Learning To Be An Individual

I can tell you that I did NOT know who I was when I was single.  I wasn’t even sure what that meant.  

I went from being a kid with no stable father figure to having a boyfriend at age 10…, and I honestly can’t remember a time when I WASN’T in a “boyfriend/girlfriend type of relationship.  I dumped one boyfriend only to date another until one of them became my fiancé…, and we were engaged only a few short months before saying “I do.”   

I never had a “single life”.  

Myles Monroe says it so well… “The average person has never been single, even though he or she may be unmarried or divorced. Unmarried means to be without a spouse (so does divorce, in the legal sense), but single means to be all one (alone)—a separate, unique, and independently whole individual.” – (Munroe, Myles. Single, Married, Separated and Life after Divorce)

The only way I found any value or self-worth was when a boy wanted to kiss me, date me, or thought I was pretty.  As long as I had a guy that wanted to spend time with me, touch me, even use me… I felt valuable.  

This was working for me, kind of, for a season, and it kept me distracted enough to never think about my actual condition.  

I can’t tell you how many problems this caused in my first marriage.  I was married to my first husband for 13 years.  We were married when I was 20; he was 21.  And to tell you the truth, we both were using each other to fill our own personal voids; we were in trouble from the start.  

“If you don’t know who you are, or if you have a poor sense of self-worth, you have not yet tapped into the God-nature within you and will probably be a liability to anyone you marry. To marry without a strong sense of self-worth and personal identity means that you will spend your life trying to become somebody, usually by attaching yourself to your spouse’s identity. If your spouse also has an identity problem, then you have double trouble.” – Munroe, Myles. 

Unfortunately, getting married never fixes self-worth or identity problems, or ANY issues of the heart for that matter.  In my experience, it has always magnified them.  

I had a counselor tell me once, “when women hit their 30s, it is common for them to want to seek out their own identity apart from being a wife and mother.  They start pulling away and wanting to discover who they are as an individual.  The husband senses in their wife a desire for independence.  Out of fear of losing her, or “the woman he married,” he tightens his grip on her instead of supporting her during this critical and necessary time in her life.  Many marriages don’t survive it.”

YOU CAN AVOID THIS WHOLE PROCESS BY KNOWING WHO YOU ARE BEFORE MARRIAGE!  

“Many marriages fail because people get married before they become single. They latch onto a spouse, identifying themselves with someone else before they have come to terms with their own identity. They marry expecting marriage to make them single. In other words, lacking a personal sense of completeness, they look to marriage to make them whole persons.” – Munroe, Myles. 

That is precisely how I felt.  I needed this person to make me valuable, to make me a whole person.  And THAT, my sweet girls, is a recipe for disaster.  

Munroe says, “You need to know who you are and be secure and complete and whole within yourself before you get married. If you know who you are—if you have a good self-image—you won’t need anyone in order to be someone.” 

And I couldn’t agree more.  

Do you feel unloved or unworthy?  Do you feel unwanted or worthless?  Why?  Has your past taught you to feel that way?  Has betrayal, abandonment, rejection, or shame created a sense of worthlessness in your soul?  Have you had a season dependent on only Jesus to heal and discover His plans and purposes, JUST for YOU?  How are your self-esteem, confidence, and self-image?  Are you desperate for a relationship with a man?  Is your identity found in JESUS or something/someone else? 

My goal with this blog is to get you to examine your heart and life and to be honest with YOURSELF.  My goal is that you will consume Jesus and all he has for you at 100MPH!  

Here are some excellent books to get you started.  Make it your mission to be healed and whole.  Choose to have a biblical view of marriage.  

1. Who Do You Think You Are by Douglas Graves 
2. God’s Remedy for Rejection by Derek Prince 
3. Passion and Purity by Elisabeth Elliot 
4. Single, Married, Separated & Life After Divorce: Myles Monroe
5. The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage: Myles Monroe

Jesus has incredible plans for YOU, personally.  A spouse is a bonus!  GO after God with all you have, and He will take care of the rest! 

Blessings, my Beauties!