Dear Married Friends,
In our busy lives there is often not much time for us to sit down and share our hearts. Your priority is rightly your family, and I don’t want to interrupt, or get in the way, but there are some things that I would love for you to know about the journey and struggle of those of us living without husbands and children, especially those who count their time being single in decades rather than years.
- Please don't see us as a problem to be solved. We are a person, not a problem.
- Allow us to grieve – what we are going through is real grief. However, it is not visible grief – what we have lost is an expectation, or a series of expectations.
- Encourage us to work at building good friendships, this is a very useful life skill whether we marry or not.
- Enable us to take up ministries that demonstrate that we are valuable and can make a useful contribution in the Kingdom of God.
- Enable us to process the wounded-ness of our humanity while continuing to value us as a person. All of us are a work in progress and God is conforming us all into the image of His Son.
- Help us hold fast to the calling God has given us. For some of us, the sense of obedience to God's calling means we know we will only marry if we find someone who shares that calling.
- Value the unique position/status/role we hold and remind us we need to value ourselves as well.
- Realise we do have unique needs – someone to talk things over with, someone to share responsibilities with, finding a place to go for a holiday where we feel safe, people to celebrate with, different things to celebrate.
- Help our families, churches, and communities to understand that in God's Kingdom, singleness is not shameful.
- Remind us that we have a unique opportunity to understand that our true satisfaction comes from Christ alone.
Your Single Friend.
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
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L has spent a large part of the last 20 years working in India. Her three loves are mentoring women, materials and books. Living in India has grown her love of materials even more and she especially loves to see scraps of material turned into amazing designs and useful purposes.
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