I Get it Now

I still remember it so vividly. I was twenty, and I was sitting with a group of girls who were in their late teens and early twenties. They were struggling with singleness, wondering when Mr. Right would show up. They sounded so desperate, trying to figure out how to get guys to notice in a godly way.

Inwardly, I was laughing.

I might have been only twenty, but I knew that it wasn’t likely that any of them would marry right out high school. I knew that most girls don’t marry before twenty-five. I wasn’t ready to get married myself I always said that I wouldn’t even consider getting married until I was twenty-five. I had too much to do, and too much of life to figure out. However, I was not without compassion for these girls. Their whole focus was on becoming wives and mommies, something they couldn’t do without a guy. I tried to tell them (though I don’t think I did it well) that God created us for a purpose. That purpose didn’t start when I guy came along.

A few years ago, when I was about twenty-four, I got into an online discussion about how hard Valentine’s Day was. Grateful they couldn’t see me, I rolled my eyes. I then, in more compassionate words then I felt, talked about focusing on the good works God has set before us. We could live courageously because we know that God has a wonderful plan for our lives. I didn’t add that I thought these were being a bit dramatic and focusing on the wrong things.

Well, If you don’t remember my age, I’m twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. My twenty-fifth year is almost three years behind me. In January, I came face to face with some things that until then I had dismissed as being far in the future.

• The ‘what if you don’t get married?’ question was always dismissed so quickly for years. At twenty-seven, approaching twenty-eight, it is harder to dismiss.

• My family won’t stay the same. My siblings will get married, my parents won’t always be around, and everyone continues to grow up.

• The ache to have a family has become very real and strong at times.

I get it now

All those times girls came to me, and I either gave little help or wasn’t as compassionate as I should have been, I’m sorry. I just didn’t get it. I just didn’t understand, but now I do. I’ve felt the ache that watching your close friends marry and start families while your left hand and womb remain empty. In the last three months, I’ve cried those tears of the pain singleness that I had only watched others shed before. I’ve handed a toddler back to their mother, and my arms have physically ached for the emptiness for a child to fill them. I get it now.

Yet, in the midst of my understanding, I also know that I have been reminded of these truths:

• God hasn’t changed. Just because I’m experiencing a new ache, doesn’t mean he has stopped holding the future.

• Jesus sees all my tears, and He is there for me in the midst of my pain. He has wonderful plans for me, even if they aren’t what I hope for.

• It is normal to want and even ache for a family of our own. God built that desire into us. There will be times when that ache is strong. It is okay to feel it, to cry, and even to seek friends to help us stay strong. We should never comprise God’s standards or our own to seek a solution to dull that ache (look at Sarah’s story in the Bible. My namesake went around getting a kid the wrong way).

This is my Valentine’s Day message to each of you:

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NIV