Many people cannot stand events like Valentine’s Day and it’s not just singles, though people without partners—those wanting one—may find all the modern hype of days vaunting romance as verging on sickening. That’s fair enough.
Recalling single life as a person who was not called to celibacy brings back many rich memories—pain-filled but full of growth.
For singles destined for non-celibacy, surviving Valentine’s Day is about either denying its reality—shutting it out—or coming to terms with it, in acceptance, patiently waiting for life to return to normal. Both methods, among others, are fine.
Painting a False Reality
Factors of influence tend their way over our psyches commensurate with what we give our minds attention to. In other words, if we live in a retail world, constantly watching television and absorbing other marketing-saturated media, we can expect to be bombarded by the hype of events like Valentine’s Day.
The lead up to days like this is frenetic; a promotional circus around sales.
It is maddening for a single person harping for the couple-life to swim amongst the treacherous rips out in the surf of retailed coupledom.
Dealing with Truth Closer to Home
How do we effectively empathise with the single person around Valentine’s Day? Some say it’s simple: “Fall in love with Jesus.” Well, that’s simpler for some than for others because we’re all wired differently. It’s insensitive to think that everyone can choose for themselves—and immediately so—Christ as their ‘husband’. That is a process for all, though some are blessed miraculously.
The issues behind the desire for a relationship are complex and only known to God.
It’s a mystery for some just how powerful the struggle is. They don’t actually enjoy living like this and notions like Valentine’s Day just thrust romance in their faces like a putrid smell.
Surviving Valentine’s Day is a method that can only be invented at an individual level, besides the suggestions to accept or deny.
Some truths don’t change no matter how much we pray, and it’s another insensitive thing to moot that “God gives us all our desires.” God does not accede to all our desires; besides the fact that some are not good for us, many of those that are or would be, for some reason unknown to us, do not materialise.
If God is calling us to coupledom, it’s best to arrange life in such a way that the in-between time as a single is handled as tolerably as possible.
This may mean skirting past and around things like Valentine’s Day. It’s as simple as diverting the attention to something more positive.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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