Set Apart SPOTLIGHT ft. Aurelie Mukendi

I was never truly aware of how beautiful the season of singleness is, until I was in a relationship. I fell in love, right guy at the wrong time and not at all how God wanted it to happen.  I went through with it partly because I was young but mostly because I was broken. Broken girls like me grew up watching Disney fairytales, meeting Prince Charming is something we look forward to.  Someone to rescue us from all the pain we’ve endured, someone to laugh at our horrible jokes, someone who will accept and love our families and hopefully he loves dogs too...that’s how it goes right? The longer I remained in that relationship, the louder I could hear God telling me that I had awakened love before it was time. I had pulled myself away from His plan for my life and stepped into a season, where His word had told me to wait. I sought rescue in man and the wounds that I hadn’t yet allowed God full access to, were destroying not only me but a man who till this day, I will always love and cherish.

I didn’t fully understand what God was doing; it didn’t make sense to go from being in a relationship with someone I loved, to being single. Did I even want to be single? So I did what a lot of us do when God tells us to walk away from a situation, we try to negotiate balancing our disobedient living with His plan for our life, until one day those things become too incompatible to co-exist and you have to choose whether you love the Lord as much as you say you do when you sing those worship songs...

I chose God’s will and from the moment I did that, His Spirit awakened me to something I hope every single girl will realize, being single doesn’t mean you’re not in a relationship. You’re in the most beautiful relationship with One who sees you as breathtaking everyday, loves you everyday and accepts you everyday. He fell in love with you at first sight, His love isn’t blind, in fact He sees yours flaws yet His is a love that will forever remain unconditional. He encourages and empowers you to grow and most of all He wants you.  

I devoured the words that Paul spoke to single people in 1 Corinthians 7, particularly his closing verse:

‘But in my opinion it would be better for her to stay single, and I think I am giving you counsel from God’s Spirit when I say this,’

For the season of my life that I am in, I know that God has given me the gift of singleness and in verse 35 of this chapter, Paul writes that we should do whatever will help us to serve the Lord best, and what works best for my walk with God is being single. I still dream of one day getting married but my perspective has shifted. I’ve come to realize that being single shouldn’t be looked at as a period of inactivity, where you wait idly and unfortunately in some cases, desperately for the next best thing. If you’ve got Jesus, in every season He is always the best thing! Singleness is not a season where you jump onto an imaginary conveyor belt to display all your lovely character traits that show why you’d make the perfect girlfriend and then wife.

My season of singleness is about glorifying God. That’s pretty much where it ends and begins. Life doesn’t begin when you get married. It starts now.  The bullet point list I used to present to God of all the things I’d be able to do if I was married has disappeared. I constantly ask myself, in this season of singleness, am I focusing on the things of God, doing all I can with my life in every sphere that He has placed me in? I’ve come to realize that when God created me to do all the great things that He foresaw and planned for my life, being single was never going to be a deterrent for Him.