Embracing “The Wait” Part 2

Embracing "The Wait" Part 2
Waitin’…Hopin’…Dreamin’!

This is the second part to this post. The first is available here

More waiting:
So the Wait for me can be broken down into a few parts then:
1. Waiting to meet people in the first place
2. Waiting to fully get to know them in the first place – 2 years – don’t try to cut this short, you will only regret it!
3. When you’ve found someone that could be the one, or a few viable options, starting to pray seriously about them, and waiting until things actually materialise with someone.

Embracing the wait
I think that something helpful would be to have a rough idea whereabouts on the process you are. If there is no-one that you have met, then in a way, if you subscribe to the 2 year thing, then you know that you have at least 2 years of singleness ahead of you, in which you could try something big and exciting. The point of the 2 years thing is that you might meet someone who initially looks maritally promising, but whom you then decide against as a potential spouse within the 2 years (even though you could of course still be friends with them), which would effectively bring you back to the starting line – so the best thing to do to maximise your chances of finding an excellent spouse would be to get to know as many excellent people as possible, so that even if you have to decide against a few initially promising people, you would still have a number of others to consider. Apologies, I know that this might sound so mechanical. This 2 years thing is a guideline, and is not at all “set in stone” – it is not a Biblical commandment, but is a wise precaution, and God is after all God – He has the power and the authority to work in His mysterious ways, and to create marriages between the most unlikely spouses. However, I’m hoping that that is not what He will choose in my case. To be honest, I would not now even call someone a friend before knowing them for 2 years any more. Anything might happen within those first two years of knowing someone, and I think I would just go with the flow. I would not try to hold onto potential friendships; I would let promising interactions get aborted, and just walk away. This is because I suspect that, before 2 years have elapsed, firstly you do not really know one another that well, and secondly neither party really has enough invested into the interaction or acquaintance to fight for it. How can you fight for a potential friendship when you don’t really know that it will ultimately be worth fighting for?

I think that instead of running around desperately trying to find someone, we singles should embrace our periods of singleness. I believe that singleness can be such a powerful time of achieving things and concentrating your effort. I think that we can be so focused on trying to get into a relationship at all costs that we miss out on the value of what we have right here in our hands. We have so much opportunity to try new things, to be flexible that people who are married, or have children, just do not have in the same way. We can be spontaneous, we can try “crazy” ideas, we can fail – and then we can start again. When you have a family, you cannot fail. You always have to choose the dependable safe option to make sure you have food on the table and money in your pocket. Little hungry mouths are depending on you. Even if you do not yet have children, all it takes is for your wife to say “Darling, I’m pregnant!” to bring you back down to earth with a big fat bump (No pun intended!) – or for your husband to say “No, Tosin, you categorically cannot take the money we’re saving for our house deposit to go on a cycling world tour – and no, I am definitely not coming with you!” – for you to feel kinda deflated – not that I’m planning to marry such a boring old misery-guts of course!

By embracing the Wait it is not as if you are giving up on marriage altogether, of course. It is about maximising where you are at that point, and making the most of its potentials. You could do all these exciting things, and then get married. However, if you rush straight into marriage, then you might deprive yourself of doing all these things until you are a lot older, when you might have less physical strength and energy for them (but more money, admittedly!) Also, if you rush into marriage then you might be more likely to make a poor choice of spouse.

Ultimately, if marriage were guaranteed, and I could choose between finding “the One” early and getting married early, or putting it off while I achieved a few things in my singleness, to get married later, I would DEFINITELY choose to put off marriage. Unfortunately marriage is NOT guaranteed so if I were to meet someone suitable I would not be able to guarantee that I would find a suitable replacement for him in X years when I did feel ready to settle down, so I’d be more likely to go ahead and get married if I did find someone excellent, even if privately I would rather wait a little longer. So thinking the way that I do, I guess it is actually quite convenient that no-one suitable has come along then, isn’t it! 😉

Bible Verses:
Proverbs 13v12:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
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PHOTO CREDITS
Photo of woman standing in forest from Pixabay
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