Finding Contentment in my Season of Singleness

This is something I often struggle with. Don’t you? I find myself thinking, “I will finally be happy when I am married with children.” But that isn’t true and it never will be. If I continue to think like that, I will never be happy. I will never be joyful. I can’t rely on circumstances to make me happy, because it won’t work. I CAN however, find contentment and joy in my Savior Jesus Christ. In fact that is the ONLY way to find TRUE Joy.

This summer, my church has been going through the book of Philippians. The sermon series is called “Discovering Joy”.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this series because, first of all, it has shown me how I have put so much emphasis on finding contentment in circumstances. I don’t think I fully realized that until we started this series.  Second of all it has shown me how to experience joy and peace by living in Christ Jesus.  I still need some work on it though, but I know it will take some time.

In church this morning my pastor said, “The lack of peace comes from inside of me.” If I worry about a situation, especially one I can’t control (i.e. a crush, lack of a spouse, lack of funds for maintenance on my house); all it does, is cause strife in my everyday life. It gives me anxiety, and stress that I wouldn’t have if I just trusted more in the Lord to let Him take care of it. My codependent nature makes me want to take control of it, so that I can fix it. But what if it’s not supposed to be fixed? What if the reason I am going through some sort of trial is that God is trying to teach me how to rely on Him more? What if the reason I haven’t “found my Boaz” is because Jesus knows that I will start to rely on a human to bring me peace and joy and not Him? I know for a fact, that was how I thought before I started my recovery journey with  Celebrate Recovery (click on me to find out more) ,  I thought that the only way I would be happy is if the guy I was dating was happy in his life. Not only searching for joy in my circumstances, I was searching for joy in someone else’s circumstances.

So now what? How do I find contentment in my season of singleness? How do I release that desire to “find my Boaz” on my own to Jesus, and rely on Him to provide for me, to rely on Him for my happiness? Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”

It says to pray, pray about EVERYTHING. Then it says to tell God what we need and to thank him for all he has done.  I can find contentment in my current season by conversing with God.  Notice I didn’t say “talking TO God”, instead I said “conversing WITH God”. I can tell him what I need and thank him for all that he has done, but I should also listen for what He has to say.  In quoting my pastor again, he said, “Prayer should always include an element of worship. Thank God for all he has done. When we thank God, it increases appreciation and trust in Him.”  Then he said, “STOP and become aware of the presence of God.”  He encouraged us to “practice the presence of Christ”.  In other words, get silent. Find at least five minutes of quiet in each day. Turn off everything; the TV, phone, music, anything that can distract us from experiencing His presence and hearing His voice.

 It also says, “Then you will experience GOD’S PEACE”, not my peace.  I won’t even attempt to explain that further, because I can’t.  I don’t fully understand exactly what God’s peace is… Paul told us we wouldn’t be able to, “which exceeds ANYTHING we can understand.” But isn’t that where the hope is? When I think of God’s Peace and what that must be, I feel lifted. The burden that weighs me down, the constant worry of “will God bring me a husband”, disappears from my thoughts. I guess that’s what Paul means when he says, “His peace will guard out hearts and minds”.  When I am focusing on Jesus, “living in Christ Jesus” His peace guards my heart and my mind. I just think that’s awesome! I have experience that before. One day I was driving and this gloom of worry came over me, I literally shook my head and prayed and a peace came over me immediately. It was an amazing feeling. I called it a Jesus hug.

So to sum up, to find contentment in my season of singleness I must turn my focus from the fact that I am single and alone, to the fact that I am not single and alone as long as I am in Christ Jesus.  Thanks for letting me share.

When to Pay Someone to Clean Out the Gutters or Ask Your Brother for Help

One of the setbacks (or at least in my mind) to owning your own home as a single woman is that you have three options on how to keep up with home maintenance:

1. DIY: With this option it helps to know what you are doing. I’m not talking about easy things like mowing your own lawn or painting the walls inside or hanging pictures. Every woman, single or not, should know how to do these three things. I’m talking about the hard stuff like, fixing the lawn mower that died while you were mowing your own lawn, or cutting down a tree, or cleaning out a thicket of wild plants without getting bit by a snake, or even cleaning out the gutters. Ok that last one should seem easy but if you are scarred of ladders then it can be an issue. Point being if it is something that intense things can get broken and you could get hurt if you don’t know what you are doing. 

2. Pay Someone: This option can get pretty pricey, for example. When I bought my house last year, I viewed it, loved it, put an offer on it, and closed on it all in a matter of a month. A month without rain. Then as soon as I moved in, it started to rain and rained for the rest of the summer. My yard became a swamp. You couldn’t get to my front door with out walking through the small creek that once was my front walkway. And forget trying to go play with the dog in the back yard. It was ridiculous. My father, the engineer J (no comments allowed on that statement), just happen to be visiting during one of those monsoon season type of pour downs and decided to walk my yard to watch the flow of the water. He then devised a plan of attack, even drew out a diagram (again no comments from the peanut gallery), and told me to call a landscaper that specialized in drainage issues. As any good daughter should, I followed Daddy’s directions and called around and got some estimates. All of which rounded up to about $1500 to $2000! Which leads me to the next option…

3. Ask friends and family for help: This option can be quite humbling to do. Especially if you struggle with “I CAN DO IT MYSELF” syndrome like I do. As stated in the last part of option one, things can get broken or you could get hurt trying to do something that you haven’t the least idea of how to do properly. To finish on the story in option two, I decided to ask my parents, siblings, and friends from church to help me dig up my front, back, and side yards and lay down drainage pipe along with catch drains. Of course I got sick the day before with bronchitis and strep throat and couldn’t do any of the work. How very convenient… Truthfully I was bummed, I wanted to help but I couldn’t get out of bed. Thank God for His blessings and provision of friends and family!

At any rate, I have now come across two more home maintenance jobs that are forcing me to decide between the above mentioned three options.

The first is my lawn mower broke while I was mowing the lawn last weekend. I could just go buy a new one, but that would leave me with having to put it on a credit card. Not normally recommended. I could read the operation manual and try to fix it myself, and if it doesn’t work, simply borrow my brother’s lawn mower for the rest of the season. Or, I could take it to a lawn mower repair man and pay them to fix it.

The second is slightly more embarrassing. The other day I looked up at my gutters and saw that there is a small tree growing out of it. A TREE! On no, I am one of those people now. I have a tree growing out of my gutters. And it’s not just in the back where no one can see it, no it’s in the front of my house right above the front door! So, do risk my life and climb up a ladder and clean them out (which is a terrifying thought for me), call someone out to the house and pay them to clean them out (I may not have the funds for that depending on how much it cost), or do I bite the bullet and swallow my pride and ask my brother or brother in law to come and help me?  Decisions Decisions……..

Keeping My Eyes on Jesus

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up. After all, you have not yet given your lives in your struggle against sin.” ~ Hebrews 12:1-4

I struggle with something called Relationship Addiction. I came to that “self-diagnosis”, if you will, by attending a program called Celebrate Recovery (Click on me to find out more) at my church. I am also a codependent but that is a subject for another post. I have been in recovery since August of 2011 and every day is a struggle to remember that Jesus is my husband and not the next guy I see in a public setting. Some days are better than others but I still will find myself looking at the left hand of every attractive man I meet. Thinking to myself, “Hmm, I wonder if he is married.”  

Last fall I took a sabbatical of sorts from dating and then half way through that year developed a crush on a guy that goes to my church. Let’s call him, Mr. MOG, (Mr. Man of God). He is involved in a lot of the same ministries as I am and I have never really paid that much attention to him until it was pointed out to me, by different friends and family that he seems to pay a lot of attention to me. Then I started to look back on the time that I have known him and the many conversations we have had over the years, and it hit me. He really does seem to pay attention to me…. And I remembered a few years back when I found out that Mr. MOG was dating someone, I didn’t like it….I felt….jealous. I was in a relationship with someone else at the time and I was still jealous of a girl that was dating a guy that I wasn’t interested in. Or so I thought. I think I was subconsciously interested in him because of his obvious heart for God, and the work that he does with the church. I realized that I was attracted to him in a Godly way… a first for me. Of course at this phase in my sabbatical I fought the feelings and ignored them. I didn’t want to admit that I kind of liked him too. I didn’t want to even think about it. I was taking a year off from dating. Not only that but the purpose of me taking that year off was to grow in my relationship with Jesus and not to find the next guy I want to date after the year was over.

Now as the time is ticking down to the end of the year of dating only Jesus, I find myself thinking about Mr. MOG …. A LOT! ….Even dreaming about him. I struggle with that because I know that the enemy can and will use my weakness against me. I just have to hold on to Jesus and keep my eyes on Him in order to with stand the temptations.
As a codependent I have a tendency to try to manipulate situations so that it works for my interests and I can feel better about myself and feel “in charge of my life”. I am often tempted to create opportunities for Mr. MOG and me to hang out and get to know each other better. I have even fallen into said temptation and tried to organize group events which always fall through. I know that is God’s doing, because if God does want us to get to know each other and eventually start dating, He will provide the opportunity. I don’t have to MAKE the opportunity, if it is supposed to happen God will open that door. The hard part is holding to that.

I read the scripture above this morning and it helped me to remember that all I need to do to avoid that temptation is to put down the sin that trips me up and keep my eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects my faith.

Jesus, thank you for your Living Word and thank you for using it to speak to me this morning and remind me that I can stay strong as long as I keep my focus on you. I ask for your help to stay strong in my walk with you. In Your Name I pray, AMEN!  

Give It To God

What a great example of what I so often do! I hold on to something that I love because I think it is what’s right for me, or what I’ve always wanted and I struggle to give it over to God; when all the while He is waiting on me to give it over to Him because he has something SOOOOOO much better than I could ever imagine for me.

My number one struggle to give over to God is whether or not He has a MOG (Man of God) waiting for me. I have good days and bad days and when the bad days come, I often fine myself weeping and begging God to bring that man to me soon because I am tired of being alone. That is the part that I hold back, not “when will I get my happily ever after, God?” but the “I am tired of being alone God!” I struggle to let go of that and I know that it means a lack of trust in God.

Father, help me to let go of this lack of trust in You. You know my heart and You know my desires. I try to surrender all of me, but somehow this one thing is the hardest to let go of. Help me to surrender it to you! I still have hope that you will answer the prayer request of a husband, but it is fading. I often wonder why you haven’t answered it yet. I wonder if I am meant to be single for the rest of my life. I wonder if there is still something you are waiting on me to do, or be, or get to before you answer the prayer. I wonder if you have already answered it and it is in front of my face but I am just not seeing it because it’s not what I thought I wanted. I wonder if you have already answered it and I completely missed it and let it pass by me like a feather in the wind. Father, I grow tired of asking for it. So, I try to live my life and focus on trying to find out what your purpose for my life is. But every now and then it comes back. God you see how it breaks my heart, and I find myself angry at you for it. When it’s not you I should be angry at. I shouldn’t be angry at all. Father please forgive me for my anger and help me to release this pain to you.  

In Jesus Name I Pray,

Amen