Dear young Chr!stian women.

Are you starting to feel funny that you're now of marriageable age and have no prospects in sight? Do you feel like you must be odd because you've never been asked on a date? Are you feeling doubt about your future because the childhood plan of grow-up-and-get-married isn't quite panning out like you had expected? Do you feel like you stand alone, a kind of modern nun, the only girl who is unattached, who must be, maybe, unwanted?

And there's a lot that's been written about seeking Him instead of seeking a him, or on using singleness as preparation, and that stuff's not bad or anything.

And there's a lot that's been written about what's going on with the boys and how their generation needs to step it up, and maybe there's some truth to that. 

But I'm not super concerned with the what or the why. I don't know about the future and if we're looking at a generation of Chr!stian single ladies. I got no advice on any of that. Absolutely none. But let me just tell you, you're not the only one. 

You are one of countless kind, beautiful, smart, funny, mature, and godly young women in the same boat. You are not defective. You are not bizarre. You are not repulsive. You are one of the many girls who love J3sus with an inspiring passion and who are enormously talented with amazing gifts, but who have never honest-to-goodness been wooed. There are many, many, many of similar such Chr!stian single ladies. Droves. Shining paragons of eligibility who have somehow never have had a suitor. 

It's a bizarre phenomenon. 

But let me assure you it is a phenomenon. You're not alone in feeling like this.

If you feel like all of your friends are getting engaged and they're looking at you like you must be so lonely, you're not the only one.

If you watch the birthdays tick by and see your hopes to have family by a certain year get pushed back and pushed back, you're not the only one. 

If you're worried that the gift of singleness is not returnable, exchangeable, or refundable, you're not the only one. 

If you feel directionless or purposeless because you've been waiting to wrap your destiny with someone else, you're not the only one.

If you feel walled in by expectations or assumptions that you must be damaged or dysfunctional because you're single, you're not the only one. 

Lies isolate people, don't they? In isolation people wither. And it tugs at my heart when I see these girls withering, believing they are wallflowers, that they stand alone as the last one picked. Nothing is farther from the truth. Don't let comparison tell you that there must be something wrong with you. Don't let the lies that tell you that you're in some way defective take root in your heart. You're lovely. 

Whether you care that you're single or not, you're lovely. Whether you feel judged by marriage-oriented Chr!stian culture or not, you're lovely. Whether you've been waiting quietly for a life partner or not, you're lovely. 

You're not repellent, maladjusted, or unloveable. And you're not alone. You're lovely. Don't forget it.