So this week I had to set my alarm for 6:00am so I could be on the trail by 7:00am, otherwise there would be no hike this week. It’s not even light out at 7:00am. Not being a morning person, I grumbled and complained about this state of affairs to anyone who would listen in the days leading up to the hike.
I continued to grumble and complain to Kirby as we set foot on the trail and continued for the first half hour to stumble on a barely visible path. Everything was essentially black and white…not enough light yet for my eyes to see color. “Great,” I thought, “a beautiful fall day and I can’t even see it.”
Then something pretty awesome happened. The sun started to come up. And I was in awe as its light started to hit the tips of the trees:
It was beautiful. I couldn’t stop taking pictures. The sun’s rays were cutting through the trees in ways I had never seen them do before, and the colors just exploded.
Gradually I began to realize what a gift this early hike actually turned out to be. I saw beauty I would not be able to see at any other time. It was special and not something I will ever regret doing.
I’m betting the concept of the “gift of singleness”, based on the Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7, is something that you’re sick to death of hearing about. In my twenties and early thirties, when a well-meaning friend would bring up this idea in conversation, I would respond this way: if I had the gift of singleness, I wouldn’t want to be married. I desperately wanted to be married, so clearly I didn’t have the gift of singleness.
But there’s another way of looking at it, and it’s this. If you are currently single, you currently have the gift of singleness. If you are currently married, you currently have the gift of marriage. It’s not a question of which situation you want, it’s which situation you are actually in.
The first time I heard this concept was when I read a book called Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye? by Carolyn McCulley. Here’s a direct quote: “It’s not a gift that we have to spend time trying to identify, that we should worry about having. If we’re single, we have the gracious gift of singleness. How we may feel about it – “Do I like being single? Do I desire marriage?” – is not part of the equation. The emphasis here is on a gracious God who gives good gifts and ultimately on His purpose for giving them.”
I’ll be the first to admit, I struggled with this idea when I first came upon it. How could being single when I didn’t want to be single equal a gift? What was “gift-y” about feeling lonely, sad, jealous of my friends in relationships, and having a sore butt from sitting in front of my computer on dating sites for way too many hours?
But I could ask myself this same thing about having to get up at 6:00am to hike when I’d much rather be sleeping in. What’s “gift-y” about being sleep-deprived, cranky, hiking in the dark, and constantly having freshly-spun spider webs on my face because I’m the first person to walk through them on the trail that morning? And yet, at the end of that hike, I couldn’t argue that being forced to get up that early was more than worth if for the beauty I was able to witness. And I’ve learned it’s the same with my singleness.
In fact, over the years I’ve found at least three different perspectives from which to view the state of being single as a gift: what I can enjoy in the moment, what doesn’t feel so good in the moment but I end up enjoying in the long run, and what other people in my life enjoy because of my singleness. This week’s hike was a perfect example of the first perspective; we’ll leave the other two perspectives for the next two hikes.
So what makes this perspective different from the others? This part of the gift actually feels enjoyable in the present. I get to decide how I spend my free time, which I have a lot of because I am only cooking, cleaning and shopping for one person. I’m not tied down to anything…if I decided suddenly I wanted to live and work in Colorado, or join the Peace Corps, or go on a walkabout in Australia, I could pick up and go without much drama. I get to nap when I want. I get to clean when I want. I get to spend what I want on what I want.
Full disclosure: it actually took some of my married friends and family telling me how jealous they were of my freedoms in these regards for me to realize what a plus they were. I’ll never forget being on the phone years ago one Saturday morning with my sister Deb (who is married and is mother to arguably the best nephew a girl could want) and telling her my plans for the rest of the day: lunch, followed by a nap, then maybe a movie or hang out time with some friends. And she told me how much she missed being able to just decide to spend a day that way. For the first time in my brain, the sun started coming up on the beauty of my singleness.
Starting then, I decided to stop viewing my singleness as just black-and-white sucky. ‘Cause in truth, it isn’t all sucky. There are things I like about it. Concentrating on them instead of on what I don’t like about it has helped me feel a lot happier and less frustrated…and has made me a lot more fun to be around.
So this week, take some time to write down some of the things you actually appreciate about your singleness right now. If you can’t think of a single one, try asking your married friends what they envy about your single state. Let me know in the comment box below what you end up coming up with. Until next time, have an awesome week!
Just make sure and keep an eye out for those spider webs.
