I am NOT a Deviant!

So my cute young friend Stacey made the statement last night that she is tired of people looking at her like she's weird for being single, and she followed it with this declaration: "Single is not deviant behavior!" First off, Stacey gets mad props for using a word like "deviant," because that's not a word that I throw around in normal everyday language. But even more so, she's touched on a point that is worth repeating (sometimes over and over again): Just because I'm single doesn't mean there's something fundamentally wrong with me.

Now, honestly, girls, how many times have you secretly asked yourself this question? Let's be even more honest: how many times have we not-so-secretly asked this question to one of our best friends? Some boy we liked that didn't return the favor? Perfect strangers on the street? (I'm sure this last group would have an idea or two. . . .) When things go wrong, or they just don't work out, or we start feeling really lonely, we have a tendency to turn inward and see if we can identify the one flaw we have that repels men faster than a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner.

But hey, guess what? Chances are that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you. (Unless you look and act like Helena Bonham Carter in the Harry Potter movies; THEN we might need to have a little chat, just you and me.) That last guy that you were with/you liked--there are a myriad of reasons it didn't work out, and sure, you might bear the blame for some of that, but so does he. At the end of the day, we are all fallen creatures, but we are loved by a God Who made us the way we are--quirks and all--and He thinks we're pretty special.

So before you start spending hours upon hours examining your face in the bathroom mirror and start planning your plastic surgery, or before you spend countless hours asking your best friend, "Am I too demanding? Am I? AM I????" think about this fact: we women tend to turn inward to figure out what we did wrong to make a relationship go south. And sometimes we are able to identify a solitary mistake, but that's pretty rare. In the meantime, that boy over there is hanging out with his friends, doing stuff that he wants to do, and is moving on with his life without wallowing in a load of self pity and regret. So why don't we take some lessons from him and do the same?

And when you stop a minute and start looking around, you discover that contrary to the way you feel, you are NOT the last single woman left on the planet. In fact, there are some pretty incredible women who remain unattached, and they certainly aren't deviant. So what makes you one?