Create a Life

I recently got into a discussion about single young women. And one girl said something that stuck out particularly to me.

"We need a life to share with someone else instead of waiting for a guy to come along with all the put-togetherness."

How true is this? I come from a conservative background where books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and When God Writes Your Love Story and Boy Meets Girl, as well as the ideals of courtship were promoted. I had friends who preached the necessity of a girl living at home until she was married and the evils of working outside as a single girl.

To this day, in conservative circles, the idea that a girl should stay at home and assist her father and brothers in pursuing their dreams is heavily pushed upon every young woman. I reject these ideas because this implies that God has created robot women, each one exactly alike with the same exact talents and gifts to be used in the same exact way. I believe in a God that created individuals not just genders or gender roles.

That having been said, I believe in creating a life for myself, based on the calling God has for me. If a girl sits around doing nothing with her life while waiting for a man who may never show, then she has wasted a perfectly good life. If a girl was meant to wait for a man to begin her life, then why wasn't she born the day of her wedding? The fact is, a man doesn't need to put together a life for himself AND then create a life for the girl he loves in order for him to marry her.  A girl doesn't need a man to create a life for her. She has the tools and gifts to do so for herself right at her fingertips. If a man cannot fit into the life that a woman has built for herself according to the calling God has led her on, then he is not. worth. it. A woman needs a man whose life is compatible with her own. God didn't create us to place man, a husband, as the center of our lives. He didn't create us to place a man and his life above all else, above the gifts and calling God has given to us individually. And while some say that this can fit into the form of a housewife and homemaker and mother, it doesn't always. Some women aren't called to that life.

Waiting to build a life around a husband is a waste. It is creating an idol out of  a husband. We can have absolutely marvelous lives if we'd only stop sitting around, waiting for a man who could possibly never show up on our doorsteps. I am an individual, a woman called to do something with her life. And if a man wants to enter this life, he has to be compatible with it, just as my life needs to be compatible with his. And in this way, I am not wasting my life away nor am I obsessing over an idol of a man, a husband.

If we create a life for ourselves, this does not mean that all men will be scared away nor that there won't be any room for a husband. Yes, perhaps it won't work out with the lives of a lot of men, but as Amy March said, "You don't need scores of suitors. You only need one. If he's the right one." Create a life that you're called to create...a life you can share not give up.