(Written for Valentine’s Day. But you know, as par for the course, I’m running a bit behind.)
There is a reason I never write about what it means to be 29 and single (a rule I’m about to break right now, because you know, my parents raised me to reject any rule that’s stupid. So essentially, all rules not including the words “Don’t” and “Murder”): there’s too much to wade through.
Let me clarify- not internally. Internally, I stand with feet firmly planted on a rock a man could never quite occupy, though a handful have tried here and there through the years.
But outwardly, my friends? Outwardly, on the InterWebs and splashed onto the pages of books and in hushed tones in coffee shops, the amount of material on this subject is insurmountable. It’s exhausting.
The past few weeks have found me in conversations around this topic that have been heartbreaking, as men and women question their core identities in the face of what someone else has decided should be.
What someone else has decided for them they should be.
And so, it’s 2013 now and Valentine’s Day has come and gone- and while I’m pretty sure I’m not the very last single girl on earth, sometimes I wonder if I might be the very last single girl who’s okay with it.
My friends, my loved ones who live here and there and everywhere, who face a day of love and feel somehow less then, can I just say:
We don’t need a list of ways to better ourselves. We don’t need to thumb our nose at the beauty of love. And mostly: we don’t need to wait.
There isn’t a magic to marriage. There isn’t a universal switch that is flipped that day, and from that point forward, life is interesting (or if there is, the married people are keeping a really tight lid on that one).
There is only magic in living into the now of your life. Your life. Not anyone else’s. Just yours.
We are wedded, my dear ones. Maybe not with a ring and a covenant (although those are sacred, lovely things), but we are wedded none the less. To each other. In relationships that are life-giving and meaningful. That are human.
So why would we hate a day to celebrate The Greatest of These? Why would we feel anything less than perfectly formed for this time, in this day, in this now? Why would we let someone else define for us that we are less than- or not quite- or almost? We are full. We are living days that are pieced together in beauty and life, not lacking in sunshine or laughter.
And can I say? Live out the fullness of your life, right beside Your Creator, in beauty and truth and adventure and newness and familiar and fun and light. To wait a single moment for any of these things is to ignore the wildness and freedom life offers to you. That your Creator offers to you.
That is a gift, my loves. For all of us. Together.
Live Color Fully 
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