By Ife J. Ibitayo
If winter is the season I hate the most, February is its worst month. January at least has New Year’s Day, and I still bask in warm reminiscence of March’s spring break. But the month of February has no holidays, well any worth celebrating when you’re single.
Fresh flowers, cuddly bears, and red hearts assail me at grocery stores. Affectionate couples shame me at dine-in restaurants and movie theatres. Twenty-eight days mock me with a singular reminder: “You’re all alone, buddy.”
This pain is especially personal to me because I was ready to be married by the time I turned fifteen. Yep, by then I’d already hung up my cap, kissed my bachelor glory days goodbye, and poised my pen to write a new chapter in my story. Fast forward a decade later and that page has remained (astonishingly) blank. Being a romantic at heart, I embraced several of our culture’s fallacies about love.
You’re Nobody Until Somebody Loves You
The first lie I believe was best sung by the venerable Dean Martin: “You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you.” I wanted to be somebody! I took growing up in a loving family for granted. My parents and my brothers have to love me. I wanted someone who didn’t have to have me in their life, but of all the men on the face of this planet, they chose me alone forever.
You’re Half a Person Until You Meet Your Other Half
The second lie I accepted was that you’re incomplete until you meet your other half. I felt this “truth” viscerally, like a hole in my soul that could only be filled by the right woman. She’d alleviate my insecurities, heal my scars, and secure my destiny. Therapist Esther Perel said it well, “We come to one person, and we are asking them to give us what an entire village used to provide. Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and all in one.” In short, she’d be my salvation.
Your Somebody/Your Other Half
As outsized as this expectation may sound, I actually don’t think it’s wrong. It just took me the better part of a decade to realize that it was misplaced. Appropriating a well-known quote from C.S. Lewis, “If we find ourselves with a desire that no being in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another being.” And that being is the one who made us: God.
Through the overwhelming pain and triumphant victories I’ve experienced in life, I’ve learned that God is my best friend, my confidant, and my lover. Someone did choose me alone forever for a loving relationship. Ephesians 1:4 says, “Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes.” And my relationship with Him has given me belonging, identity, and continuity. For 1 John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” God is my transcendence and my mystery all in one!
Conclusion
My relationship with God has not weakened my desire to find my soulmate. Rather, it has provided a safe harbor to continue looking from. Until I find her, I know I stand high above the lovelorn seas. I rest in the arms of my heavenly Father until He sweeps me up in the triune bliss of romantic love.
“The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
(Jeremiah 31:3)