The call to singleness

Waiting is hard, especially in our culture that says instant gratification is the best way to live your life, especially in a Christian culture that says good Christian girls should marry good Christian boys and support their husbands and raise a family.

For many, marriage is looked at as the ultimate means of happiness. How could it not be? For the rest of your life, you have a best friend, someone to stand by you through everything, someone to share your life with, someone who loves you and wants to be with you.

For others, however, it is the ultimate means of holiness. You are happy, because that person who loves you and wants to share your life, who wants to be with you "until death do you part" is also your greatest source of growth. Not just someone who makes you happy, but someone who makes you think. Not just someone who makes you laugh, or holds you when you cry, but someone who pushes you to be better, to do better.

Of the two camps, I tend to fall in line more with the second. But knowing that also means that my choices are limited. In order to find someone that challenges me, I need to say no to the one that just makes me happy. Which brings us to the reason behind the title of this post.

I don't believe I am "called to singleness" as the saying goes. But I'm not sure that that particular calling really exists. You see, I always looked at that saying as something that meant God had chosen a select group of Christians and determined that He would not give them the desire to be married. Instead, they would be above our culture's saturation of romantic comedies and love love stories. They would look at those things and say "that's nice for them, but I'm doing alright on my own. Me and God? That's enough :)."

I thought of these people like they were some sort of superman for being so content in their walk with God that they didn't need anyone else. But a recent conversation with a friend of mine made me start to think.

What if the "call to singleness" is not a lack of a desire to get married, but a willingness to wait on God for what His absolute best? What if the "call to singleness" simply means knowing without a doubt how you are supposed to serve God, and a refusal to settle for someone that would lead you to do otherwise? What if the "call to singleness" is just not the lack of a desire to get married, but instead the willingness to say "Ok God, you have given me a call to service, and that requires a very specific kind of person. If I never meet that person, I'm ok with that. I'm willing to place my service to you above everything else."

Am I called to that? I have no clue. So far it seems that I may be. But like I said, waiting is hard, and as so many others do, I may one day decide that the person who is right for my personality is more important than the specific service that I want to spend my life doing. It's easy to compromise. Who's to say I won't? But for now, I'm willing to wait. I've got all the time in the world :).