To My Single Friends

Dear single friend,

Do you know how much I, a married woman about to become a mother, admire and respect you?

Paulo Otávio on Flickr.

You, who by choice or circumstance remain single, teach me things my married friends can’t. Even though I have a husband and this fully pregnant belly, I look to you for lessons in solitude and friendship.

I’ve been in the same relationship since high school, so I often wonder how you and I can even relate. Your life looks so different from my life. You can emphatically pursue a career, go out last minute for a girls’ night (or guys’ night), invite people over at a whim, pack up and go visit family or friends for a weekend, use your money to go on a trip, buy whatever you’d like for yourself. You can go on a summer mission trip without missing the person with whom you share a bed, move to another state without uprooting your family. Your money and your time is yours.

I don’t mean to compare or complain. Marriage comes with its own distractions and commitments. It also comes with benefits of companionship and security, but that doesn’t mean I think my life is better than yours–I hope you see that too. We can learn from each other. Marriage is filled with so many what-ifs. What if my husband dies? What if we one day need to live separately for a time? In those times, even if you’ve moved past your current stage in life, it will be to you I look for comfort. I will look to you to teach me how to be alone. For now, by inviting you into my family, sharing my marriage and soon my child with you, I get so much joy knowing that it could be preparing you for your future, or even simply filling a gap in your life.

Isn’t it cool how we can get a more full experience of life just by being around each other?

So I want to thank you for participating in my life with me. I also want to thank you for sharing your life. Through you, I learn spontaneity. I learn to embrace solitude and use it well, I learn how to be a fully engaged friend, I learn how it looks again to have God as the first leader in life.

And the generosity you’ve shown me in taking me out, bringing me snacks, buying things for my baby you haven’t even met yet, I hope I can one day pay back to you.

Though our lives look so different, please know how much you mean to me.

Marriage is two becoming one, not to two halves becoming a whole. Know that you are whole. You are greatly and dearly loved.