Journey with Della

Question: how can you be so happy despite being single at this age?

The 39, Single and Happy Series

This question usually comes after most of the other ones already addressed in this series. The assumption for most people who find out that I am still single at this point in life is usually that I am definitely miserable and any appearances of happiness are just masks that I am using to cover up the deep pain of singleness. Some have outrightly told me this to my face a few times while others just whisper an I am praying for you in response to my plight.

This comment from one of my LinkedIn connections to my 39, Single and Happy post on my birthday last year says it all “Good luck! I don’t believe none of that. Aren’t nobody happy to be single at 39.”

My reply? “You reserve the right to your opinion. My post was not intended to make you a believer.”

And I would say the same for this and every other post in this series. I am not sharing this to try to CONVINCE anyone into believing that I am truly happy. There are too many people out there trying too hard to convince people about one thing or another rather than just living life the best way they know how. I have lived long enough to know that people are almost impossible to convince. Regardless of what you do or don’t do, people will always believe what they want about you and everyone has the right to make their own judgments and choose their own beliefs, really.

So why am I doing this? For the very reason that I own this blog – with the hopes that somehow you can devour the fragrances squeezed out of me by the joys, challenges, highs and lows of the different seasons of my life. We each have had and continue to have unique experiences through life. However, our stories often intersect with those of others. In those intersections, there is great opportunity for mutual encouragement and sharpening and that is what I am being intentional about. If at the end only one person’s experience is better because of this series, my goal would have been achieved. But is nothing else, I hope that I would have demystified the subject of my singleness and given you not only access to that part of my life but equally permission to engage with the subject without any discomfort.

Well, back to the subject of today’s post – the secret. So, what is my secret?

If we had all day, I would share with you a million different things but not only do we not have all day, a million things would be impossible to retain. So, I have boiled it all down to the following four key things.

1. My life is God’s

You already know by now that I am a Christian with a vibrant walk with Jesus. My relationship with God is the main lifeline for me through all of life’s seasons – the good, the bad, the hard, the challenging, the ugly etc. However, for quite some time, I was the boss in this relationship. I basically thought that because I had finally decided to give my life to Him – a thing that He was desperately waiting for – He was supposed to serve me. In fact, He existed to give me whatever I wanted when I wanted it. You know, sort of like an I-do-what-you-want-and-you-give-me-what-I-want arrangement. It was as if we were in a business deal of sorts and I was supposed to negotiate each one in a way that would back Him up sufficiently to a corner so that He could do what I wanted. But whatever happened, I had to be to center of this arrangement because well, you know? Because why not?😉

So with the marriage thing, as with everything else, there was always a checklist of conditions to meet and then he would keep His end of the bargain. If I preserved my purity, walked in obedience, sought His face for a spouse, prayed and fasted, there was no reason why I should not be married when I wanted to. After all, the Bible said He would give me the desires of my heart if I delighted myself in Him. This was pretty straightforward in my mind and so when at first it was taking me longer than I hoped to get married, I was sure that there was something I was doing wrong. The church had taught me that if only I had enough faith and did all that I was supposed to do, I would always get what I wanted from the Lord. My singleness was therefore as a result of failure of some sort on my part. As long as I believed this, happiness eluded me. Well, this is a half truth and therefore a lie if you see what I mean.

Am I supposed to walk in obedience and seek God for the things I want? Absolutely! Do I have responsibilities as a child of God on this side of eternity? For sure! Am I in control of what happens to me? Absolutely not! Do I get to choose what I want when and how I want it? Definitely not! As God’s child, He invites me on an adventure with Him. My role is to submit to His purposes and to follow Him in complete trust. In His time, He makes all things beautiful and causes everything to work together for my good because I love Him and am called according to His purposes. In other words, my life is not my own and I do not get to negotiate the terms with Him.😇 I simply trust Him completely because He made me, owns me and has a good plan for my life.

This shift in perspective is reason number one for my happiness.

2. God, others and life don’t owe me anything

How come a beautiful, intelligent, hardworking, and very smart woman like you is still single? 😊This is another question I have heard more times than I can even remember to which I devoted no time in this series because, well, I just am. Period! There isn’t much else to say about that, actually.

Besides being the most senseless question to ask, this question right here is the at the heart of all feelings of entitlement related to marriage and relationships. And for a while, it actually led me there.

I felt entitled towards God – I had been a faithful and obedient child and He owed it to me to give me a husband. In short, I was too good a child of His to be single 😁 And when I stumbled on wedding bells for some people I knew who didn’t quite compare to me in their degree of godliness, I would feel resentment rise up within me towards God. Remember the story of the prodigal son? I was the entitled big brother who considered his father’s treatment towards his younger brother unjust. “You mean I have been here serving you so faithfully this entire time and you chose that (his nose hanging towards his younger brother) over me?” 😏 This is pretty much what the big brother said to his father and captures pretty accurately the thoughts that entitlement ushered into my mind. Oh the holier than thou attitude rooted in arrogance and pride straight from the pit of hell. But yeah, I was guilty of that until I realized that God does not owe me anything. I do not serve Him for His good and He does not owe me any “incentives” for good behavior.

I felt entitled towards myself – I know how to go after what I want so I owed it to myself to do whatever was necessary to get married. Back in the day when I still did New Years resolutions, I would write down get married as one of them and then engage the year with intentionality expecting that to happen. My entitlement towards myself and my entitlement towards God were very closely related. The first part of the year saw me doing the right things – praying, fasting, holding God to His word, etc. I had to do everything to get it right each year in order to twist God’s arm to bring me my husband. And then there were the prayer sessions dedicated to breaking the power of ancestral spirits and other patterns in the blood line. I don’t remember how many times I renounced the patterns in my family and cut links with all my single aunties or those with troubled marriages. Oh I have suffered! Anyone relate? And then I would feel the resentment towards myself start to rise by the start of the third quarter of each year. Once again, I had failed to impress God enough to get what I wanted. 😔 As long as I was this frantic about vindicating myself, happiness was very far away.

I even felt entitled towards men 🙈 This is one that is hard to express but I have felt resentful at least once towards someone I considered the top on the list of suitors in my mid-late twenties 😂 How dare he have the effrontery to not ask me to be his wife?!🥺

And then life? How could life be so unfair? 😩 What did I ever do to deserve such cruelty? Why wouldn’t life reward the amazing good I have done or others? 😭That was my thinking for a season which again, brought nothing but misery and more woes until the day when I realized that life owes me nothing. I am a human being like all the other 7 billion in the world and my life is really not that important in the cosmic scope of things.

Needless to say that like with the prodigal’s big brother, our entitlement doesn’t bring us any good. It only makes us miserable. If you desire happiness in any season, drop the entitlement already.

3. Singleness is a gift

For the first few years of this singleness season, I saw it like a disability to be conquered or a waiting room to get out of. Whenever I prayed about it, I was asking the Lord to take it away. When I talked about it, I was rehearsing the woes that it brought to my life. Whenever I thought about it, I wished it away and longed for the day when my knight in shining armor would appear and sweep me off my feet and away from “singletown” to our very own happily ever after.

As long as I despised being single and impatiently looked forward to putting an end to its reign in my life, I couldn’t see the blessings that were buried in it. The fact that I could up and travel to different parts of the world without even thinking twice about it, the ability to shut the world out and do nothing literally for as long as I wanted to, the luxury of not cooking, doing laundry/dishes and other household chores when I didn’t feel like it, the privilege to choose who I related with and how the relationship went without any obligations from marital ties, etc. didn’t seem like anything as long as detested my status.

Then as I learned to not take these things for granted, I started to see that singleness is neither a waiting room to get out of nor a disability to be conquered but a gift to be treasured and enjoyed. Granted, it isn’t one that a lot of people choose or even want but SINGLENESSS IS A GIFT nonetheless and it is one that is not given to all😇. The minute I started seeing it for what it is, I began enjoying it to a degree that I didn’t think was possible. If you have been following this series then you know that I have enjoyed it so much that I would choose it for the rest of my life without hesitation 😊 Nothing spells happiness better than the realization that of all the people in all the places in all the world, you have been chosen as the recipient of a gift that empowers you to do what most people only dream of in their lives and many would give an arm and a leg to get.

4. Only the good that is done for others counts in eternity

I look back at my mid to late twenties and wonder why I was so consumed by my marital status. It was almost as if the only thing that mattered was the title that came before my name and as long as there was no r between the m and the s in mine, I was doomed to eternal damnation 😂 It is hilarious to look back at it now because when all is said and done and we have answered all the titles we ever could get in this life, only the good that we have done for others in response to the love of God for us would matter in the afterlife. This includes the sacred privilege of raising kids and running a home, no doubt but it includes so much more.

We are created for purposes far bigger than us and living to fulfill these should be everyone’s goal in life. Is getting married important in fulfilling purpose? Yes. Is getting married necessary to live a life of purpose? Nope. The God for whom we live and whose purposes we seek knows what we need in different seasons to be the people that He calls us to be. My responsibility is to love Him and seek His purposes for me consistently. He then gives me what I need to fulfill them in the different seasons of my life. The mistake that most single women make is putting their lives and subsequently the pursuit of purpose on hold until their husbands come. I actually did that for about a year and a half but then I discovered the folly of my ways. Today, I tell my fellow S ladies that if they are not fulfilling purpose as single women, there is no guarantee that they would as married women.

Raising kids and nurturing a home is an important element of a woman’s purpose so please do not hear me as suggesting the contrary. Are all women who do not have that privilege doomed to the sidelines and the spectator bench until their own families can be started? Of course not! There is so much more that you can do as a single person that you would not be able to do as a married person so do not waste the opportunities buried in the gift of singleness that you have received. I decided many years ago that I don’t want to ever look back at my life with any regrets and so I steward these precious years with that in mind.

The greatest happiness to be found is buried in the pursuit of one’s life purpose. When you find it, there aren’t enough words in all the vocabularies of all the languages in all the world to describe the happiness that your soul would know and experience. So, yeah! I am as happy as can be for a 39 year old single lady busy living her life’s purpose. I couldn’t ask for anything more, really! Many times, I have to pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming.

One thing is certain – mine is a happiness that is rooted not in the temporary pleasures that different seasons of life might bring but in an enduring joy that is deeper than all of life’s challenges and rooted in the assurance that He who started this good work called ME is faithful to take it to completion. As such my happiness is beyond what any external circumstances in my life can impact my singleness included 😎

So, there you have it. All there is to know about my experience with singleness. I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed sharing them. This is the last post in the series but life goes on and I can only hope that yours and mine find more intersections down the road as we continue to journey together.

If you have any further questions – about my singleness or any other subject – ask away and while you are at it, do not forget to share your perspective with me too. Many thanks to you who has left comments as you read. Those have been encouraging and informative to me too. Let’s keep journeying together.