Single and Satisfied

I spent the summer attending weddings, traveling, and visiting family. Now when you get to be 23 you have a summer like mine where you're invited to 6 different weddings (or ordinations) for people who are close to your age. For some of my friends this summer hit a couple years ago, but for me this one was it. Don't get me wrong I absolutely loved celebrating with these couples and I am so happy that each one of them blessed me with the opportunity to be part of their day (some in person and some from afar), but let me just say it is hard to constantly answer the question "so are there any special men in your life?"  For me, at age 23 whenever I cross paths with someone I haven't seen in awhile I am immediately drilled with questions about why I have no husband or babies yet. After I finish the questionnaire I am always given this look of sadness like my dog just died and then told "don't worry you'll meet him someday!" I didn't realize how hard it was to have this conversation, until I had it every week all summer long. So here I am to set the record straight. Yes, I am 23 years old and yes I am single. For the last 5 years I've been focusing on myself, because let's face it I'm a mess. I have been learning to let Christ love me and perhaps for the first time in a long time I have spent a great deal of time learning to love myself. I spent 4 years focusing on my education, working a ton, and growing in faith. I have spent the last year learning how to balance a full-time job and my own sanity. I feel like saying "in the last five years I haven't had time for relationships" is a cop out answer, but I will say that in this moment I am enjoying being single. I can tell you that there are many aspects of my job that I would not be able to do if I were married with children. Not that there aren't people who do my job (and do it well) that are married, I just think in this moment I wouldn't be able to. See, I'm trying to figure myself out, balance working and a social life, structure my prayer life, and now take on a whole new aspect of ministry. One day I will be ready to "settle down" to "find the one" to "start my life", but right now it just isn't time for me to be searching for that. Sure, if tomorrow I met the "man of my dreams" I wouldn't look him in the eyes and say "well, this is just not the best time for me can you come back in a few years?" But at the same time I'm not going to focus my time and efforts on finding my future husband. When I was in college my roommates and I talked a lot about this song called Present Moment it says "Lord, help us to live in the present moment...Placing our trust in you, in the present moment" we would strive to live in our vocation of the moment. We would constantly ask ourselves; today am I being the best student, roommate, friend, sister, servant, or daughter that I can be right now in this moment? Sometimes the answer was yes, but for me the answer was usually no. I learned something important in that time, I learned that it was okay if the answer was no as long as I was working to change that to a yes, striving for holiness, and trusting in The Lord. So I believe that someday I will meet my future husband, someday I will have a family, and someday I will no longer be looked at like my dog just died when people talk to me about my love life. Let me just remind you of something, I'm ONLY 23. I have so much life to live and I am fully capable of living part of this lifte (or maybe even all of it) as a single woman! So before you feel bad for me because I'm not married and have no children just stop for a moment and realize that you shouldn't feel bad for me because I definitely don't feel bad for myself!