Hey 15 year old Anti,

Beautiful Anti, (I know that you won’t admit that you need to hear yourself be called beautiful at the moment, or that you don’t quite believe it. So let it be spoken over your life until it settles in your heart years from now) allow me to introduce myself.

I know that you’ve just seen all your siblings get married over the past few years, and as such you’ve got some clear expectations of who you think I am. You’re waiting with bated breath to hear about my love life. You want to hear all the ins and outs of the meet-cute with my husband. About how after a nice (but short) time of being single, one thing led to another. You want to hear me talk all about how a sweet friendship naturally (but not too slowly) played out. About all the cute places he took me for dates, about his carefully planned and perfectly executed proposal, and about how the wedding day is going to be perfect. (‘Cause everything is right on schedule, right? Right??)

*crickets chirping*

Before I lose you entirely to totally irreparable heartbreak, give me a minute to describe the past eight years to you. I know your picture for me post high school is a year of Youth Mission Team, followed by three years of uni, and then seeing where the wind took you from there (preferably to a nice man though, hey?). What actually happens is that one year of YMT will turn into two (Perth 2019 and Sydney 2020), which will uncover an unknown desire you have to move to Sydney. You’ll move up to Sydney at the start of 2021 and will be employed with YMT (where I still work today) alongside studying high school teaching. You will join a household who loves you, a community who loves you, and will be pinching yourself every day, because the sheer goodness and faithfulness of God is overwhelming, to say the least. The blessings on your life will be innumerable.

And yes, beautiful Anti, through all of this you will be single.

Knowing that you feel the beginnings of a call to YMT from even age 15, you will choose to embrace singleness across your high school season in preparation for the one year of single vision you think you have coming up after school. This practice of living single life well is going to be one of your greatest assets on your years of YMT (and beyond), so keep at it! The fruits you will reap from singleness are astounding – you will learn so much about yourself and others and to lean on God more authentically. You’ll witness radically to authentic love in this hook-up culture and will learn necessary lessons in good boundaries and healthy communication. It’s explosive.

Now I know that you won’t admit it, but there is a part of you which expects that almost as a reward for your planned and dedicated time of faithfulness and radical exclusivity, you will then be swept off your feet by a strikingly good-looking man who can’t take his eyes off you.

I’m going to explain a couple of things that you haven’t really been told yet about singleness (don’t worry! It’s all shrouded in beauty and goodness.) They will take you a little while to learn through life experience, which is perfectly okay. It’s time to BeReal (you’ll get that when you’re older). And there is nothing more real than Jesus and the hope that he brings.

I know you’re currently reading everything you can on Christianity, singleness, womanhood, and femininity. You’re listening to every chastity and dating podcast known to man at least twice, and have time and time again prayed for your future husband and have laid down your future love life and dating season at the feet of Jesus. Beautiful Anti, even though you will continue to pray, to read all the right books, listen to the right podcasts and will try to choose Jesus in the upcoming times of loneliness and when you’re grappling with crushes, at times you will still find singleness a tough pill to swallow. And though you may feel ashamed about wanting to be in a relationship and will scold yourself for not being sunshine and rainbows all the time about being single, there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed about. Loneliness is something everyone experiences at points in their life regardless of their relationship status, even when you know and trust that God has a plan for your life.

Well-intentioned folks will meet your feeling of shame or heartache at singleness by reminding you of all the good parts of a single life, and how you should enjoy the season for however long it lasts. This is absolutely true, and singleness is a gift (which you will learn more and more – check out Kate Kirk’s epic blog on the beauty of the season on singleness here), though know that you are allowed to feel the feelings of disappointment or unmet expectations without judgement when they do inevitably rise.

C.S Lewis in The Screwtape Letters talks about the Law of Fluctuation, which you are going to become very familiar with! The basic principle is that emotions, urges and feelings of motivation are cyclical – they go up and down, up and down, up and….. etc. Everyone goes through this, no matter the season or state of life, and it is not an indication of your strength of character, faith in God or inner convictions.

Beautiful Anti, you will find the right women to surround you. God will place in your life the people who sit with you when you’re feeling down, and who will raise you up when the time to get up and go arrives. It’s okay to acknowledge that you yearn for or desire something - as long as that doesn’t totally consume you from living in the gift of the present.

Being single doesn’t mean being overlooked or unseen. There will be times, even in your young adult years, where you feel like you are invisible or undesirable because your season of singleness is longer than you had initially wanted. Let me make something very clear – you are not the problem, and singleness isn’t a problem! Your relationship status is in no way indicative of your beauty or how attractive you are, beautiful Anti. It might be hard to believe now, but one day you will absolutely rate yourself 10/10, because God rates you a 10/10 whether you are dating, married or single. God has not overlooked you, nor will He ever forget you. Not even once.

In fact, what will become increasingly obvious to you is that the availability which comes with your singleness allows for the wildest opportunities to emerge. When it’s just you and Jesus, you can go anywhere (literally) and do anything (literally) that he invites you in to. You and Jesus are going to become unstoppable together. That’s not just a nice, sentimental thing to say to try and distract you from the fact that you tend not to have anywhere to be on February 14th but is in all honesty a snapshot of heaven. You have an eternity ahead of you to spend with Jesus! So getting a head start on knowing him well and allowing yourself to be known by him alone is going to be a pretty good use of your time and will be exactly what you need to put you in good stead for the rest of your life (and eternity).

Beautiful Anti, I know it won’t do much to just tell you to not compare your journey to anyone else’s, because you struggle immensely with this. Babe, this is going to be an ongoing battle, over which Jesus has the victory. I can’t promise that you won’t have moments of asking God ‘why not me?’ or ‘when is it my turn?’ or ‘not even one cuddle??’ But over time, you will learn that just because your journey is different to everyone else, that doesn’t mean that it’s worse. In fact, it’s better for you because God has tailored it for you!

Eventually, you won’t ask God ‘when is it my turn?’ as often and will start asking ‘who do You say I am?’ more. And boy oh boy, beautiful Anti, He has some amazing things that He can’t wait to share with you about yourself.

Go slowly. There is no need to rush into anything with anyone. The Holy Spirit speaks with peace, clarity, and good discernment, and will guide you on the right timing for your life. Do not use other people’s journeys (or even your own impulses and intense moments of feeling) as the dictator of your decision making. God will not lead you astray. He never has, and never will.

I don’t want to spoil the millions of good and beautiful surprises in store for you (where’s the fun in that?) but let me give you a snapshot of you in the future. You are working in what truly is your dream job in a workspace where you are loved, honoured, respected and where your potential is brought out and encouraged. You are stepping into positions of faith leadership (both formal and informal) that you couldn’t possibly have planned for yourself. You are leading a group to Portugal for World Youth Day in a few months. You skateboard! Yeah baby!

The point is the plans you have in mind for yourself now are good. But what God has in store for reality is so much bigger, so much better, and SO full of life and abundance.

Life doesn’t begin when you finally go on a date with your future husband, beautiful Anti. Life has begun, and the adventures you will embark on and the people you will encounter on the wild journey of your singleness are a thousand times more real than the hypothetical relationship, marriage, or boyfriend you create in your mind.

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

Do I know exactly what’s in store for me in singleness, dating and romance? Nope. Not even a little bit. But the thing is, beautiful Anti, it doesn’t really matter either way. God’s plans are good. Whether that means we are single for a short time longer or a more extended period or have alternating seasons of both, my hope, fullness, and abundance is found in Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever – regardless of the circumstances my tomorrow will bring.

Everything will be more than okay. It will be blessed. And for the harder moments where loneliness and heartache try to shake your confidence, always pray, and repeat “this too shall pass”. Those moments always do.

Alright, kid. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Chin up, go gently on yourself and strap in for the best eight years of all time. If you could see now exactly how great they are, you’d probably explode from excitement.

Oh, and good luck with that saxophone exam tomorrow. You totally nail it.

Much love,

2023 Anti

An Open Letter On Singleness

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