It’s day 26 of 31 Days of Interviews with Single Women. You can find a list of all the interviews in this post.
Today we’re talking to Megan! Megan says:
It has been a long journey to reach this point in my walk with Christ, and I am only boast about this because of Christ and not because of me. Understanding that Christ + nothing = everything. The Lord has been working on my desire for marriage, I started praying that my desire for a deeper relationship with Jesus would be stronger than my desire to meet man and fall in love. I also asked the Lord to remind me that my life is all about His glory and not my happiness in fulfilled desires. The secret is in the Lord’s work in your life. Ask for it.
Megan is 26-years-old and lives in the southeastern part of Virginia. She is a middle school math teacher and also a blogger. Be sure to visit her at He Will Be Faithful and read her interview below!
Brenda: First, tell us a little about yourself – your name, age, where you live, and where you grew up.
Megan: My name is Megan, and I currently live in southeastern Virginia. I grew up in central Virginia and spent my college years in Ohio. I am 26 years old.
Brenda: Where do you work, and how did you get started in your job?
Megan: I am a middle school math teacher at a public school here in Southeastern Virginia. Since I was in elementary school, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher, but it wasn’t until I was in middle school did it become clear that I wanted to teach math. This is my third year teaching, and my first two years were in a high school. I spent 4.5 years getting a bachelor’s degree in Math and then spent 1.5 years getting a Master’s degree in Teaching and my teaching license. This is not necessarily the path everyone takes to become a teacher, but it was the one that the Lord had me walk.
Brenda: Do you feel like your job is God’s calling on your life or do you hope it leads to something else one day?
Megan: I knew that I wanted to work with kids almost my entire life, and teaching made the most sense with my personality, my strengths and my ability to handle gross things and emergency situations (I thought about being a nurse/doctor/midwife when I was in high school). After being in the profession and starting my third year, I can say that I love my job, I believe it’s what the Lord has called me to do right now, and I see myself doing this for a while. My desire is to be married, so if that were to come, and children, then I would reevaluate at that time whether the Lord was leading me to do something else.
Brenda: When you envisioned your life as a young girl, did you hope to have a career when you grew up or was your desire more for marriage and children or did you want both for your life?
Megan: I did want to be a teacher, but I also wanted to be married with kids. I never really grew up thinking that I would do both simultaneously. I think that I always hoped that I would be able to teach for a few years, and then give that up to stay at home and raise a family.
Brenda: What fires you up? What are you most passionate about in your life and in the world?
Megan: Theology gets me pretty fires up, so much so that I am thinking about attending seminary part-time starting as early as next summer. Knowing God through His Word is so important for the believer to pursue! I have been in middle school ministry for the last few years, and I have always pushed studying the God’s Word as a worthy pursuit.
Brenda: Are you involved in serving in your community or church? What, if any, ministries or organizations are you a part of?
Megan: I am currently in the middle of a church search, so I am not currently serving in a local church. Though, I was involved with the 4 and 5-year-old sunday school class, and helping out with the middle school girl’s small group.
Brenda: Tell us one thing you LOVE about being single and one thing you hate (or your biggest struggle) about being single.
I am love traveling, and love traveling with my girlfriends. Being single allows me to have both the freedom and ease of planning such trips and weekend get-togethers. I also love that I don’t have to compromise on how I spend or save my finances, but this can also be an area where I routinely wish that I had a partner to share the financial responsibility with.
The one thing that I hate about begin single, is the lack of companionship. Now that I live on my own, I don’t have someone who wants to know what I’m doing everyday, or someone who I talk to everyday. It’s selfish, but I would love for someone to care enough to know what I am doing everyday. This might sound funny, but I would love to have someone to share a calendar with. There is something that sounds so wonderful about having someone you have to coordinate a schedule with.
Brenda: I imagine there are times when you feel content in your singleness and other times when you want to throw something across the room because of it, but overall, how do you feel about being a single woman? Is there more contentment and peace or more of the opposite?
Megan: It depends on the day. The days that I want to throw something across the room, those are the days where I am comparing myself to the women on my Facebook feed that are updating their status to brag about how awesome their husbands are, or seeing that cute couple hold hands at church while we sing or pray. In those moments, the jealously is the worst…. Some incredible man picked them instead of me. In those moments, it’s the question that I end up asking, “When will it be my turn?”.
More recently, there has been more contentment. The Lord has been showing me that His relationship with me is greater than any earthly relationship, and that His relationship with me is the only thing that can complete me, not a marriage. I used to have this idea that I couldn’t truly be blessed by God until He had given me all the desires of my heart, which included marriage and kids. Wow, was I wrong! The Lord has slowly shown me, through my stubbornness, that I blessed beyond measure, and blessed to know Him and blessed to serve Him. There is contentment (but still having desires of your heart) when your relationship with the Lord grips you in a way that everything else seems so small in comparison to the Lord in your life. Contentment comes when you choose to see the Lord working in your life and choose to be thankful for the daily blessings that the Lord gives you.
Brenda: Do you ever get mad at God because you are single? When bitterness, discontentment, confusion, and even jealousy creep into your mind, how to you deal with it? Do you have a go-to person or scripture verse or something else that helps?
Megan: I do get mad at God, sometimes. Marriage is an unfilled desire that I have, and I don’t quite understand why God allows me to remain single. But also I get angry because being single is painful because it’s so personal. You can feel like something is wrong with you and if you could figure out that one thing and change it, then your singleness would go away. It doesn’t usually work out that way. I could be the nicest, sweetest, most attractive woman out there, but men could still not be interested. It hurts when a great guy at your church chooses someone else to ask out. It hurts when your social media is blowing up with posts about engagements, weddings and babies. It just plain hurts. I can twist our desire for marriage and place the blame on God and get angry. I can choose to see my desire for marriage as something that I need in order to feel blessed by God, but again I am twisting my desire into something that God has never intended it to be. When I do these things, I get angry with God. It’s when I take my eyes of of Jesus and onto myself that I get angry with God.
Usually a good cry, a nap and a phone call or text to a fellow single lady is what gets me through.
Brenda: How do you deal with loneliness?
Megan: Usually I send a quick text to a few of my single friends about being lonely. Sometimes just knowing someone else knows, it helps with the loneliness. I know that in times of extreme loneliness, I believe it’s the Lord tugging at my heart, and asking me to consider what He wants from my life.
Brenda: Do you struggle with obsessing about guys and dating? Like, if you’re interested in a guy or if you just start dating someone new, do you think about him constantly, analyze every conversation, and get overly attached quickly? Is so (or if not) how do you deal with your emotions?
Megan: I don’t really have any experience to go off of for this question, and I haven’t really had a crush in a long time, so I don’t really know how I react in my post college life.
Brenda: What is your biggest pet peeve about the way single women are perceived?
Megan: Well, maybe it’s the perception that my growth in the Lord is stunted because I haven’t been married, because apparently the only way you learn how selfish you are is by getting married and having children. Just because the Lord used marriage in your life to show you those things, doesn’t mean that the Lord can’t teach me the same things in a different way (i.e. work, church service work, friendships, roommates, etc.).
Also, one of the pet peeves is that I am somehow not as grown up as someone who is the same age, but is married with kids.
Another one is that all we think about is about how to get a husband. That the decisions that we make are based on where we might have the best chance to find someone. And then the opposite is true too, that any married people encourage singles to make decisions based on the possibility to finding a mate, (i.e. pick a church that has the most singles, get involved in a singles only small group, etc).
Brenda: Do you struggle with finding community in your local church? How do you find community in a world that seems coupled up?
Megan: Since I am in the middle of a church search, I think my lack of community in my local church is probably more about my lack of a church home, and not necessarily because of my stage of life. In my last church, I felt like the married women didn’t quite understand how my life worked, and because of that, there was a perception of how I was somehow not as grown up or stable as the other women of the church. But I would say that singles have to be more proactive in searching for community. Seek it out, and grow where you are planted. What I did was intentionally find a community that had all stages of life, and they all interacted with each other on a regular basis.
Brenda: Are more of your girlfriends married or single? How do you find authentic friendships as a single woman?
Megan: No matter your stage of life, if you have Christ in common, then an authentic friendship is possible. Most of my friends are married now, even at 26. The area where I live doesn’t have a big 20-something population and an even smaller Christian single 20-something population, so meeting other single Christians is difficult. My most authentic friendships are with women from my small group, and once I find a church to call home, then I am going to ask for a mentor. Many of my single women friends are living in different places, so technology is a great thing for friendships that span large land masses and oceans.
Brenda: Our perception of you is that you are living a fulfilled, purposeful life as a single woman. You’re not waiting around for marriage, but fulfilling God’s call on your life now. What would you say is your secret to doing this?
Megan: It has been a long journey to reach this point in my walk with Christ, and I am only boast about this because of Christ and not because of me. Understanding that Christ + nothing = everything. The Lord has been working on my desire for marriage, I started praying that my desire for a deeper relationship with Jesus would be stronger than my desire to meet man and fall in love. I also asked the Lord to remind me that my life is all about His glory and not my happiness in fulfilled desires. The secret is in the Lord’s work in your life. Ask for it.
Brenda: What words of advice do you have for other single women who want to live with purpose now and not wait for marriage to start their lives?
Megan: Prayer is the biggest piece of advice I would give. Pray the Lord to give purpose to your time begin single. Look for ways to serve the people around you. Put the Lord and others before yourself. Pray the Lord to capture your heart and provides opportunities for you to use your singleness for the Glory of Him and seeing His Kingdom grow. The Lord, in all of His sovereignty, wants to use your singleness for His Glory.
Brenda: And some fun stuff!
Brenda: Which do you like best – Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or Pinterest (or all of it!)?
Megan: I have all of these, except Twitter. I think that Pinterest in my favorite since it has been really help to finding teaching ideas, fitness ideas, and fashion inspiration.
Brenda: What’s your favorite drink?
Megan: Water. 🙂
Brenda: Where would you want to live the rest of your life – beach or mountains?
Megan: Mountains.
Brenda: Do you read more fiction or nonfiction?
Megan: Non-fiction Christian theology or Christian life books.
Brenda: Are you an introvert or extrovert?
Megan: Extrovert.
Brenda: What’s something quirky about you?
Megan: I’m not sure if there is anything quirky about me. It probably seems normal to me.
Brenda: What else do we need to know about you? Where can we connect with you online?
Megan: I blog at He Will Be Faithful, where I blog about being a single Christian, the Christian life, theology, and other general fun stuff. Check it out 🙂
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