I still get sad that I am not dating anybody. I still get feelings of lonesomeness. I still worry about the future, and I wonder if I always be alone.
I still fall into sin, and I still don't have the prayer life I wish I did.
But there is something new about me now: I have hope.
And, no matter how intense my feelings of lonesomeness are when they come, I have a hope that goes beyond my common sense -- and that goes beyond the statistical data they say about a girl who's still unmarried at age 31.
I wonder, sometimes, if I am single because God does not yet deem me suitable to be in a relationship. Since I still seem to struggle with the same things, maybe God is telling me that I haven't learned enough yet.
But then I see the redemptive nature of the sacrament of marriage. I have seen so many people go from a promiscuous lifestyle into the Christian joy of a committed marriage, their hearts fully willing to sacrifice. It seems as if suddenly, with the sacrament of marriage, they are healed of their former ways. If marriage can be redemptive to them, why will God not let it be redemptive to me?
Just as I long to be a wife, I long for motherhood. This is another blessing from God which I have seen redeem the sinful ways of so many others. A former student of mine, who, for years, was caught up in the lifestyle of drugs and sex, suddenly found herself pregnant. But, in a short period of time, her life became transformed by the new life that was growing inside of her. Indeed, God had performed a rescue by giving her a mother's heart. Today she is drug-free and takes her life and her responsibilities seriously.
So if the gift of marriage and the gift of childbirth can be redemptive to the soul whose lifestyle did not formerly commend itself to the will of God, why can it not be redemptive to me, a faith-filled girl who merely struggles with lonesomeness?
Please, God, show me what causes You to have me wait.
