I have dreamed of having my own family since I was a little girl. Dreamed, schemed, plotted and planned. It was the thing I wanted most in my life and I wanted it bad. Once I turned 18, the hunt was on. The goal: Find a husband or die trying. I pleaded with the Lord "give me a husband or I'll die!" I was convinced that there was no worse fate then prolonged singleness. I mean everyone knows what happens to women who are single after the age of 25. They end up living alone, or worse yet living in the back bedroom of their parents home passing away the years until they die. Doomed to a lonely, purposeless, bitter existence. Always the bridesmaid, but never the bride. Forever wiping the noses of other people children, never really experiencing life at its fullest. Watching as everyone in her life eventually leaves or dies. For all intensive purposes, alone in this world, a nobody.
Okay, so maybe I'm a bit dramatic.
However, things have changed over the past few months,
For the first time in my life I'm not afraid of being single any more.
It's the strangest feeling I have ever felt. I never thought I would be
able to say that. For so long, I was so consumed with this idea of family, I couldn't think straight. I was so scared of being alone. I looked to family to provide everything I thought I ever needed; love, acceptance, security, identity.
Everything I should find in Christ.
We serve a patient God do we not? Can I get an amen?
I am reminded of the story of of Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan women in John 4. Though she has had five husband and I have had none, we are more a like then we are different. Both of us were thirsty, thirsty in more ways then we knew. Both of us had grown weary of trying to drink from our own cisterns, only to have what we thought was water turn to dust in our mouths.
Jesus told that women "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again,
but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never
thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a
fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” (John 4:13-14)
Oh Lord, may your word become to me a fountain of life springing up inside of me.
