Something dangerous about a woman;
Content with how things are;
In acceptance of the season she is in.

Loving what is today
Knowing that, accepting a season
does not make it permanent.

Change is happening
In all spheres of life;
some just quicker than others.

Taking away all distractions
Allowing her to focus on the reality
Seeing the possibilities for the future.

Possibilities not distracted
by norms of others.
by what she is ‘supposed’ to do.

But having true freedom
to feel, deep down;
“What is my God-spoken way of life?”

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During one of my “seasons of sorrow”, yearning for the circumstances I didn’t get to experience, I found myself reading Timothy Kellers book “The Meaning of Marriage”. I wanted to figure out what it that marriage-thing actually was and why I wanted it so badly. As I reached the end it dawned on me: As much as I did want that kind of marriage…

I just didn’t want that right now.

Suddenly, I found myself in a new situation. What do I do when that one thing I’ve been yearning for and in sorrow of not having for so long, is the one thing I want at some point in the future – I’m just not ready right now? In this season of life, everyone around me seems to settle down, can it be socially acceptable as a Christian to not want to get married and have a family life at this moment? Would that mean that my chances would pass and never come back?

And, so began my first season of acceptance. I remember it not being a walk in a park, but it set me free from a lot of expectations I had. It gave me space to actually feel and not try to feel what I thought everyone expected me to as a single believer at the end of my twenties.

Just because I accepted the state of things right at that moment, it didn’t mean I wanted it that way. It didn’t mean I was okay with being single. It just meant I found the ability to love life and accept it. I found the ability to accept the road I was on.

Loving single life doesn’t mean that it is set in stone that I will be single for the rest of my life… And thank God for that!

A year ago I found myself at my mom’s wedding. I chose to love the irony of attending my mother’s wedding and that she got to experience while I was still waiting for that first time around. Despite this, pretty much every member of our distant family gave me “much needed advice”. One told me not to grow too comfortable. Another, to get moving.

That did not make me go home feeling cared for and comfortable enough to jump at any chance of a date. It made me go home feeling uncomfortable, unloved and wrong.

The thing just is, that you can do everything right and still not hit jackpot. Finding someone is a miracle on it’s own. And yes, we do need to do what is natural in order for God to pull his overnatural, miracle way.

The thing just is, that I don’t want to settle for less. I want to be with that God-chosen one. And that takes time, work and a miracle.

At the end of the day, I’m the one who has to pull myself up every time yet another one has a band on that “leadership finger”. Yet another one turned out to have a girlfriend. Yet another one wasn’t interested in me like that. Yet another one found my boundaries too much. Not you.

And that is why I made a rule of acceptance in my single-chronicles:

Accepting life never makes any state of life permanent. It just makes it liveable. And a whole lot more fun to live!

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I’ve heard life compared to seasons. That spring-feeling that spreads through you when love takes every thought, every action hostile. I know about parts of life being compared to a dessert. Every step is taken in agony – yet, all you can do is put one foot in front of the other.

Personally, I’ve always found life to be like a hallway. Some you rush through like a wind, others you’ve been camping in for so long that you know every detail of that one room. Sometimes you find yourself in more than one hallway at once. At work things are flying, while in your home-life-hallway you may find every door locked or barricaded.

We’ve all been there. That one barricaded hallway where there seems to be no breakthrough.

To me, that “all to familiar”-hallway is my singleness. I know every surface of that room, every colour, every detail. I even try to splash things up a little, brigthen it up, making it home.

Every once in a while, I try to push through to see if ‘now is the time’, but the doors in this one hallway always seems so unnaturally barricaded. Every once in a while something happens, but I always end up back in that room, counting the boards in the sealing, waiting for the extraordinary.

I don’t understand why. I don’t understand why I can’t, when so many around me gets to. But I know how it feels when it’s a God-timing.

Though, my heart is not there yet my reasoning, mind and senses knows that Gods timing is the one to count on. I know how it feels when God wants something in my life.

Sometimes God scatters opportunities in front of me, sits back and watches me take up the pieces, studying them and choosing. Other times, it is like I don’t even have to push any door open. It will be opened for me and I will be forced through, kicking and screaming like the kid in a supermarket not getting that one candy bar.

Over the years, I’ve learned that change doesn’t necessarily happen because I do something extraordinary. I can prepare the circumstances. I can even try to prepare myself. But in the end, God is the one doing the extraordinary, and if he doesn’t think it’s time – it won’t be.

The hardest part is not waiting or going through the process of the wait. It is not trying to believe it will happen in my own life or to someone else. Having chosen him to lay the road before me, I can’t know when, where or with whom neither in my life nor for the people around me. While the wait is hard, the hardest part of it is the fact that we are waiting for his timing. Not mine.

In the midst of it all, taking desires and life-wishes off the table, the ultimate hardest part is praying ‘Thy will be done’ and trusting that no matter what, the road laid before me is the best road taken.

I don’t know why I’m single. I don’t know why you are. I don’t know whether I’ll ever not be. But I trust that God knows what he’s doing. Even if my fleeting heart doesn’t always agree I know that the process he is taking me through is the best for me. Though this road is narrow and less travelled, I choose to trust the one that can do extraordinary things instead of my own abilities to create a destiny.

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Photo by Art_of_ROSH on Unsplash

Photo by Art_of_ROSH on Unsplash

Life took a drastic turn for me and my siblings when our dad died 7 years ago. He passed away while on a holiday in Egypt – a holiday my very generous brother had given him as a present. Little did we know how this one loss would start an avalanche of events in all of our lives.

You see, me and my siblings are three very different, yet on some levels similar people. Thus, we also had three very different ways of taking care of our grief. And while we also had to learn how to make grief a part of life, mental health issues started to surface in my siblings lives as well.

The past seven years we’ve had to deal with a lot of different terms of way they act and find explanations to those that did not necessarily fit the people my sister and brother were and are. Because, sometimes it is not my brother or my sister acting, but that something inside them telling them to go against their common nature. And on that note, one thing is fighting against things your body is physically trying to express, another thing is, when you can’t seem to trust your own mind and psyche.

In all of this, my siblings are growing to become two very strong, independent people who in their own ways are handling whatever is thrown at them with grace and dignity, knowing the strength of asking for help and getting to know when is it themselves acting and when is it that mental illness inside of them speaking. Seeing these two people grow up with seemingly all odds against them and still becoming the best versions they can be is an awestriking experience knowing that their fight against themselves along with everything else.

But here am I. The healthy one. And it’s not that I don’t love my family or that they could do anything different. But when everyone around you are fighting battles against themselves and is in need of extra attention due to their mental wellbeing, one thought has started to surface within me.

What about me?

I am healthy, yeah. And, yes I am strong enough to carry a little bit extra. But sometimes I am looked towards as if I don’t need the extra attention every once in a while. I am being put in the – “She is healthy, so I don’t need to ask how she is or check up on her or compliment her”-box.

Yesterday, I was calling my mother – who in her own way are trying to find a way to be mentally and physically stable in all the storms she finds herself in at the moment, and I threw a rather “on the edge of being cruel”-joke. “I guess, I have to invent a mental illness to get people’s attention in this family. ” followed up by the laughing comment whether this one joke was made “too soon? ”

But if I for a moment have to look past all the social conducts, how I am supposed to think about it all and the expectations of the strong elder sister, I find it hard to overlook the feeling of being so much alone.

I feel like standing very much alone on top of Mount Everest not knowing who I can count on to catch me? I find myself moving in the shadows of my siblings illnesses trying not to be in the way of them getting the help and attention they need.

I know one of my siblings will hate reading this, because this one already struggles with the seemingly need of getting all of this attention in order to become a healthier version of oneself. And I’m not trying to destroy this process.

However, I can’t help but wonder, when the unthinkable, unrelatable crisis hits a family – who takes care of the healthy ones?

I thought I had learned how to create boundaries between it all. Where my role as the big-sis comes with a strong mind, understanding and a shoulder begins and where my life as a human being who has needs as well gets a role too.

But sometimes the two intertwine and get mixed-up. Sometimes I have to be the stable, understanding Big-Sis without being any of it underneath it all. It can get overwhelming having to surpress one’s own needs in order to hold another ones.

When is it okay to step back to gain stable ground again? When should I be the stable, understanding family-member without showing the chaos on the inside?

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