The Reality of This Present Time.

 Often at the beginning of a bright, shiny new year we may find ourselves wanting to gaze into the future: what we hope the future will be and what we pray it will not be. But after all is said and done it is imperative for us to prepare ourselves to abandon all of our finite planning, goal-setting and dreaming for God's infinite plan and purpose for our lives. My reality is the following: I may not ever get married. I will soon be 40 and I am not sure if I still want to get married. I am tired and weary of the subject and just want to be content with where God has me as a single woman and as a single mother. 

Once upon a time, I was very guilty of the sin of idolatry. I idolized the idea of marriage, family and having children hence my screw up in putting the cart before the horse and having my first child out of wedlock then after that relationship ended disastrously, I found myself on the rebound and with baby number two! I wanted marriage, family, and children more than I wanted anything...including God! I can admit this now and I believe that for the sake of catharsis as well as to stand as a testimony, it is high time that I came clean! My parents divorced when I was 5 years old but even before that I was 3 when they first separated. So I longed and ached for a whole and healthy family. I never got it! I prayed for my mother and father to get back together and the reality that they would never be married again was more painful than I could bare. I thought that I was justified in wanting these things more than I wanted God, besides I didn't ask to be here and I most certainly didn't ask to be born to parents who couldn't make it together. But Jesus still required faithfulness and commitment to Him. I did not have the right to use the pain that I experienced as a child of divorce to forsake Christ and erect an idol in my life that caused me to sin against the very God who could heal me.

Whether I like it or not, I may not ever get married. I may not ever be anybody's wife or spend the rest of my life knowing what it is to have a man love me enough to make me his wife. These are musings that have crossed my mind and they are facts that I have to face. I am a single mother and like it or not, I cannot afford to have just any man in my life for the health, safety and stability of my children. It is quite enough that my sloppy life (prior to selling out to Christ) has deprived my children of a healthy father/child relationship and I refuse to make matters worse for them by inviting any ol' piece of man (as my grandmother use to call them) into my children's lives. Don't get me wrong, I would like to get married but marriage is not the priority that it once was in my life.

My priorities at the present are submitting my life as worship to God and raising my children to be sold out people of God who avoid the pitfalls that I fell into as a young person. I would truly like for my children to have a father-figure in their lives but I will not allow them to become the object of a sexual predator or random nutjob that preys on single mothers and their children; the mothers who are desperate for male companionship while the children are desperate for a father figure. This is a recipe for trouble as many single mothers have married or have engaged in pseudo-marriage relationships with men who took advantage of the women and sexually, physically and/or emotionally abused the children. I am also aware that there are lots of mentor groups for fatherless children but unless I know the man personally, there is absolutely no way that I will ever allow some random man, that I don't know at a church or with an organization or anywhere who feigns himself to be a mentor and father figure to fatherless children only to have my children's innocence and virtue compromised by some closet pedophile. 

Desperation for anything or anyone outside of Christ can have disastrous consequences. Hey, that's how I got to be a single mother in the first place! I was desperate for a husband and kids so much so that I compromised myself and everything that I believed in order to try to get my way. Well, I didn't get my way and what's worse is that I allowed myself to become so consumed with wanting to be married that I decided not to do it God's way either. But to God be the glory for helping me get it together two kids and no husband later. God is faithful and I truly believe that He who has begun a good work in me is faithful to complete the work that He has begun in me (Philippians 1:6). I haven't completely shutdown on marriage but I've simply decided that my life is better spent committed to God and the things that He has entrusted me to have stewardship of right now than commit myself to getting and being married and even going so far as to try to subvert God's authority, plan and purpose for my life as well as the lives of my children.

In addition to not obsessing over marriage I had to clean some other demons out of my closet and this is just one of the videos that really helped me to face me and stop making excuses for sins that were separating me from God. I don't agree with all of this brother's videos but this one is on point for sure. However if you are not willing or ready to face, confess and repent of your own sin then you might not want to watch this video as he is very frank about a subject that most single Christians and even Christian single parents struggle with overcoming. 

Remember mediocrity hates greatness, so be great and let the haters, hate!

LadyfromZion aka Koretta L. Allen is available for public speaking engagements especially pertaining to subjects of single parenthood, being single, women's empowerment through the word of God and much more. Mochababybrown@gmail.com