“My name is Josh…and I am Single” Confessions of a Happily Single Small Christian College Student

2/7/16

When you're a twenty-one-year-old male in the Christian community there always seems to be one question that always arises, "So is there a girl you're interested in?" and the answer is usually either, "Yes, my fiancé (blank)" or "No, I don't think it is God's timing for me right now" and nothing in-between those two.

Sometimes if you are that later one, like me, you feel like a leper in the town of angels compared to the first group and can spiral down into the deep pits of self-doubt and many other negative thoughts and emotions.  In a place where "love" and "finding the girl God wants for you" it is really easy to get lost in the confusion and disarray that love and dating can be.

Why does it feel like it is bad to be single at a small Christian college?  I’m young.  I don’t make a lot of money.  I don’t have a lot of free time. The list goes on and on to why I shouldn’t be in a relationship, but the hardest person to convince is myself. 

When you are in a tiny place that seems to focus on one thing (It doesn’t, but sometimes it feels like it), it can be exhausting, especially when what is focused on is "young love." 

Love is a mystery and a mystery that a lot of twenty-something can’t figure out.  Some do, and I know a lot of people who are very happy in a relationship, but just because they are able to be in a serious relationship by the age of nineteen doesn’t mean every human being is.  Comparing and contrasting with people around me is exhausting, unhealthy and just flat out wrong, but it happens.  It shouldn’t feel like I have to go to “Single Dudes Anonyms” just because I’m not putting a ring on a girl by the time I leave undergrad.

The self-doubt and negative self-talk are not worth it because the answer really is that I am not ready to be in a serious relationship.  I'm selfish.  I'm a hard worker who is focused on my future.  I'm overscheduled a lot of times.  Some people can handle all of that and give a girl what they deserve, but I can't.  

There are three things that really stand in my way of being a young man that is ready to be in a relationship.

One: I’m busy 

Two: I have big dreams

Three: I can’t give what women deserve

Part one:

I go to class, basketball, worship leading and so many other obligations every single day.  I barely have enough time to give myself what I need, let alone another person. There have been multiple times this school year where I don't eat dinner till 10:30 at night and can barely function. Like I said, I am selfish, but I think it is a healthy selfishness.  I'm not trying to take from people, but I'm doing what I want to do.  I'm getting to experience things I want to experience.  I am not trying to hurt anyone.  I am not trying to over indulge, but I do a lot that involves myself and that makes it tough to add another in.  God has given me a lot of opportunities and I need to embrace those opportunities to the fullest.

Part two:

I have big dreams for my life.  I want to go to a large Graduate school and be a graduate assistant at the Division I level right after I leave undergrad.  This requires a lot of prayers and a lot of work.  This is a big goal for myself, but everyone has big goals at the age of twenty-one.  There is absolutely nothing wrong if that goal is to be the best husband/wife and nothing more, but that is just an aspect of the dreams I have for myself right now.  Women have dreams too.  We live in a world with more and more opportunities for women every year and there are a lot of girls I know and admire who also have big dreams.  If my dream is to move down south or out west and coach basketball and a girl has a dream to help the homeless in Chicago and we are in a serious relationship, come graduation, someone is going to have to sacrifice.  I know couples who are ok with that, but I'm not.  I could never live a life where I didn't let my girlfriend/wife not follow her dream or vice versa.  We're at the dreaming age and if you aren't willing to give a dream up don’t, and that is for young men and women. 

Part three:

There is little more valuable for a young man of God, other than his relationship with Christ, than a young woman of God.  A woman who loves the Lord and pushes a man to love the Lord more and more is a woman who deserves the world and, as I have mentioned in the past two sections, I can't give that.  A girl deserves more than I am right now.  I (and a bunch of other dudes) will be there at some point, but right now I am not.  I don't want to rush the process.  I am broken goods.  I am not ready.  I am constantly being refined into the man God wants me to be. A girl will not fix a man's problem, but a Godly woman is a gift from God and it is a gift he will give me when I need it, not when I want it.

At a small Christian college, casual dating does not exist to be blunt about it.  Where wife and husband finding is the goal for many, it is ok to be single.  I'm only twenty-one, I have no idea who I am going to be when I am twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, sixty-five, but I do know the aspects of my life that will always be there: God and family.  

Learning to love those two and growing with God and trusting God, I will eventually grow enough to start a family of my own, but at the time, I am a young dreamer who struggles to see God's will for my own life most days, let alone his will for my own and another girls.  Seeking Him and growing in Him is what I need to do.  It is ok to be single, even though the world around me makes it look like it is not, and I need to remind myself that regularly.