Why is it always assumed that a single person looking for love has not sought God? I keep in mind that the people usually handing out the "wisdom" are married, and they have forgotten what it was like to be alone. It's easy to say "all you need is the Lord' if you are already spoken for. This world is not an easy place to live in. Let's not make it harder for those of us who are alone.
I couldn't agree with you more.
When my then-husband left me in my 20's, I had a lot of people telling me I'd need to stay alone the rest of my life. Then it came out a long time later that the reason he had left was because he had a girlfriend. So then I had some people say I still needed to pray for a reconciliation (that never happened -- he wound up getting remarried,)while others still said I needed to remain single the rest of my life, and then there were a lot of married people patting me on the head and saying, "You're just a baby. You'll find someone within the next few years."
That never happened. And a whole lot of time has passed. So much in fact, that some of those people patting me on the head and calling me a baby are now divorced themselves or their spouse has passed away. And I wonder if other people are giving them the same Godly advice, spoken in the same condescending manner, as they gave to me, and what they are doing with it. Most I have heard of got remarried right away, because they couldn't handle being alone. But yet they could tell single people how to live.
I'm a bit older now and have learned that many Christians need to be dealt with defensively. Now when married Christians try to tell me how I have this blessed time to get closer to the Lord, I always think about the fact that God usually does not call couples home at the same time. So is that same person who is giving advice to singles, while going home to their spouse, willing to put their life actions where their words are? If their spouse dies before them, are they going to use their "blessed single time" to get closer to the Lord?
Or do they pray at night that God would take them first instead of their spouse, because they never want to have to face the pain of being left behind?
Now of course, there are some married people who are very familiar with loneliness, whether they've been single themselves in the past or are lonely within their marriages. I appreciate people who can convey a sense of sympathy or empathy because they at least try to make you feel understood. Likewise, I could never counsel someone who's been married 20 years because I didn't get to experience it myself, but I would try my best to show love and compassion.
But now days, to the married person who wants to tell me all the blessings of being single and what to do with my time, I will have no qualms about asking them how they plan to deal with it if it's in God's plans for them to be the one who gets left behind.
And if they think they have it all planned out, I hope I can be there to witness it, because I want to see for myself how well they adhere to their own advice.
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