Then use this Lenten season to pray that God will find you a suitable spouse, if pleasing to the Lord.
Thank you. I will.
After reading
this article and reflecting on it, I realize that I have some amount of freedom to choose my vocation and that the best thing for me is, in fact marriage…
Earlier this year, I thought that Jesus was calling me to lifelong singleness and so I tried to resolve myself to this life. Each day, I felt increasingly negative about Jesus and the Christian life. I finally reached a point, about a couple of weeks ago, to where I was literally desperate to escape this.
I’ve kept running scenarios over in my head where the priest, for whatever reason, announces during a homily or at some other function, that God has in fact called me to life long singleness and there’s nothing I can do about it. I kept thinking that if this happens, I would go back to the synagogues to wait for someone else to come and be the messiah.
I know that Jesus is the Messiah and so I wouldn’t really do that. I would strongly consider it but in the end, I would stay with the Church, not out of love but only out of fear of winding up in Hell.
I have been a smoker off and on for quite a while and despite my best efforts to stop smoking, the more I fear being single, the more I chain smoke.
I made a decision on Saturday of last week (2/22/2014) that I absolutely did not want to remain single but wanted to get married. Since then, my mom has commented that I seem to be getting my life together more and more. I stopped smoking on Ash Wednesday and this time, I am done with it.
So long as I believe that God is preparing me for marriage, I find peace and joy and motivation to get my life ordered.
Also, I am going to start working out again and get my body really in shape.
So long as I entertain the idea that Jesus is calling me to life long singleness, I feel nothing but disappointment, frustration, resentment and fear and I struggle constantly to not have a wholly negative attitude toward him.
I grew up being told for years by the people that attended and were on staff at the protestant congregation I attended as a child that Jesus was keeping me single for his own purposes and there was nothing I could do about it. I spent entire years during my teens deeply and morbidly depressed over this. I wished that I had never been born and the fear of Hell was often the only thing that kept me from killing myself.
When I was attending synagogue, every Jew there wanted me to get married and taught that God wanted me married and I was at peace with that.
Since I’ve come into the Church, a lot of my childhood ideas about Jesus have resurfaced and I find a complete absence of peace in the idea that Jesus wants me single. Also, it is sometimes suggested to me that I should become a priest or join some other religious order and my feelings toward this are always, without exception, wholly and exceedingly negative.
The single life isn’t right for me. It never was and the thought that I am stuck being single for my whole life leads me not to peace or Godly living but to despair, depression and very self destructive behavior.
I’ve been told my entire life that God is love and that Jesus is my best friend. If there is one thing that I know for sure, love doesn’t want me single and my best friend isn’t calling me to a life of singleness but instead will do whatever he can to help me bring this state to an end.
Instead of constantly hating and resenting Jesus out of fear that he has cruelly and heartlessly imposed an utterly horrible life of singleness on me, I’m going to instead start believing in his goodness and the I will soon marry. Instead of fighting tooth and nail against him (and basically getting in his way and continuing to stay single as a result), I’m going to try my best to cooperate with him and help me become the person I need to be in order to be a good husband.
I’m going to try as best as I can to be forever done even considering that singleness is actually what God wants for me. Because of my past with those protestants, I’m prone to getting very upset at even the mere mention that God would do something so utterly hateful and cruel as to keep me single and I’m going to have to work on that.
I ask whoever reads this to pray that I keep faith in God and know in my heart that He does not want me single.
Thank you for your prayers.
(One final note. To all of you that are still trying to see me off to the priesthood or some other lifelong single religious vocation, in my confusion, I’ve already tried to enter an order. The vocations directer in my diocese won’t have it. He’s refused my every attempt to go into the religious life. He’s even told me that I am barred for life from ever being a priest and that I am definitely not called to that. He hasn’t stated so but I believe that his refusal to admit me into a life as a religious is because he recognizes that I definitely do not want this but instead, only tried because I felt like I was being forced into it. His answer is to close the doors on that).
