Have you ever looked at your life and felt like there was nothing to live for? Not speaking of people, but of purpose.

I have.

I’m an artist, a feeler. Everything hurts. Everything is amplified. Everything is joy. Sometimes it’s a heartbreaking combination. I used to sit on the top of my daddy’s grain bin, staring up at the stars, tears running down my face, wondering what it would feel like to be weightless for that one moment before my body hit the ground. But there was always the contrast, the hope, the desire to have a life that meant something. The stars were so beautiful. The beauty made my soul ache and long to understand. I was trapped in my body, in my emotions, in the way I viewed love. I used to look at my body and value it for what it was, something to use to get what I wanted, something to use so that I wouldn’t be alone.

Everyone lives for love. It’s all they want. All they think about and all they sing about. Love is devastating when you don’t know what it really is. Love can be awful. Like when you hear it over and over again and then it leaves you broken. Like when you wake up in the morning next to someone who only said it so that they wouldn’t have to sleep alone. Like when your parents decide that it isn’t worth it anymore and move into different houses. Like when it knocks the breath out of you and makes you feel like you’ve lived through war zones and battlefields and come out broken.

One morning I woke up and my spirit was different. I felt hopeful. I felt curious. I went to the river and I decided to walk alone in the woods and let my soul expand. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I was searching. Deeply. And then all at once, I found it. A tiny, empty cocoon hanging from a branch over the water. It was then that I heard God’s voice for the first time, it was then that He told me that I could be that. It was a dangerous, magical invitation. I could be like the butterfly who, after wrapping her previous form in the cocoon, was completely transformed, and in the end, flew out of it with beautiful wings. Free.

I carefully picked the cocoon from it’s place on the branch and held it in my hands so gently. That night I stood alone in my room with a blank canvas, the cocoon, and God himself. And I began to paint. I painted furiously. I painted with tears running down my face. I painted as if my life depended on it. And at the end I stood back and saw what I had painted from the depths of my soul. It was myself, or rather my spirit, a pure figure of white, long flowing hair in every color of the rainbow, a stream of water flowing through my heart, hands held open. And it was in those hands that I attached the cocoon to the canvas, a treasure and a reminder of all that could be. I looked at myself how I had painted “me” and how I knew, for the first time, that God saw me. Pure, beautiful, full of life and possibility.

That was the night that my whole life changed forever.

I decided that night that I would be single until God specifically told me otherwise. I had no idea what that meant, just that my heart was going to be dedicated to God alone from then on. I spent my whole life walking through a battlefield. I watched my parents love for each other turn to hate and then into indifference. I dated boys, looking into their eyes to see myself. I loved boys for what I knew love to be. I opened my heart over and over again to love and let it get ripped to shreds by something that was only a cheap replica of the real thing. I found every bit of my worth in others. After 5 years of living that way, all that was left in me was a hard, bitter, darkness. I hated everything I had become. I hated the way I needed them to tell me who I was. I hated love, or what I thought love to be.

The night my life changed, my heart was a mess. My life was a mess. But I knew that God wanted me, that he was calling out to me. And so I went with him, only him, and I went with my whole heart.

I didn’t go on a single date for 2 years. I carefully guarded and protected my heart during that time. I promised myself that I would never go back to that dark place of needing to find myself in others, and I didn’t. I looked hard at myself and I began a journey with the Holy Spirit. A journey where He showed me exactly who I was and where He revealed to me the truth about love.

I talk to so many girls who see singleness as a curse, something that defines them as unwanted or unloved. I talk to so many young Christian girls who are upset with God for not sending their husband yet. Girls who have watched their friends get married while they feel like they stood on the sidelines. Girls who think that maybe they aren’t good enough. Maybe they aren’t worth it. Girls who place all of their worth in whether or not they are dating or married. And I get it, I’ve been there. I know. And I have also left that place and found the gold that lies in being single, getting to know yourself, and being in that special place of intimacy with God.

Dear one, your worth comes from who you are. You are a daughter of God. You are beloved. And I implore you, do not waste this season of your life. The season of being single is so very beautiful. It is a time of intimacy with God and with yourself that will never be the same again. It is a special gift from Heaven. I look back on my season of being single and I treasure it. I treasure everything I learned in that time, I treasure the struggle, the fight, the becoming. I treasure the self that I found in those moments.

I wrote this blog about how being married is the best. I need you to understand that being single is also THE VERY BEST.

Being single is the best because midnight trips to the beach. Or the mountains. Or the movie theater to see a matinee by yourself. Or the coffee shop on tuesday afternoon with your journal and a good cup of coffee. It is a time when you can go anywhere on a whim. It can be a season of joy and of adventure. It is a time of finding your adventurous spirit, of knowing yourself.

Being single is the best because TREAT YO’SELF. Stay at home on Friday night, put in a good movie, smear a homemade avocado facemask on, paint your nails, wear your PJs. Be good to yourself. Love yourself. Write yourself love letters and tape them all around your room. Buy yourself flowers. Don’t wait on someone else to do it. Do it for yourself, because you are so worth it. 

Being single is the best because travel. Study abroad. Visit your family in another state. Go and stay with your parent’s friends from college who live in another country. Take off. Do it. Work crazy late hours to save the money. Wake up at 4 am and go to sleep at 1am if that’s what it takes. Eat only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to save money. Get there. Go. Live with a family in another culture and see what their life looks like. Be an explorer, a student, a studier of people and places.

Being single is the best because Jesus. It is the only time in your whole life that you will have this specific type of relationship with Him. It is a beautiful and unique time when it is only you and Him. Someday, a husband will come. Babies will come. and those things are also beautiful. But not the same. There is a special connection that you are forming with Jesus right now that you will always treasure. Don’t waste it. Let him be your lover, your husband. Let him be the only one who romances you, the only one who catches your eye. Let him bring you flowers and write you special love letters and show you how dearly loved you are. Let him show you what love really means. True, pure, beautiful, endless love.

I want to share with you, once again, the scripture that I have been reading and re-reading lately.

You see, dear one, each season is the very best. Each season is uniquely different. Each season will change you, teach you, stretch you to new limits. Each season has its time and its purpose. Do not wish your season away. Do not let this precious season pass you by while you are wishing to be someplace else. Take the season of being single for what it is, a treasure. A time to grow. A time to get to know yourself. A time to become. A time to rest. A time to be loved. 

Know that I am hoping for you. I am praying for  you. I am in your corner.
I am cheering you on in your journey, and I am so excited for you to embrace this season of life, this special time that you will always treasure.

In the spirit of love and adventure, xoxo,

Ellyn