Singleness Is A Gift: Celebrate Not Tolerate

A gift is something we receive. When we earn something, rarely do we consider it a gift, even if we may say’ “I earned it”. The other word we could use to describe a gift is – “present”.

Singleness is a present. It is about the present. The NOW!!

I say we should celebrate singleness NOW as we do any moment in life. There is power in a moment (thank you Chris Rice), but also simply because living in limbo isn’t living at all. I should know! For the past few days, I have been in limbo. Waiting for my period to come so that I can see if it will be as painful as previously, or if the pill I am on is “fighting” this endometriosis. This means that while I have been feeling okay physically, I have desisted from doing certain things or going to some places, or even wearing certain clothes! 

Just last Tuesday, I mustered some courage to sit in a certain Café (the fear of traffic also helped) and tried to read Olive Kobusingye’s The Patient. I was feeling very thankfully alive and trying hard not to be distracted by the simple pleasure of the moment. I have taken a keener interest in the book because I have been in and out of hospitals a lot these past few months. Suddenly, I got this sharp pain in my left leg! It persisted and it was threatening to rain. I feared that I might get bad PMS and decided to rush home. I took pain killers when I got home and the leg pain eventually dissipated but the period hasn’t come yet. I talked to my ob-gyn and I decided I was done with living in limbo!! I am back to the business of truly living, we will sort whatever issues as they arise.

Similarly, singleness shouldn’t be a state of limbo to be tolerated. What if one never actually marries? (I like to ask friends this kibuzo). What then? If love and marriage come, praise God!! If they don’t – praise God still!! You may apply that to all else; that job, child, scholarship, business etc.

A desire for marriage doesn’t mean you have to be unhappy now.

To be single is to be alive! Let’s not forget the many benefits that come with it also! Yes – there, I said it. Let’s face it, there are freedoms that come with being single, and while we are single, let’s make the most of those. For example, I don’t like to cook and I can afford living off cereal and very simple meals which I couldn’t do if I were married and especially if I had children!! I would have to care and feed others more responsibly. As a nomad at heart, being single affords me an ease with which I can make plans or even be random. Granted, there are things we miss like a certain level of intimacy (of course that can also be, “but a dream”). Let us accept that and enjoy what we have!!!

Everyone is single at one point or another of their life. For some, it may be for a lifetime. Are you not a complete human being when you aren’t married? Or if you get divorced or widowed? Why have we made an idol of beautiful thing that marriage is?

If ever there was a problem about this business of “the problem or curse of singleness”, it would be that we are not being honest at all. The issues are deeper. Let’s encourage those who want to make a life together and build families to do so, by all means!!! Let us celebrate that!! Let us also celebrate those that choose to remain single, or remain single for reasons other than choice. Ultimately neither state completely satisfies. No single human being can completely satisfy another: Not parents and their children, not the “best-est” of friends and not lovers either! “Human” isn’t perfect. That’s why we need God!!! Only He can satisfy us completely, and teach us true contentment and true enjoyment in whatever situation!!

We all can attempt to love as God does – sacrificially, with patience, forgiveness and kindness (read 1 Corinthians 13). We can enjoy dying to self even as singles, and enjoy where we are as we are becoming more like God’s image!! 

Yes, let’s celebrate being single!!