For Those Who are Single

These quotations from Dan Allender’s book To Be Told are a tender acknowledgement about singleness that I have never read anywhere else.

Our story is a face-to-face encounter with all of life’s betrayals – not just the loss of relationship with close friends or siblings. (pg 83)

There are single men and women who exist in perpetual widowhood. They grieve what has never been and often surrender their present to dread of the future. (pg 84)

And there are many singles who live with not only the loss of absence of a partner but also the memory of past violence and the anticipation of once again being misused. It is widowhood, but without the benefit of a shared past or the anticipated reunion following death.
…the single experiences widowhood. She is single to some degree because she has not been chosen.
The single woman (and man) bears the same pain as a widow, but with the additional heartache of not having been chosen.” (pg 85)

Not being chosen can often be equated with the Psalm that says “hope deferred makes the heart sick”. People will be tender towards one who has lost a spouse, or to couples who are childless, but that compassion is often not offered to those whose dreams have been lost in other ways. One of those ways may have been for a spouse, a partner to share life with.

This is a tough subject to write on and yet I feel often that it is a subject no one wants to discuss or address but rather it is like whispered pity in church circles.

No matter what our story is, what the losses are, what the hope is or what has been deferred, the redeeming threads are woven as deeply into the singles story as into that of those with partners. Grace is no less, calling is no less, our personhood is not less valuable, and our identity is a strong as any others. Our identity is not based on who we are in relationship with in family or partnership, or by our gender, but it stands solely on who we are as designed by and breathed into by our Creator.