Lies I've told myself on Valentine's Day

Next Saturday is Valentine's Day. I don't know how it is for everybody else, but for me every February is a screaming reminder of romantic relational status and of cultural pressure. I have been very whiny about this in the past. I have written anti-Valentine's Day manifestos. I'm still not a fan of Valentine's Day. I could list my reasons why, and every year those years clarify a little more, but I fear that they often come across as sour grapes, even though every year the reasons become less emotional. (One of the annoying things about not being married is that few people seem to believe you at the times when you're okay with that...apparently contentment with where God has placed you is not for unmarried people.)

I have never had a date on Valentine's Day. Or around Valentine's Day. Or ever. I realized this year that I have often hidden that fact, pretended I had my share of that sort of experience, and I started wondering why. I think it's because I bought into a lot of lies about that sort of thing. Here are a few of them.

Lie #1: There must be something wrong with me.

• A lot of women I know, even the unmarried ones, have a string of stories about dates they've been on and men chasing after them. I don't. There's a selfish part of me that sometimes wishes I did, but it's overridden by the part of me that hates the thought of messing around with somebody else's heart. I've had enough grief over unrequited romances myself--I don't want to inflict that on anyone else. So from that perspective, maybe it's not something wrong with me that has kept the men from beating my door down, maybe it's something right.
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• Anyway, if I have to change in order to attract a man, then it isn't really me attracting a man, it's me misleading a man. Not fair to either of us. The best and most lasting changes are inspired by love that exists without needing the changes. 
  
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• "I know you love me just the way I am / So I'll change my ways if I think I can" -- Michelle Tumes

Lie #2: Maybe I should be doing something differently.

• This has led me into being too aggressive sometimes. Few people but me could identify when this line had been crossed, but suffice it to say that there comes a point at which I feel that if something were to happen romantically it would be because of my pursuing the man instead of the other way around. Thank God nobody has actually fallen for me in those situations, because I wouldn't have respected him. (I believe that submission as the church submits to Christ implies pursuit as Christ pursues the church.)
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• This lie feeds into my impatient Sarah heart, the "take matters into my own hands" mentality. (There is a time for taking matters into your own hands. I think a good test of whether or not it's the wrong time is to examine your heart to see how much impatience is seething there.) And I'm not the only one who falls into this mode of living. Someone I know recently entered into a serious romantic relationship. When asked if it was worth waiting for, she said yes, it was. But she wished she had waited more patiently, and not created so many Ishmaels along the way. I like the way she put that. I want to leave my Ishmael count where it is now.

Lie #3: Given enough time, I could drive anybody away.

• I have experienced enough friendships with people I was actively vicious towards to know that when it's meant to be, it's meant to be. True, many of those people have now moved on to the outskirts of my life (how very Nanny McPhee--"As long as you need me but don't want me, I will stay. When you want me but don't need me, then I will leave"--and yes, I did just reference that movie). But they remain good examples of this truth: what God is bringing together, no power on earth can hinder.

Lie #4: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who hasn't dated a bazillion other women before drop significantly.

• As a famous pilot once said, "Never tell me the odds." It's weird, but for somebody who dislikes math as much as I do, I try to turn life into statistics a lot. That is a denial of my stated belief that God holds my future in His hands and knows what He has planned for me. My life is not governed by chance or odds. 
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• There's also the fact that my dream of meeting a man who has been waiting his whole life for someone just like me could prove to be like my friend Sabrina's similar dream of becoming the first-time wife of a long-time Christian around her own age. Then she met Andrew, a divorced man who had become a Christian a few years previously and who is several years older than she is. And they are beautiful together. God's plans for us are better than what we could ever dream up for ourselves.

Lie #5: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who is actually interested in me personally and not just desperately searching for a wife drop significantly.

• See #4a. 
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• You may have noticed the C.S. Lewis quote I have on this site: "The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself." I want people to take me as I am, and the fact that I am a woman is part of that, but by no means all of it.
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• As for what's wrong with searching for a wife? Maybe nothing. I just have a pretty big ego and I want somebody to be searching for me. Maybe that doesn't actually happen. Probably not. Probably it could start out "I need a woman...any woman" and turn into "it is you I have loved all along." Also, come to think of it, I've always been more Beauty and the Beast than The Little Mermaid.
  

Lie #6: As the years pass, the odds of meeting a man who hasn't been badgered into meeting me drop significantly.

• See #4a.
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• I don't like the idea of being set up. First, let's think of other connotations of the phrase "set up." If that isn't enough to bring you to my way of thinking, which it probably isn't for some of you, here's the main thing I don't like about it: to me, it reinforces so many of the other lies swimming about in my increasingly conscious mind. 

I have never been on one single date. And I am more than okay with that. I am more than okay with how much God has taught me over the past several years about my twisted expectations, how much He has revealed of my heart (which is much more confusing than I used to think it was), how much He has shown me His sufficiency, how much He has changed my priorities, how many times He has let my heart break and has re-formed it to look more like His.

This year I will not be moping on Valentine's Day. 

Further up and further in.