Dear Mandy,

Firstly I just love your e-book and I can’t wait for the new one. Thanks for the website and tweets!

I’m 34 and I have been waiting to hear the words I love you and to say I love you to that one special Man.

I am a born again Christian woman and I have made the choice to not have sex before marriage. This has meant that some of the guys I have met haven’t understood me and have dumped me.

How do you hold on to your faith and your ideals when you look back and see that it hasn’t really worked? I have been faithful but have gotten to the point where I’m tired and I’m looking around at people who have compromised and they are married with Kids.  I guess my question is how do you keep your spirits up? Sometimes I fear that I will be single forever and as a result I have frantically started putting myself on online dating sites and trying to get more involved in church to try and meet my husband but it’s like the more I try the more elusive it is.

Thanks for everything that you do. Thanks for being strong when we feel weak, you give us hope and give us a voice.

God bless you!

—A single woman in South Africa

 

Dear Precious Friend:

Oh, how I recognize my own voice in your email! Sometimes I look around at all the married couples surrounding me, some I know for a fact didn’t remain pure until marriage, and I am left to ask: Why, God? How is this fair? Why do You seem to have such impossible standards for my life but not for others? I lie down in front of God and kick and scream and beat my fists against the ground in frustration, essentially throwing a temper tantrum. And after a little while, once I’ve gotten all my tears out, He picks me up and puts me back on solid ground with a pat on the back and reminds me of one very important thing: While others have settled … I was not called to. That’s not my path. And guess what? It’s not yours, either.

I want to point out a couple of things about you that I think you might have forgotten about yourself.

 1) You are STRONG. You have made a decision and set a boundary and stuck by it even when people walked away from you because of it. That takes courage. That takes discipline. And it takes faith. In yourself, in God and in the fact that you deserve better.

2) You are worthy of someone who will respect you enough to respect the boundaries that you have set for yourself and your life. The weak men who hit the road at the first sight of a woman who refused to lower her standards clearly did not meet them! So bid them a fond farewell and say a prayer of gratitude that God meddled before you settled.

Lady, you are a woman of purity who loves her Lord enough to send away what she wants most in the world – LOVE – because you were so fiercely faithful, you refused to allow yourself to settle for anything else than God’s best. You know what that makes you? A Queen! And a Queen is worthy of a KING … not a Court Jester!

Ultimately, if God’s will for your life is to be married … the man He has for you will respect your boundaries, your standards, your morals and your body. No questions asked. And my wonderful friend … if it’s not God’s will that you be married, then He has a plan far bigger for your life than you can even comprehend. A plan SO big, He needs to keep you to Himself. So stop the frantic chase of love and relax into His embrace, knowing without reservation that your path is meaningful, and significant, and beautiful and valuable … with or without someone to join you on it.

Love,
Mandy