Singleness: A Grace-Filled Season

For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that marriage is my vocation.  It’s tough to explain – just a deep-rooted, heart knowledge that this is how God is calling me to love.  So there are days (sometimes many days) when I ask myself: Why am I still single?!?  My plan for my life was to go to college, meet a good Catholic man, fall in love, and marry upon graduating.  Not only did that not happen, but here I find myself two years out of college, still not even dating, and yet still very much feeling called to marriage.  So, why am I blogging about this in the midst of National Catholic Marriage Week?  Allow me to explain.

Being a young adult, single Catholic can definitely be a challenge at times.  But what I’ve come to see in the past few years is that this season of singleness is a grace-filled opportunity.  If only I will open myself up to the graces available in it.  The Lord has revealed a lot to me in my quest for an answer to the ever-pressing question, “God, if you’re calling me to marriage, then how come you haven’t provided the necessary components (a.k.a. a man to pursue me!)?”  He has shown me that this season of singleness holds so much opportunity to enrich my life and the lives of those around me.  When I decided to stop living in a state of longing for the future and the fulfillment of my vocation to marriage and instead began to focus on the place where God has me right now, my life became so much more life-giving and fulfilling.  For whatever reason, this state of singleness is exactly where God has me, and as I began to seek His face in the midst of it rather than kick and scream through it, I found that this season of my life is not a cross to run from, but rather a gift to embrace.

It’s a gift for so many reasons.  I have the ability to pour myself completely into serving God by serving His Church, right now in full-time ministry.  I have the time to pursue hobbies and interests that I probably won’t have time for when raising a family.  I can invest myself in rich and lasting friendships with other women who find themselves in a similar situation.  The list goes on, but, I think perhaps the greatest aspect of this season of singleness is that it is a unique time to focus on my own personal formation so that I might have a more beautiful gift of self to offer my husband and children someday.  Now is the time to allow God to form me into the woman He has created me to be.  Now is the time to create habits of daily personal prayer and frequent reception of the sacraments that will strengthen me to live my vocation of marriage when the time comes.  Now is the time to truly learn that Christ and Christ alone is the only One who will ever fulfill me.  Now – this time of singleness – is truly a grace-filled time.  And so, to all those of you out there who find yourself in a similar situation, let me challenge you to use this time of singleness to prepare for marriage through a deeper commitment to your own personal formation so that you might more fully live the abundant life Christ desires for each one of us.

By Sarah Houde