It's Not About You: Single on Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day.

I'm going to be honest and straightforward in this post.

This subject has been nagging at me for a few weeks now,

and I just can't keep quiet about it.

I want to address how single women are handling Valentine's Day.

Let me start by saying...

Valentine's Day is not about you.

Did you know that Valentine's Day was established in remembrance

of a man who was executed for his beliefs?

He wrote sweet notes to those he cared about because he knew he was going to die.

This man was willing to die for something he believed in,

but today this fact gets glazed over with chocolate and roses.

Something else different in the approach to modern Valentine's is that

single women everywhere use this day to bemoan their relationship status.

If we don't have that special someone,
we tend to congregate in groups and celebrate our friends instead.

Sure we have a good time.

But you know what? We all sit at the table as hypocrites.

 We try to pretend this is good enough, that we are happy to be with our friends,

when really, it is all a great big facade we use to drown out our woe-is-me pity party.

I've celebrated a few Valentine's with girlfriends, and genuinely had a good time!
But this year something shifted and I saw things differently.

Imagine your best friends are getting married,

but instead of letting them have their day, you and and your girlfriends

decide to have your own party because none of you are getting married.

Do you see how petty, childish and self centered that sounds?

"I just wish I had someone to give me flowers and take me out."

Let's be honest with each other, what we are really saying is,
"I wish I had someone to celebrate me."

Women have made Valentine's Day all about them!

It is all about your man celebrating you and showing you just how special you are.

Not only is that selfish, it sounds dangerously akin to idolatry.

Valentine's Day is not about you.

Did you know that you have chosen to be single?

Yes.

Your singleness is a choice.

You may look at is from the perspective that the right guy just hasn't come along.

 But pay attention to a set of words in that sentence...right guy.

This implies that there has been a wrong guy.

This implies at one point you made a choice...'I don't want him, he isn't right.'

At that moment you chose to be single.

Singleness is not something that is thrust upon you, it isn't a disease... it is a choice.

If you were given the chance to go with someone on a trip, but decided not to,
then spent the rest of your time bemoaning the fact that you weren't going on a trip somewhere,
wouldn't that seem a little foolish and fickle?

As silly as that may sound in the that context,
that is how many single women approach Valentine's Day.

There are plenty of fellas out there who would snatch you up,
you could probably pick one up at Wal-Mart!

While they may not be what you want, you are still making that choice to be single.

If you have a hard time with being single on Valentine's Day,

I would challenge you to scrutinize yourself.

Just because you are single doesn't mean you have no purpose...

it doesn't mean you can't live a life of joy and meaning now...

and it doesn't mean you are an incomplete person.

If you are an incomplete person without a relationship,

then that is your own shortcoming, and you need to work through

some issues because no relationship is ever going to complete you.

Another point I would like to make.

Stop for a moment and look around.
You live in a point of history that is truly amazing.

If one stops to listen to what the men of God and prophets are saying,
it doesn't take a theologian to know we are living in extraordinary times.

And those times are growing short.

Jesus is coming back...and it may be very soon.

The world has grown cold,

and we are in the winter seasons of the world's time.
Things are shifting, changes coming that may
forever alter the comfortable world we live in.

Yet we focus so much on temporal things.

Yes, we all long for companionship, myself included!
But I'm convinced God knows our needs (Matt. 6:8)
and He longs to meet them. (Is. 30:18; Phil. 4:19).
If we know this to be true, we can likewise be assured that
if we haven't been given a significant other,
it must be that God does not see that as our most pressing need.


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I'm linking up at Anchored in Love Divine
for the Blog Everyday in February Challenge!