Being Single: Red Flags & Being Alone
Editor’s Note: Today’s post was written by Victoria Lienemann. She blogs here and tweets at @VictoriaGraceL. She also wrote for us a few months ago on Bodies & Beauty: Made With Purpose. As a sidenote, are you single and struggling? Consider becoming a mentor/mentoree and gain a close friend to love you through it. – Lauren
As human beings, we are created with weakness. We are created to be imperfect. We are born with characteristics and traits that cause us to fail and to fall. As human beings, we have a tendency to immediately jump to the worst conclusions and lose hope quickly. I am a walking billboard for immediately losing faith when things don’t go my way.
As a Christian, I know the first thing I should do when I see a red flag in my life is pray about it. But do I? Of course not. I’m too focused on fixing things by myself, laying them out in front of me and trying to figure out where I’m going next. I constantly forget that it’s not my road. I did not build it. I did not choose this path.
When my last boyfriend broke up with me, I cried for weeks. After that break up I felt instantly like I was fighting the world by myself. I felt abandoned.
After countless failed relationships, I decided I was going to finally accept the advice older women had given me year after year since I can remember being in a relationship. I was going to take time for myself, to grow, to be single and learn about who I was. This wasn’t because I was ready to be empowered and liberated as woman, but more because I thought every man was out there to take advantage of me and break my heart.
I was so blinded by the men and mistakes in my life that I didn’t see myself for who I really was. For years, I’d looked in the mirror and saw myself as someone’s girlfriend. Someone’s lover. Someone’s future. Someone else’s something else. All I’d ever wanted in my life was to make someone happy. And I was failing miserably at that.
I took my red flags and I bundled them all up and wrote them all out.
I pondered another solution (being the stubborn woman I am) but knew in my heart there was only one. I began to pray about my new found single lifestyle. I prayed that I would find someone eventually, but for now, I prayed that I could just enjoy my life.
I prayed for strength in situations. I prayed for my heart to stop aching. I prayed for trust. I prayed. It was as simple as that. I’d received blessings before this, and I realized that I’d prayed for those. So maybe, if I prayed for God to “fix” me, He’d do that too?
Well I learned something funny in the past year or so since that break-up. God doesn’t want to “fix” you. God doesn’t want to test you. God doesn’t want you to feel lonely and abandoned. God wants to mold you. He doesn’t sit on his throne and laugh while we make mistakes; He aches for us to throw up our hands and say “I give up, go ahead, take me.” He is fully aware of how broken we are, and He doesn’t hang out on the sidelines just watching you fail. He sets a path in front of you to shape you.
When I prayed for strength, what I got in return was a new heart shaped from the old pieces. When I prayed for laughter, for happiness in my life, what I found was the sadness and disappointment fashioned into something to be grateful for. When I prayed for God to fix me, I received a foundation of qualities, morals, and values to build from. And when I prayed, I unconsciously threw up my hands and said, “I give up, go ahead. Mold me”.
When we fall, we are not supposed to stay there and lay flat while the world passes by. We dust off our hands and pick ourselves up. These characteristics, traits, weakness and imperfections we carry within ourselves are meant for a purpose. Each time you fall, you are given the strength to pick yourself up again.
Being single doesn’t mean you need to be lonely. And being single certainly doesn’t mean that you need to feel abandoned. You’re not alone and you’re not abandoned. You’re being built into a perfect creation, a woman that God wants you to be for the man and the children He is going to bless you with.
You’re single because you deserve to be alone. Not because you don’t deserve someone else to love you, but because you deserve to have time to love yourself and just yourself. Because you deserve to be the best possible version of you for everyone else in your life.
You are single because this is the time that God is going to use you the most, where you’re going to learn about what you want in life, where you’re going to learn that independence comes from inside of you. This is where God is casting your mold. This is where He is shaping your weakness into strength. This is where He is gluing the pieces of your heart together in an entirely new shape so that everyone else in your life can see the light shine through the cracks.
A year later, I am not quite the perfect mold. But I’m getting there. I will not settle, and I don’t deserve anything less than the kind of love from a man that completes me and makes me feel whole in every single way..
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I know we are supposed to be molded, but the loneliness feels like more of a punishment than anything. This was comforting though. Thanks.
September 10, 2011 at 2:59 am
You are never being punished, tested, or abandoned. You are always being made better, stronger, more of who your King wants you to be. Take comfort in that, too, Kelsey. It will all be very worth it one day when your heart feels whole from the love of the right man. <3
September 10, 2011 at 7:58 am
Ahhh, after all the posts about how amazing marriage is (not that they weren't good articles), I'm SO glad to read such a great article about being content and single. I'm moving away from home for the first time (and I lived at home through university!), and it's one of the few times I'm really happy I don't have a boyfriend because it would've made the move so much harder!
September 10, 2011 at 7:41 pm
am so grateful for this entry. Just what i needed because i started to feel hopeless about ma love life because eversince my last breakup every guy i meet and i like turns out to be unavailble for me to date..but now i have accepted that maybe i do deserve to be single and love me and just me alone because God provides fo my every need and whenevr he sees it fit hel bring someone along..all i have to do now is surrender to him and let him mold me
September 11, 2011 at 1:59 am
Love it! I am getting divorced and this month's topic is so perfect for where I am at. Finding peace and allowing my life to devoted to what really matters, who really matters. My dearest friend always reminds me I need to know Who's I am before anything else.
September 13, 2011 at 11:59 am
This article (actually most of the 'single' ones) really speak to me lately. I've felt lonely and longing for a husband or a boyfriend. After dating a few and just not feeling 'right' about it, I sort of forgot and denied the part of me that believed that there was someone out there that I will be with and it will be right. And yet as much as I've wanted it, I know it I'm not ready and not quite the right person myself…Thanks for the encouragement.
September 15, 2011 at 2:26 am
This was a great article, and I really enjoyed the part about deserving time to love yourself and to become the best possible version of you. However, I don't believe you have it quite right at the very end of the article.
You said, "I don’t deserve anything less than the kind of love from a man that completes me and makes me feel whole in every single way", but the truth is that a man will never complete you. You can only find completion in the Creator and not in a part of his creation (another human being). This has been a difficult lesson that God has been showing me in the year-and-a-half after my fiance left me, but it's so important. I think the sooner we can grasp this truth with our whole heart, the sooner we can find healing, restoration, and comfort in the Lord: the only one who can complete us!
November 10, 2011 at 2:55 pm
You mentioned things that God is trying to do in your life, what scripture passages are you referencing when you say these things?
March 16, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Great article! I was feeling you: http://ichooselove.com/celebrating-single-life/
Let us celebrate where God has us now, considering we might never be here again. He has us where he has us for a reason, and we'll find greater peace in the gratitude of this place than in rejecting His gift.
April 2, 2012 at 6:14 pm
I agree with prior comments – this is a fabulous post. But if I can note one thing, truthfully, it is the paragraph break between, "These characteristics, traits, weakness and imperfections we carry within ourselves are meant for a purpose. Each time you fall, you are given the strength to pick yourself up again." and, "Being single doesn’t mean you need to be lonely."
Being single isn't a failure. Being single isn't a problem. Being single isn't a weakness. The Lord didn't create "you, and"…He created YOU. It's true that you and your "plus one" are meant for each other to satisfy the Lord's will; but the person you marry does not alter who you are, they enhance who you are. Our relationships compliment us and contribute to our lives in the most profound ways, but they do not define us (if you haven't read it, the book "Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldredge is a really great resource on our unique contributions, strengths, and offerings as women).
I love this blog because it speaks to women, not just women "in relationships" or "women who have it together", and I love this post because it speaks to the highly personal and wholly individual relationship we hold with our Father…who sustains us through even the most vulnerable and self-deprecating of times. And for me personally, this post couldn't have come at a better time in the week. Thank you, Victoria, for sharing it with us.
April 2, 2012 at 11:41 pm
wow
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January 17, 2015 at 2:54 am