Single |sin•gle| (adjective) - Voluntarily Happy & Independent

I have reached that age where everyone around me is getting engaged. All of my friends are slowly taking their serious relationships to that higher level of commitment and it is a beautiful thing. I am always over the moon whenever I catch wind of one of my friends taking that leap into the next chapter of their lives.

The only problem is that...everyone around me seems to assume that I am looking to open that next chapter for myself. Or that I should be looking to. This, in turn, makes every interaction I have with the opposite sex tense with "potential" and no one can seem to accept that I have male friends. Everyone immediately jumps to the conclusion that there must be something more in the works.

Take my upcoming visit to Samar, this August. I'll admit, I had my share of school girl experiences on the island. With my first real taste of adventure away from home, it's not surprising. But everyone keeps asking, "who are you going to see when you go back?"

My response is always, "Everyone," because that is really my intention. To see everyone: my cousins, my students, my friends. But then I get fixed with a questioning stare and no one seems to believe me. They think I'm hiding ulterior motives. Like I'm scratching my way back to the Philippines for the sake of a boy.

And that's just not true.

I am a very different person from the one who left the Philippines a year ago. Just like I was a very different person from the one who left for the Philippines two years ago. I wanted different things then and since then I haven't stopped growing and changing. I just wish someone would believe me.

Now, granted, I'm more than willing to admit that I set myself up for this. There was a time when all I thought about was one day getting married and I told everyone that.

My deepest fear was being alone. I wrote in one of my old blog posts:

"Sometimes I feel like I have so much love in my heart for a husband and kids that I’ll never have. Sometimes I feel like I’ll always be the bridesmaid and never the bride and the surrogate mother title I’ve come to be known as, over the years of fostering and nurturing kids in school and in church, is the only title of “mom” I’ll ever get."

And it was true. I was afraid of being called to singleness. I wanted, above all else, to want God more than I wanted marriage, but at the same time, I just wasn't there.

"I know I have my whole life to find that one guy who will be willing to do all of this with me, but…that’s my confession. As young as I am, I get scared that it will never happen for me and I pray everyday for God to just give me the peace of mind I need to accept whatever He has in store for my life and the life of the family I may or may not have."

I was completely devastated by the thought of never having a family of my own. More than that I criticized myself for not being able to attract anyone. I looked at myself as unworthy, ugly, not enough. I allowed Satan to whisper words of discouragement to break my self-esteem and I thought the only way to break free of that was to fall in love; to find that one boy who would see me as beautiful.

But...someone already saw me as beautiful and He was trying to tell me every second of every day of my life and I just couldn't find it to be enough. I couldn't see passed my own mirror until I was torn away from it and forced to look at just how big the world really is.

My prayer went like this: " I want to be okay with [singleness]. I want to accept it if that is God’s will [for me]."

And God answered that prayer.

Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm not proclaiming any sort of lifelong celibacy, I'm not saying that I am completely against the idea of marriage or saying that I don't want to get married ever...because that's not true. But I am saying that I love God more than I love my future. I trust God with my future and if that involves being married, then great. If it doesn't. Then, that's still great.

It took me a long time to get to this point. To get to the point where I stopped desiring to be desired. God made that possible because He gave me joy in desiring Him.

And so now, when I say that I am single, I say it with a confidence I have never had before. I say it as someone who views singleness as a huge blessing because it is one given to me by God. If He wanted me to be in a relationship, if He wanted me married, then I would be there. But I'm not, and I have already spent too much time worrying about the love I didn't have in my life and not appreciating the love I did. 

I love being single. I'm not looking for a relationship. I'm not closing myself off to the possibility of one, but I have other things to worry about, other things to take care of first like...school and my own finances. I want to be independent and self-sufficient and more self-aware than I am now and that's the truth.

I love being single. I'm going to the Philippines to visit family and friends. I'm not going there to re-imagine some fantasy. I'm going there because I've grown and I'm different and God provided the money and the means. That's it.

That's all it ever was.

Again, I love being single. Singleness is a beautiful thing and believe me when I say that I am going to enjoy it as much as possible.

-Aarika