Many people look at my life and they see a problem I am single.

I sometimes feel like I wear a badge of singleness, or that there is a giant red S stamped across my resume and, for that matter, my life. Please understand me, I would like to get married. One of the things I desire in life is to be a husband and a father. In my quest to become a full-time youth minister, my singleness has been, without question, my single greatest detriment. I have to tell literally every committee I speak to that I would like to get married, but that I haven’t met the right girl yet.

So how is it that I became 35 and single?

The way I see it, there are three factors. The first factor in my singleness is my living circumstances. I have been living alone (unless the dog counts) for the past 10 years. And somewhere over the course of these last 10 years I have become comfortable with my life. It doesn’t bother me to be alone and I am almost never lonely. In fact, I am rather content. Contentment is normally not a problem, it is a blessing. It has, however, been a factor leading to my singleness.

The second factor in my singleness is the situation of my life. I have been a member of only small churches for the past 15 years or so. So let’s just say that the pool of eligible women has not been huge. While at SEBTS there were a few girls I was interested in. Girls are really good at sending signals though, and I can usually tell when they are not interested back. I did get rejected a couple of times, which is actually good.

The third factor is how I spend my free time. When I’m not at work or church (those are often the same thing) I watch TV (alone, in my house - not a lot of girls there) or I fish. A watershed lake on the back side of Ft. Bragg is not a very good location to meet people at all. It is certainly not a real hotbed of eligible females.

I think the problem at the core is that I am not desperate enough. I would like to meet the right girl and get my life to the place where everybody else thinks I should be, but I don't feel incomplete or broken in any way because I haven't.

Tomorrow...My half-baked plan for the future