Hi Galahad,
Here in singles, we welcome compassionate and helpful insight from everyone, married or single.
There are a few things you should know about my background. First of all, I'm not a "wishing without action" kind of person. I was pretty much born in church and have been involved in it all my life. I was married from age 23-25, until my husband left without explanation, which I found out through friends, was another girl. He divorced me in 1999, which was... 16 years ago? At this rate, I could very well go another 16 years and still be single, putting me near 60 years old, and that is the perspective I'm coming from.
I know, I know. People always say, "You're just a baby, you have plenty of time." They told me that when I was 25. They still said that when I was 35. And yes, they try to tell me that now. Not many of the people who tell me that, however, have been single for nearly as long, so they've never lived the single life for several decades, as is becoming my experience. I'm not too far away from 45... Two decades after my divorce. I personally feel that when you can start talking in decades... you know some time has passed, and you've gained a bit of experience to speak from. Ironically to me, I have a relative who is very close to becoming a centurion, and they have never, ever told me that I was "so young with plenty of time", even though in comparison to them, anyone who isn't at least 85 years old may as well just a toddler. Instead, my relative always tells me, "I pray a special prayer for you at night, honey, because I don't know how you've made it alone all these years." God bless this person's compassion and understanding!!!
Galahad, I appreciate your taking the time to post, I really do. I know you mean all the best.
But it does get frustrating as a lifelong Christian to be told to pray, meditate, seek God, ask God for someone... as if I haven't been doing that for decades. It just always makes me wonder, why do people assume a person ISN'T doing these things? Just because I'm not remarried yet? That certainly doesn't mean I've been passively waiting for someone.
And, as I've written in other posts, I've spent the time doing all I could do within the church--classes, volunteer work among a wide age range, choir, writing to and visiting inmates... I even enjoyed simple things like going and cleaning the toys in the nursery on Saturday mornings and wiping down/sanitizing pews during church cleanup days.
My posts aren't from someone who is sitting around waiting for someone to drop out of the sky on her doorstep. But rather, they are a bit of a lament from a person who, like so many others before, around, and after her, is actively living out her faith... but gets a bit discouraged at what I see in my surroundings.
