Category: For Single Women

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

How do these words leave you feeling?

Do you feel like you’ve read them hundreds of times, and you want so desperately to believe them, but with each year that passes the words themselves become a hope – a hope that you will one day believe them.

The Lord knows His plans because He is already there.  There in your future, preparing and planning.  This is your hope.  Hope that He has not forgotten.

Just about a month ago I had a temper tantrum in the middle of the Chick-fil-A parking lot.  Yes, a full on, blown out, temper tantrum – with tears.  How embarrassed am I?  And it was over oatmeal of all things.

We got there at 10:25, and the line was almost out the door.  But we were in the door before 10:30, right? And surely they make a few extras so that the breakfast cut-off time isn’t right at 10:30.  Besides, I didn’t even want a biscuit.  I just wanted oatmeal.

We were on our way home from a weekend in the mountains.  John wasn’t thrilled about stopping anyway, so when he saw the line was long he was being super patient and very sweet already.  So we stood in the line for five minutes waiting.  When I got up to the counter I placed my order of oatmeal – with granola and brown sugar – or whatever it comes with.  The young girl not-so politely – well, that’s not true, she was probably polite  – said, “Breakfast has ended.”

It was 10:31.  I said, “You don’t have any breakfast food left?” She replied, “No, breakfast has ended.” “You mean you can’t make any oatmeal?” I replied back with a little bit of attitude. “No” , she said, “there is not any more.  Would you like something else?”

“No, all I wanted was oatmeal.”   I stormed out the door making it clear I was unhappy, marched into parking lot, and started crying – before I called the manager back on my cell phone.

John just looked at me.

Isn’t that typical, though, of how we act sometimes when we forget our blessings and instead demand our way?  Hopefully none of you act like a two-year old like I apparently do, but even in our minds we often pout to God when we don’t get our way.

Today we are Falling in Love with Our Blessings, and how vast they are!

No matter how low or sad or desperate your circumstances, you are still very blessed.

Have you considered any of these blessing today?

• the heart that is pumping in your chest right now
• the legs that carry you from one place to another
• that small toe that gives you balance
• the eyes that allow you so see God’s creation
• living in the United States
• the food you ate today and the clean water you drank
• the last breath you just took
• the Cross that gives you a home – forever

Yes, some of these seem almost silly to think about because we take them for granted so often, but today let’s think about them, and let’s Fall in Love with Our Blessings!

This is the seventh day of a ten day series “Falling in Love“. Read the previous posts by clicking below, and don’t forget to enter the giveaway that ends on Tuesday, February 14th!  On Valentine’s Day I will announce the winner!  As a way to bless you, my readers, on the Fall in Love journey!

Fall in Love with Your Life {and Plan a Party} :: Day 1
In this post I tell you how I threw a Valentine’s Day party for myself and all of my single girlfriends, and I show you how you can plan your own! (Plus there’s a link-up!)

Fall in Love with Your Family :: Day 2

Fall in Love with Your Friends :: Day 3

Fall in Love with Those in Need :: Day 4

Fall in Love with Creation :: Day 5

Fall in Love with Your Purpose {And enter a GIVEAWAY from Holley Gerth!!} :: Day 6
Enter to win God’s Heart for You by Holley Gerth!!  I have just started reading it, and am already in awe of how God is speaking to me through it!

My struggle with purpose started when I was a single woman.  If you asked me what I wanted to “be when I grew up” I told you a wife and a mother.  Period.  The end.  No more questions asked.  The answer was the same at ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and now thirty-five.

There is no doubt that God put these desires in me.  They never went away even when I asked for him to change them.  But it’s hard to be a wife and mother without a husband and children, and that I had no control over. I felt like a displaced wanderer not really knowing who I was or what I was supposed to be doing.  My reality kept me in a box from being who I was created to be.

I even chose my degrees based on wanting to be a wife and mother.  I became a teacher with the logic that teachers are home at 3:30 and have summers off.  Little did I know that teachers are rarely home before 5:00 and then bring work home.  It’s the same type job as any other.  Plus little prayer went into my choice of profession, and I didn’t consider things like my personality type or spiritual gifts or what God wanted me to do.  So for thirteen years now I’ve been in a job that I suspect God would not have originally chosen for me had I asked him.

Countless days these words would mutter inside my head, “What is my purpose?  Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing?  I have a job that is not me, I am alone, and I have no one to love and take care of. God, what is my purpose?”

I know I’m not alone in this because I get emails from all of you, single friends, and you say the same thing.  Your heart yearns to be a homemaker, and being single makes you feel stifled and pushed down, unable to fulfill the desires in your heart.

This past year my struggle with purpose came to an all time rock bottom.  Even though I am married, I still do not know what I’m supposed to be doing.  I know teaching isn’t it.  And we do not have children.  So there are still hollow places in my heart.

But God began to teach me about purpose through these ten words that hang on our refrigerator.  They’ve hung there for a while, but only recently have I grasped them.  I wrote them on this index card after hearing a pastor say them in a sermon one time.  It’s funny how God uses his wisdom when we’re ready for it.

Notice the two words “to be”.  My purpose is “to be” not “to do”. I worry and ponder what I am supposed to be “doing” in my life – serving a husband, changing diapers, teaching – when instead God wants me to just “be” in whatever life circumstance I am in so that my life can point others to Him.  As Christians isn’t that ultimately our only purpose anyway? To bring people to Christ? Whether it’s our family, friends, coworkers, or strangers on the street?

I want an easy answer.  I want everything I want to be here and now.  But I’m afraid that even then I may miss my true purpose unless I realize what it is now.

Sweet single friends, your purpose is “to be” in order to bridge a way Jesus.  Meditate on that today, and Fall in Love with Your Purpose.

Fall in Love with Those in Need :: Day 4

If you’ve been around Triple Braided for a few months you know that this past November I went to Burkina Faso, West Africa.  Believe it or not it’s been almost three months, and I still haven’t finished writing about my trip.  I know that sounds a little excessive – three months – to write about a ten day trip.  But that’s how much is in my heart about what I witnessed.  Writing about Burkina is not an easy feat because when I sit down at the computer all of those feelings, emotions, and memories come rushing out like a tidal wave that can’t be stopped – usually all down my face.  By the time I stop the drenching, then think, and finally write hours have gone by.  So I’m telling my story slowing.

But I mention it here because I fell in love in Burkina Faso.  It was a quiet love, a love that comes over you in a way that you don’t know it will and are afraid it won’t ever again.  It’s a love that is different.  It’s a love that is outside of yourself.

One afternoon I was sitting outside with my friend Imelda painting her fingernails.  We sat on concrete blocks that were being used to build a wall around the boys’ school.  As I painted her nails I glanced down and noticed her feet.  She was wearing flip-flops, and as expected in a country with little grass or concrete her feet were filthy from the dirt and dust.

Looking at her feet I had this intense desire to get down on my knees and kneel at them to paint her toenails.  I didn’t know how I would get them clean enough to paint, but that didn’t matter.  I just wanted them to be pretty too.

I asked her if I could paint her toenails and she adamantly said no.  Conscious of possibly offending her or disregarding a custom from her culture I didn’t proceed.  I just continued to paint her fingernails.

Never before, however, have I ever felt the desire to kneel on a dirt ground to touch, hold, clean, and paint someone’s feet.  But in that moment nothing else mattered but that teenage girl – that teenage girl in need.

This Valentine’s Day I encourage you to Fall in Love with Someone in Need, and there are so many ways to do so.  Serving in your community by making Valentine cards for children or the elderly.  Serving other single women in need at a women’s shelter or a pregnancy center.  Or even serving someone in need in your family or a friend.

My life, my wants, my needs became really, really small in Burkina Faso.  I am not trying to tell you that now I am healed from selfishness.  But I can attest to this – not a day goes by that I do not think of Imelda.  And not a time goes by that I do not thank God in the midst of pitching-a-fit.

We met in the third grade – Mrs. Shreiner’s class.  I already had braces and she was petite and just plain cute.  We lived on opposite sides of the neighborhood – me on Camelot Ct. and her on Bluestone Dr. – not super close together, but close enough to walk.  Although we didn’t like to walk the whole way alone.  Instead we would decide on whose house we were going to play, meet in the middle, and then walk together the rest of the way.  The summer was the best because our ice cream sandwiches accompanied us as we walked.  I would carry two, one for me and one for her, and we would eat them together (usually sneaking another one when we got back to my house).

With each of those walks back and forth from house to house we grew up – Christina and me – and roots of a friendship ever so deep planted hard in our hearts.  Today, 27 years later, we still talk at least once a week – sometimes more – and I still consider her the one person on this earth who knows me better than anyone.

It’s the kind of knowing where she can look at me and just by the slightest shift in my facial expression she can tell something else has shifted.  Glancing across the room at each other all we have to do is look into each others’ eyes, and we know exactly what the other one wants to say but can’t at that moment.  And even on the phone no effort to disguise a tone can fool the other person.

Christina is easy to love – truly love.

But what creates true love in a friendship?

1. The Absence of Jealousy

We have lived a long life together.  She had more boyfriends than me.  She was well-liked and very pretty.  I got married first. She has two babies.  But despite all of the joys and trials that we experienced together I can honestly say that bouts of jealousy were extremely short-lived if there at all.  Our friendship was free from competition.  We wanted what was best for each other, and we accepted each others’ blessings and our own defeats.

2. Patient Acceptance

Christina and I are very different.  We have different personalities and gifts and even interests sometimes.  But she has always accepted me – including my quirks and my silliness – and loves me anyway.  When I want to analyze something just one more time after hours of already discussing it, she just listens.  When I say something insensitive, she either ignores it knowing that it wasn’t intended or she addresses it with me.

3. Honest Authenticity

Realness.  I can be real with her – myself – unedited.  This is freeing.  It is so nice to know that there is someone – a friend – who you can be yourself with and that you trust to be herself with you.  And I can trust her to say the hard things if I need to hear them.  The things that other people are probably thinking but too afraid to tell me.

4. Genuine Care

Christina and I genuinely care about each other, each others’ lives, and each others’ families.  We invest in all of the facets of our lives.  I want what is best for her, and she wants what is best for me.

Tell me, how is true love shown in your friendships?

This is the third day in the series “Falling in Love“.  Read the previous posts by clicking below, and don’t forget to enter the giveaway that ends on Friday, February 9th!  Oh, and another giveaway starts the next day!  As a way to bless you, my readers, on the Fall in Love journey!

Fall in Love with Your Life {and Plan a Party} :: Day 1

In this post I tell you how I threw a Valentine’s Day party for myself and all of my single girlfriends, and I show you how you can plan your own!  (Plus there’s a link-up!)

Fall in Love with Your Family {and enter an AWESOME GIVEAWAY} :: Day 2

Learn how we can love our families better, and enter to win your choice of scripture art from Hidden in My Heart!