MY JOURNEY TO DISCOVERING THE JOY OF BEING SINGLE (PART 1)

Hello guys. I know I haven't posted anything in over a year but I'm back and I'm happy to be. If this is your first time here (welcome) and you are wondering who on earth I am?

My name is Grace an international student from Lagos, Nigeria and I am currently attending college at Minnesota State University Mankato. I wanted to share one of my experience this past summer and specifically one which let me to discovering the joy of being single.

 For context, I have had two boyfriends in the past. The first one was when I was 15 years old, we dated for nine months, and the second was when I was 16 years old and we dated for two years and broke up and my single journey began. I have currently been single for four years now and counting and never for once did I think I was or felt lonely until God started correcting me the summer of 2017.     
Getting corrected by God is great but can be also be very difficult. And that exactly my process but at the end of it all I wouldn’t trade it for any other thing.
 
It all started sometime in June of 2017 when one of my close male friend told me he was beginning to have feeling for some girl he met at church and he was thinking of pursuing her. For the sake of this post let’s call my friend Dotun and the girl Bukky. Dotun and I have been friends for almost thirteen years, really good friends at that. And my coming to the United States to study didn’t affect our friendship if anything, it made it stronger. 
We did a lot of things together. We prayed, talked about every and anything, helped each other in difficult times, we were just really good buddies. And no, I was not friend zoned, neither was he friend zoned. We were just friends and nothing more.

Back to when Dotun and I were talking and he told me about bukky, as soon he mentioned pursuing her my emotions began going all over. I was angry, jealous, uncomfortable you name it. But above all I was angry at myself for feeling that way, I just couldn’t figure out why on earth I was feeling that way  and that made me more frustrated. But of course I acted like I was okay on the phone and even encouraged him to go after her because honestly she is a great girl and I did not have any problems with her.

After our phone conversation I started thinking about why I was feeling the way I felt. I thought oh maybe I like Dotun or oh maybe the girl isn’t just good enough for him and this went on for a while and then I concluded I am just being jealous, which I didn’t think was necessarily bad because there is this new girl coming into Dotun’s life  and soon he'd have to share his time with her and so I assumed my jealousy feeling was me mourning the transitioning of our but deep down I knew there was more to that feeling. 

For the sake of my sanity I decided to push the feelings aside and pretended like nothing happened, and this worked for a while until I started noticing the distance between Dotun and I. We didn’t talk as much as we used to, and when we did half of the discussion was about Bukky and gradually the number of times we talked eventually reduced. My feelings got worse, so I decided it's time I faced my emotions and I did.

The first thing I did was tell Dotun exactly how I was feeling and how I was struggling. I then asked that he gave me time to deal with it on my own and see what happens to which he gladly obliged.

The second thing I did (which should have been the first 🙄) was talking to God about my emotions. My emotions were so overwhelming that I couldn't fully articulate them so automatically I didn’t think anyone around me could understand me even I tried explaining. I would go into the restroom, turn on the running water so my roommates didn't hear me and groan to the Lord because words couldn't cut it at this point and I'll just stay there and try to listen for him to speak. 
I just wanted to hear him say something. I felt so unhappy, weak and just terrible but still I decided to sort it all out with Jesus because I knew he was the only one who had the answers I was looking for. And gradually my prayer went from God please tell me why I am feeling this way to, Lord what are you teaching me.

 One afternoon, I was walking back home from visiting a friend and was in my thoughts when the Holyspirit  said “you turned my blessing to you (my friendship with dotun) to your God and turned me to your blessing”. At that moment it was like a heavy weight was lifted off my shoulders, I felt so happy that one, I wasn’t crazy and two Jesus finally spoke to me, he said something!!! I thought to myself he cares, he was listening, he was there all those times I was crying and groaning in the restroom. 

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST.....

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