Thursday, February 13, 2014

Why I refuse to celebrate "Single Awareness Day"


Every Valetines day there are those people who are just hating life because the word on the block is that it’s single awareness day. I resent that idea very much. Why do I need a day to throw a pity party for myself… I DON’T. I do that enough already. Lately, I have been stuck in the story of Hannah. Here’s a woman who has it all except a baby (which in bible times is super embarrassing because you get shunned by the community… super encouraging, right?!). Even though Hannah is being shunned by the community she has a husband who loves her whether or not she has a baby. Anyway the point is, that Hannah, through her trials and heartbreaks, worships the Lord with all she is; she surrenders.

If there’s one thing that I have learned about being a woman it’s that we want to control. Everything. We get so caught up in protecting ourselves and being in control that we hold onto things very tightly. And our hearts become a tight secure holding place for all the things that we can’t surrender.

It has also come to my attention that women sure do a lot of waiting. We wait for a husband. We wait for our babies to grow in our wombs. We wait for cookies to bake. We wait for the Lord to speak. We wait to be loved. We wait to be affirmed. Women wait. It is in our nature to wait. Recently, I have realized that waiting is an act of surrender. When we wait on the Lord, we are vulnerable. By waiting we break down walls. We give our hearts to the Lord even though it’s hard. It feels vulnerable. But mostly it feels like we’re not in control. Sometimes I feel like that is exactly where God wants us. In that space he says, “let me show you how much I love you my precious girl.”  

This Valentines day I refuse to acknowledge “single awareness day.” Instead I am going to celebrate the work that God has done in me. He has taken my insecurities and filled me with worth. Every day, he wants to be closer to me.  He is the creator and lover of my heart. This is probably the cheesiest thing I will ever write, but The creator is my Valentine because he was my first Valentine.