else feels like chaos and pain.

In the years of healing that followed, I would discover that indeed being single is a blessing.  (I also confessed to my friend that she was right and that I had wanted to punch her years before) Singleness, like many great blessings, is also a cross.  But perhaps most importantly of all, it is a calling.  No, I'm not talking about the lifelong calling of being single.  You see, the church and the world in general often views being single as a limbo for most and a calling for a very few.  It becomes a time of waiting or perhaps searching, but we rarely think of a period of short-term singleness as a CALLING.  Even if we do think that way, we don't act as if it is indeed a calling and a purpose to be used for the kingdom.  Sometimes we ONLY think of it as some type of time of preparation instead of a distinct and ordained time on its own.

It's difficult in my pride to admit that I desire with an ache in my heart and lump in my throat to be a wife and mother. To serve. To love.  To honor God.  I don't like admitting it because I never want to be that girl, you know, the needy one, the husband-hunter.  God is teaching me humility though, and teaching me to ask for prayer.  It is a good and godly desire that I need not be ashamed or afraid of, but I lay it before God everyday.  Still I pray, "Thy will be done," and above even those desires is the knowing that regardless of what my future brings, I choose Christ.

Recently, my church has been preaching on the topic "Crave."  That we should hunger for and crave Christ above all else.  Also, that God created things and relationships for us to enjoy and even crave for the purpose of praise, worship, and thanksgiving to the Creator.  Those things and people should not be worshipped themselves.

One Sunday, as the pastor asked us what we craved most, God whispered, "Blessed are the lonely."  In my loneliness, I crave Jesus.  I couldn't help but smile and praise him and thank him for my loneliness.  Crazy, right?  Being grateful for loneliness?  But he is teaching me to honor him in my loneliness, and in return, he amazes me with who he is and how much he loves me.  I seek Him, and I know that no person or thing could ever fill me as he does.  My cup runs over.