Crashing the Pity Party

    Following a wonderful post by Miss Raquel, {yes, I was clever enough to link to the post} I was thinking about Love. What a capricious word "Love" is in our English language. By "love" we English mean anything from Nutella to babies to period dramas, to Sherlock, to Thor, to our guy and our God. We are quick to say the word--indeed, "Love" is probably one of the top words in English vocabulary simply because it has so many definitions.

    As single girls and women we long for the day we will be loved by a good man, and most of the time we are content with God's love for now. Yep. That's the problem. Those two little words tacked onto the end of the sentence. "For Now." Don't lie--you know as well as I do that those two words chase after your thoughts like hounds after a hare.
    I am as guilty as the next woman of viewing this single life as an in-between-time. I seem to view these years when I am unmarried as a "waiting period" as if: "Oh, the Lord's love is good enough for me now until He decides to bring my man along and then...then it'll be over and we'll all run along merry as the day is long."

     But therein lies the whole problem. I've been reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters and came across a very intriguing bit of correspondence between Screwtape and his nephew:

“You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption 'My time is my own'. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.” 

     I had to feel convicted over that quote. I, like many others, seem to view my time as my own. I assume that my life as a single woman will come to an end someday, and in the meantime I look forward to that end with great expectation. What none of us take into account is that we don't know which part of the future we will have.

     What  if this "season" is one God has called us to for the rest of our lives? What if we aren't to be married or--and I am not being morbid, just philosophizing--what if we aren't to live as long as we expect? Do you really want to live life as a single woman with your eyes fixed on the horizon, never seeing all the gifts strewn around your feet?

     The thing is, Jesus isn't interested in convincing us to wait. What He wants is for us to fall so completely, unutterably, wholly in love with Him that we don't count moments and hours and days and weeks and months and years. He wants us to be consumed with a passionate love for Him that outer circumstances don't affect our willingness to be His. Yes, even marriage. Because for all the "Love" that we might share with a godly man someday, it won't last. The warm fuzzies will fade. You will discover he's a man after all, and even Mr. Knightley sometimes props his boots in the middle of the good china. Marriage is simply another step of life. A precious one, yes, but no more important in the eternal scheme of things than any other event you experience.

    Sometimes I think I'm guilty of using my love for Jesus {or His love for me} as an antidote. "I love Jesus--I really do. And I'm loving Him so much today that I don't feel anxious to be married at all!" Such a love can hardly be deemed a whole-hearted, selfless, tender affection and devotion to a person. It smacks singularly of selfishness. "I love you till" or "I love you because"--not a bit of that profound way Jesus loves us:

"I love you."

    No reason, no conditions, no expiration date. He loves us simply because that was His choice. And in return we learn to love Him. (1 John 4:19)

     So this is not another post on How To Wait. It's not even a post on Waiting Is Hard. {which sometimes runs closer to my frame of mind} I really want you to understand that. I've written and you've read plenty of posts about Theory. I'm asking for some Practice. Some determination to crash our pity-parties and get going with this beautiful life God has given us. How it must sadden Him and make Him shake His head to see us entirely missing the point of Life.
Life isn't an endurance test!
     It's a privilege. We can't just sit here tolerating singleness as if it was a dry, bony desert we couldn't wait to get to the end of. I'm not writing a Guide Book To The Piteous Desert.
     Instead what the purport of this post is, is a challenge to each of us to build a vibrant, sweet, lasting relationship with Jesus. A relationship that begins today and extends to death and beyond. A relationship that will still be the source of your joy, your contentment, and your peace when {and if} you are married, when the children come, when the children leave, when you're retired, and when you're eighty years old, toothless, and mental to boot. A relationship that is based on His ideas of love--not your idea of an antivenin. Because really...when all's said and done and Jesus is in the equation, who gives a wimpy hairpin if you've got a man?