When you get sick, you don’t have a choice, that’s life and it can be pretty miserable!  When you are single you do have choices. At one time or another, it’s easy for most singles to fall into the trap that their singleness is a sickness and not just a season of life, or part of their lives.

Several years ago I went through an extended time of unexplainable illness. It changed my life, and in many ways my life was put on hold as all of my time and energy was devoted to surviving. In those dark days the sickness was so consuming it threaten to become my identity. I wasn’t sickness, but when my world revolved around focusing on the sickness (or trying to prevent it!) It seemed that all that was left to “me” as a person was scars and diet regulations – the very reminders of the illness.

Singleness can be that way too if we let it. When we focus on what we don’t have, on what other’s have, how awkward it can be to be the third wheel… it’s easy to start thinking of singleness as a dreaded sickness.

While singleness may be unwanted at times (or all the time depending on the season!) we are not sick.

Singleness is not our identity.

It may describe us, but it does not define us.

You are more than ‘single’.

You are chosen by God.

His Child.

Given a new identity.

Given a purpose and reason for living that goes beyond relationships.

You are loved with a love that is stronger than death, and His love for you is more jealous than the grave (Songs 8:6).

Nothing quenches that love.

His love for you is not dependent on your relational status and does not change when your relational status changes.

His love covers all sickness.

Even yours. Even mine.

Jesus did not come for the healthy, but for the sick. (Luke 5:29-32) If you are struggling in your singleness today, don’t condemn yourself. Christ enters into our pain and weakness! Did He not feel lonely at times? Yes. But He did not allow it to become His identity. The Father wants nothing more than to be invited into our sickness and pain. It’s there that He can heal. He can’t heal when we hide behind the mask of “fine”.

The Father’s heart for you is to know that He doesn’t look at your singleness as a sickness; but rather as a gift He’s given, to show us that our value and purpose go beyond relational status. 

“You’re not sick – you’re single” – Sarah in the movie Hitch

Being fully alive today is recognizing that your value does not come from a relational status. Even my married friends have shared with me, that this is a lesson that they have had to learn too. “You’re Not Sick, You’re Single” is apart of the “Today’s the Day: Being Single and Fully Alive Series. For more in this series please click here.