A Letter to the Single Lady This Holiday Season

Dear Single Woman, 

I see you. 

I do know the vacations could make your relationship standing really feel prefer it’s out of the blue below a highlight, or worse but, below these actually unflattering dressing room lights that make every part appear wrinkled and disproportionate. Your prolonged household and nice aunts crowd the Thanksgiving desk and ask the same old nosy questions on whenever you’re getting married and why you aren’t relationship anybody, and don’t you wish to have youngsters? 

These vacation dinner interview periods are why there are such a lot of Hallmark motion pictures with fake-date tropes. It could make you’re feeling just a little determined. You greater than probably need these issues for your self, too, and if a wand existed to create these very outcomes, you’d have certainly waved it by now. The questioning simply makes you’re feeling like one thing is mistaken with you, that possibly it’s tremendous easy to fall in love and get married and have infants, and also you’ve accomplished one thing mistaken. The anxiousness begins to roll in—what when you by no means get there? What will individuals suppose? What does that imply about you? 

So you end up pushing cranberry sauce round your plate and pretend smiling, wishing you possibly can return house to your favourite sweatpants and put all this grim vacation actuality out of your thoughts. It’s a lot simpler to be single on a random day in April than at Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

Or possibly you might be single fully by selection on this season of your life and may’t perceive why nobody else in your loved ones or friendship circle will settle for that. They naively suppose success means coupling up, and so they’re blind to the opposite kinds of success in your life…your job, your ministry, the noble character traits that make you who you might be. The method you encourage your folks and provides to the needy and research God’s Word. The method you allow a room higher than you left it, the best way you took up that new passion or completed writing that manuscript you already dreamed of finishing. You’re you—and also you wish to be accepted by yourself, not thought of a part of an identical set that’s lacking one-half. You’re bored with household and tradition attempting to inform you that you just’re not full with out Mr. Right. 

Maybe you’re weary of kissing all of the frogs alongside the best way to seek out your alleged prince. You want a break from the web relationship scene, from the matchmaking makes an attempt from well-meaning buddies already celebrating their tenth anniversary. Being single for proper now could be okay. 

Being single without end can also be okay. 

Or possibly you’re newly single, and it’s 100% not by selection. Oh, I do not forget that feeling. I spent a number of years as a single mother after an undesirable divorce, and the vacations had been all the time the toughest. The resounding silence across the desk in these conditions may be worse than the countless questions. Everyone is aware of what occurred—that you just had been left, deserted, rejected—and the awkward quiet echoes loud. There’s an empty chair subsequent to you, the one which your boyfriend or fiancée or husband used to fill however is now taken up by the elephant within the room that nobody dares to debate. 

I keep in mind. It’s laborious. You’re experiencing grief when everybody else is joyful. It creates pressure—you wish to be joyful too, however there’s an ache that gained’t stop, and nobody else can fairly perceive. Everyone is taking selfies with their important different whilst you brush crumbs off the tablecloth onto your plate, avoiding eye contact. You eagerly volunteer to do the dishes or do one thing to remain busy whereas everybody pairs off for card video games. 

Or possibly the hassle to incorporate is even worse than being ignored—it feels pressured, like Cinderella’s stepsisters attempting on the glass slipper. You simply don’t match anyplace proper now, and in contrast to the stepsisters, it’s to no fault of your individual. You didn’t ask for this example, however you got it, and it’s the worst doable present conceivable. 

I do know. And I’m sorry. But regardless of the purpose behind your single standing this Thanksgiving, it is essential that you just keep in mind these three truths:

1. You are Seen

Right right here. Right now. Even on the desk with that manifestly apparent empty chair. Even whenever you’re packing up turkey leftovers and feeling like a leftover your self. The God of the universe has not deserted you, even when your husband did. You should not alone, even when you’re single. He’s with you, reminding you of His presence and His love and His sufficiency. His energy is made excellent in any weak point you would possibly really feel. He is sufficient. 

2. You are Valuable

You’re made within the picture of God. The very Creator of the universe, Who made superb sunsets and wild stallions and complicated spider webs got here to earth as a child, lived a sinless life, and died on the cross to take in your sin in order that He may rise once more, defeat demise and hell, and produce you into eternity with Him without end. Single? Taken? Married? Dating? Engaged? Divorced? When you take into account your value within the mild of Christ and Who He is…who cares about your relationship standing? Your relationship with God trumps any man-made relationship on earth. After all, these are momentary. He is everlasting.  

3. You are Not Without Hope

The scariest—and the perfect—half about this life we stay is that we by no means know what’s coming subsequent. There was a day after I was a single mother with no high quality relationship prospects in sight…and the subsequent day, I met the person who’s now my husband. You by no means know what’s across the proverbial nook this vacation. Maybe by subsequent Thanksgiving, that vacant chair the invisible elephant is occupying shall be occupied by your future partner. Or possibly it’ll maintain the brand new greatest pal you haven’t met but and didn’t know you wanted. You should not with out hope, sister. In reality, God tells us in His phrase that we are able to really overflow with hope. 

Romans 15:13 (ESV) “May the God of hope fill you with all pleasure and peace in believing, in order that by the ability of the Holy Spirit you might abound in hope.”

That highlight this vacation season would possibly really feel prefer it’s highlighting all of the areas you wish to preserve hidden proper now, however what when you modified your perspective? 

What if that mild isn’t intrusively judging you, however quite, is the glow of the Lord’s presence warming your pores and skin? What when you turned your face to it and soaked in how He sees you quite than how your loved ones or buddies or neighborhood would possibly see you? What when you modified your focus to Him quite than in your aching, damaged, or lonely coronary heart? 

What when you invited the Lord to drag up that chair subsequent to you, to carry that spot and preserve it heat and produce you laughter and hope this vacation season? You’ll by no means know except you attempt. I’m a private testimony from the opposite aspect of how intentional, private, and beautiful the Lord could be to our hearts once we’re struggling.

I see you. But extra importantly, so does He. 

So get pleasure from that second piece of Thanksgiving dessert, smile on the chair subsequent to you, and wait with keen anticipation for what the Lord has for you—not just for subsequent season however on this one. He is devoted, and that’s all the time one thing to be glad about.  

Photo Credit: ©Zinkevych