None of us saw the cracks that were present in their marriage. To all of us, our brother in law seemed to be a gift from God—not just for my sister, but also for the whole family. To my mum, he was the older son to my younger brother that would teach him all the things that us sisters couldn’t. For us girls, he was the model of what it looked like to love your wife and her family. On the surface it seemed that he was our model of what the perfect man looked like.
As a young girl, growing up I read in countless magazines how it is important to have a list of all the qualities and attributes (physical or otherwise) that you wish for your future partner to have. The younger version of me saw herself marrying the modern day version of Prince Charming. In some of these daydreams, I too would be like Snow White feeding deer and seven dwarfs until Prince Charming got home after a hard day at work and of course he had with him a dozen (non-poisonous) red apples.
As I got older and found God at the age of seventeen, my list started to lose vain qualities such as a six pack, and God began to inject godliness in list of things that my heart desired from my future partner. The first thing that God reminded me of, and still reminds me of, is that there is no such thing as a perfect man.
On this journey of singleness, when we see unsavoury things happening to people around us, it can become all too easy to destroy the list of qualities we’d like for our future partner to have. Maybe we even have numerous conversations with God where we tell Him how all men are destined to hurt us. We expect nothing, so we find ourselves in situations where we are accepting whatever attention we get. We don’t believe that there is better than what we’ve experienced or what we’ve seen.
As the shock of my sister’s marriage falling apart began to sink in, I heard the Spirit’s sweet tender voice calming down my screams to God that I wanted to remain single forever. In that moment Christ reminded me that He doesn’t intend for me to live out my season of singleness in bitterness. He reminded me that singleness is a gift, a gift from Him.
Singleness is not a time where we should intentionally build walls up in our heart and create physical and emotional boundaries that people can never cross because we’ve resolved to hate all men...well, all men except for Jesus. It’s important for us single girls to remember the responsibility that comes with being single. We will lose sight and focus of what God wants us to do if we start to look around and get discouraged by the fallen men that we see.
Our standard is Christ. He is the perfect Man. He is the one who we keep our eyes fixed on. We’ll hear Him encouraging us when we sign up to do more than we thought we were capable of. We’ll feel Him holding our hand when He calls us out to walk on water with Him. He is the one who keeps us from being just another bitter single girl.
Aurelie describes herself as a Jesus loving vegan just slightly obsessed with macadamia nut butter. She has always thought that if John the disciple referred to himself as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved,’ then that’s definitely a conviction I want to carry in my spirit and all I want to be known as.
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