Ever feel like your life is the Jeopardy! theme song on repeat? Me too! I’ve been waiting for life to start since high school. And all that time, it’s been waiting for me.
Being single in my thirties was not the plan. Not that I actually made plans. I just assumed. When the snow melts off the mountain, it doesn’t plan its course. It just goes where other melted snow went before it.
That’s what I expected to do. Graduate. Marry. Start a family. I thought that’s how life worked. I’d seen it. My older siblings melted into that stream. One by one, my friends did, too.
Not me.
Now my nieces and nephews are joining the current, even the children I taught in kindergarten. Yeah. Watching your peers pass you by is one thing, but when the kids who once asked your permission to go potty ride off into the sunset? That’s where the panic creeps in. Will I ever melt off this mountain?!
But something has finally sunk in: I already did. A long time ago, right along with everyone else, just not into the stream I had my eye on.
The Life That Started (Whether I Knew It or Not)
Looking back, I guess I sort of had plans. Vague aspirations, at the very least, and from first grade on, they were as constant as they were casual. Be a teacher, be a writer. Both negligible if I became a mom first. I wanted that most.
Come senior year, I unconsciously assumed that’s how it would play out, that wedded bliss and motherhood would in essence spare me the trouble of figuring out what to do with my life.
Of course, God knew wedded bliss was a long way off, so he spared me an idle wait. My sister, a kindergarten teacher at a small private school, needed an assistant for the upcoming year and asked if I wanted the job. An unorthodox opportunity for someone fresh from high school, but I gladly accepted. Teaching would pass the time nicely while my real life came to fruition.
Three years later, still waiting, I took over the class. It was one enormous challenge after another–I was way too naïve to know what I was getting into! But overarching the times I lost my temper, came home and cried, and felt like a general failure, I loved it. For another five years, I not only checked my teacher box but laid a foundation for the day Mr. Right showed up to check that most important one. Moms made good teachers, and I believed this teacher would make a good mom. At least, a better one than if I’d never kept a classroom of five-year-olds in check.
But while the rewards filled a hole in my life, they dug another deeper. When could I practice on my own children the experience I practiced on everyone else’s? Would I have anything left to give my own? I was burned out, running on fumes, and the ache in my heart didn’t help.
It was time to move on.
To what, though? My “real life” was still nowhere in sight.
Writing?
Actually, I’d already done that. Penned and printed an entire novel in my spare time but never attempted traditional publishing because writing wasn’t my real life, either. It just kept me busy. Gave me a story through which to live vicariously, and that was enough. I thought.
Writer. Check.
I felt I’d come to the end of a chapter (no pun intended). It was a wonderful chapter, really. Full of invaluable experience and some noteworthy accomplishments, but I couldn’t appreciate that with my true purpose still MIA. I looked to the next chapter, knowing it had to be marriage. That was the only unchecked box.
I waited for the page to turn.
It didn’t.
Waiting for Life to Start: 3 Hard Questions
The longer life didn’t go according to plan, or assumption, the more I thought. Wondered. Questioned.
- What if I never get married? Have children?
- Is being a wife and mother the definition of my value?
- What will be the summary of my life if this prayer goes forever unanswered?
These are hard questions to face because they require a certain level of acceptance that what you’ve pinned your hopes on might not happen. That was my problem. I asked the questions. I pleaded with God, “If I never get married or have children, fine. Well, not fine, but…fine. Just please show me what to do instead.”
But I wouldn’t look at instead. I begged to see the next chapter, but it had to be what I wanted it to be. My terms for happiness were nonnegotiable, and I used them to build a wall between me and the rest of my life.
Then I blamed God for the wall. It would come down in a heartbeat if he answered my prayers, but until then, I was a hapless victim of his nonnegotiable timing.
It got pretty bleak behind that wall. Year after year without a why, or a who, or a what, or a how. Or a when. That last one especially can make you desperate. Desperate enough to listen. So I did.
Waiting For Life to Start: 3 Surprising Answers
What if I never get married or have children?
- God answered, “What if you don’t?”
Hmm. Well…okay. What if I don’t? What does the rest of my life look like? How will I spend it? Decaying behind a wall of misplaced expectations? No, thank you.
But what’s the alternative?
My fourth grade teacher always advised that if we weren’t sure of a test answer, to go with our first impression. Maybe the same is true of life ambitions. What did I want to be in first grade again?
In all this waiting, my most fulfilling experiences came in teaching or writing. I had a taste of coming home with every opportunity to share with someone else the things God shared with me, whether in a classroom of kindergarteners, a room of fellow teachers, or through the experiences of my fictional characters. Why not combine the two, teach through my writing with…a blog, maybe?
And there was a spark of life. There was a Plan B I could live with.
My Plan B might look nothing like yours. We all find purpose in different things. But I’m convinced there’s not a soul alive who can only find purpose in one thing.
Is being a wife and mother the definition of my value?
- God answered, “Is it?”
Seeing a pattern here? I think God made me answer because he knew I wouldn’t believe him if he just said, “No, that’s not all you’re worth.” He’s God. Of course he thinks that. But did I?
I live in a society–maybe it’s true the world over–where marital status defines in people’s minds, whether they intend it or not, the depth and value of a person’s experience. A thirty-something spinster probably doesn’t know quite as much about the nuances of life as a twenty-something mother of four, or even a nineteen-year-old newlywed. Marriage seems to be a prerequisite if you want to offer anything to the world that’s worth having. So, I’ve wondered. As a single woman, what am I worth?
Posing that question to Heavenly Father one day, he brought an image to my mind that comes now every time I doubt: the prints of the nails in the Savior’s hands. That’s my value, and it has nothing to do with whether I have a ring on my finger. Because of that gift, my ultimate purpose is to live so it wasn’t in vain. To be a light on the hill, love my neighbor, love God, be humble, be kind. You don’t have to be married to do that, and all of it is an offering to the world worth having.
What will be the summary of my life if this prayer goes forever unanswered?
- God answered (surprise), “What will it be?”
The answer to that question will be the result of however I answered the first two. When I die, will I be known as Heather, the girl who never married and shriveled away to nothing worth mentioning? Or will I be known as Heather, a follower of Christ who lived the life he gave her? I know which one I prefer. Now it’s up to me to do something about it.
Your Life Awaits!
This has been the story of a single woman searching for a purposeful life while her husband and children remain absent from it, but ask these questions about your own missing piece or unanswered prayer and see what answers you discover.
I hope they bring you peace, whatever they are. I’ve certainly found peace in mine. I haven’t arrived yet. Paul said, “For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content,” and while that’s a mindset to which I aspire, I’m still quite human. That empty spot in my heart still throbs a little. Sometimes a lot. But this is the stream I melted into. I’m here for my good and God’s glory, and I don’t want to fight the current anymore trying to get to the stream I thought I belonged in. Whatever my future holds, it’s time to live the life that’s taking me there.
If you can’t figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose.
T.D. Jakes
If this post has been valuable to you, please pass it on and share in the comments how God has helped your life start.
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