On Singleness ~ All That Really Matters

My little sister, Joanna, in the hayfield

I wrote this blog post a few months ago, and then never posted it. Tonight, as I was looking through some of my old drafts that I never quite dared to hit "publish" on, I decided to go ahead. I hope it blesses someone. :)

Today's been a day of reflection. I spent most of it out in the sun, making a garden for a dear friend. I loved soaking up the sun, the wind, the fresh air, the dirt between my fingers, the little green leaves popping out of the tree branches above my head. We knelt beside the garden, pulled weeds, shook dirt out of clods of sod, and hauled buckets of compost. We talked about all the things we used to be... the innocent little girls we were who wanted to get married at eighteen.

The girls we are now. . .

She'd rather be playing with her baby and cleaning her house, she said. But instead she has to work. That wasn't the mommyhood she had planned for herself as a teenager.

As for me, nothing has turned out to be the way I thought it would be.

But my life isn't bad. It's just not what I wanted. Or what I thought I wanted.

I wanted to have a whole passel of kids by now.... a husband with the world to conquer and me behind him to help him do it.

But does it really matter? I have God.

Is God sovereign? Yes.

Does God love me? Yes.

Does God glorify Himself through our lives, rough and crooked though they are? Yes.

Is He glorified in me?

That I ask myself today.... Is He?

That's all that really matters.

If I am what God wants...

If I am the daughter He made for His own pleasure, may I bring Him pleasure.

May my life, "pleasing or painful, dark or bright, as best may seem to Thee..."

be a symphony of praise, a ray of God's glory, a beacon of the Hope that lies ahead.

May I care more if God is glorified through my life of aloneness than I care that I am alone.

May I care more if God is pleased, than if I am pleased with what He gave me.

May I be pleased with what He gave me.

"There failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass." Joshua 21:45