The gem sparkles in the deep silence of the vault.

Outside the vault, the iconic Tiffany in New York City teems with eager shoppers fingering coveted pieces of designer jewellery on display.

“This gem is for serious buyers who understand its value. It is not for the masses,” is how the jewel is described.

That was also God’s response when I protested for the nth time against a barren love life in a city where everyone seemed to be either on the way to hooking up with someone, or in the throes of a hook up, or recovering from a hook up. 

I was not convinced.

When I handed over my love life to God, I did not expect to wait 20 years.

I had been in a string of relationships since I was 17.

Each time one collapsed, I tore myself to shreds: Did I do something? Did I not do something? Was I too independent? Too needy? Did I talk too much, too little?

And the real question: Was I not enough?

After I came face to face with God in the gruesome aftermath of September 11 that threw me into another toxic relationship, my pastor pulled a Nathan (2 Samuel 12:7) on me one day. 

He wagged his finger in my face and pronounced with a straight face: “You are living in sin.”

I broke down and broke off the relationship almost immediately. 

On that day, I handed over the reins of my love life to my heavenly Father.

I swore I would never again give myself away; only my Father could.

I wanted the God choice, not just the good choice.  

The long wait

The early years of surrender were full of anticipation and glee. I was in the first flush of love with Jesus, happily doing life with Him.

I remember hearing a sermon my pastor was preaching to the youths. It was based on Song of Songs 8:4: “Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”

I was happy to let my passion for romance lie dormant.  

I had just crossed into my 30s, confident God would bring me a man after His heart.

I was attending a tiny church in a ghetto in New York where the congregants were either kids, teenagers or single mothers. I spent my single years babysitting, teaching and hanging out with other people’s children.

My friends helpfully advised me to switch to a bigger church in a better neighbourhood that would offer more hope of finding a man.

But I did not want to “find a man”. I wanted God to bring me the man.

I spent Valentine’s Day each year with the single ladies in my church and the swinging singles of New York City. We celebrated our own brand of love, me and my friends in the trenches of singlehood.

I spent Valentine’s Days with the single ladies in my church and the swinging singles of New York City.

Two of my best friends were single and we talked too much about the kind of man God was going to bring us.

We made a list of qualities our non-existent husbands must have. We prayed for one another. All the time.

We told God we would wait upon His perfect timing but we wondered often if “today is going to be the day of salvation” from singlehood.

I was enjoying my single life but I never doubted I would one day get married and have children. 

I waited. And waited. And I waited some more.

But no one showed up.    

Months turned into years. Years into an entire decade.

When the teenagers in my church grew into young adults and started to get married, it became difficult.

Well-meaning church mates would comfort me with words like “God has the man for you” or “You’re next”.

At first, those words brought solace. But as I remained steadfastly single at more weddings, those words began to sting, then to taunt.

Eventually I shut down. I would internally roll my eyes and ask in my heart whenever someone tried to offer the same consolation: “How would you know?”

When the teenagers I knew grew into adults and got married, singlehood became difficult.

Valentine’s Day became a loaded day. Everyone claimed it did not matter. (“Everyday is Valentine’s Day!”) No one admits to the sting of a day so bent on shoving one’s lack of romance in one’s face.

I hated that I was slowly buying into the commercial and social narrative that I was incomplete without a Valentine.

Then one of my two best friends moved away and got married.

A year after, the other moved away and got married too.

Had God forgotten me?

The devastation swept in then.

I now had to brave singlehood in my 40s without my besties.

I met nice men on the streets, at work, through friends. There was just one problem: They were not Christians.

I alternated between waiting patiently on God and trying to speed things along.

I trawled online to help God along but it was a struggle to hold conversations with faceless men who claimed to be Christians. I finally gave up, a decision underscored by the verse: “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here.” (Ruth 2:8)

So I did not.

I stayed obediently in my field where there was one eligible man. I thought I was in love with him but it turned out to be just a deep yearning for marriage in disguise.

I vacillated between thanking God for my precious season of singlehood and wondering if He had forgotten me despite my frequent noisy reminders. 

The struggle was real.

After my two best friends moved away and got married, I was devastated.

I sat down many times with God with variations of the same conversation: “Why am I still single?”

I would hear Him ask: “Do you really want to get married?”

I could never say yes. I did not trust myself. So I always told Him: “You know, Lord.”

A great exhale

My raging heart finally found rest in the words of a Father who truly knows how to still a storm. 

“No good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless.” (Psalm 84:11)

I figured if He says He will withhold no good thing from me, then marriage must not be a good thing for me. At least not at that point. It is not because I had sinned. Or because I was not enough.  

I finally exhaled after more than 10 years of holding my breath for The Man.

Jesus became my beloved. I learned to spend my Valentine’s Day with Him contemplating His love and His loveliness.

I finally believed that singlehood was a gift, just as marriage was.

I also finally understood that single is a whole number, not half of a whole.

My list of requirements for a husband shrank until it boiled down to two essentials: Must love Jesus. Must have integrity.

My prayer for marriage turned from “Please bring me a husband” to “Please bring me to my husband as a loving provision for him.”

But the battle for my soul continued.

When an improved version of an old boyfriend came back into my life, I was drawn into a friendship that turned into a relationship. He talked about marriage. He was willing to come to church with me. He asked many questions: “How many children should we have? Would they speak Chinese or English? Must I tithe?” 

It was the closest thing I got to a proposal. But he was not a believer. 

I was sorely tempted to marry him and pull him to my side.   

However, a response by Tim Keller to a question on marriage with non-Christians pulled me off the edge of the cliff.

He said the outcome of such a union meant that the unbelieving spouse would be pushed “out of the city into the suburb” if God stayed in the centre of my life. Or else God gets pushed out into suburbs while the unbelieving spouse stayed in the centre.

Neither was an option for me.

So I bit the bullet and laid my Isaac on the altar. (Genesis 22:2)

I mourned for months after that. But I felt a strange joy in obeying God.

The jewel in the vault

It was back to the drawing board. I was 42 by then.

Two years later, God brought me back to Singapore. 

I threw myself into life back home where I was surrounded by a huge family with nephews and nieces the size of a football team.

I added new friends to the old and continued to travel the world with my job. I found a new spiritual family in church and plonked myself back in children’s ministry loving other people’s children. 

Life was so busy, I had no time for pity parties.

People assumed I no longer wanted to get married. I did, but not at the expense of my relationship with God.

Seven years after my move back to Singapore, on a solitary walk in the woods, I heard God whisper: “Pray. I am going to bring you to your husband this year.”

I had never before heard Him so specifically. I doubted it because it was so random and it had been so long.

But I prayed out of obedience. A very short prayer from one who was by then afraid to ask.

I was 50 years old. I thought that meant it would be the year of jubilee, of a new season into marriage. 

But my 50^th year ended. The deadline I had imposed on God was over. I gave up then.

But God did not.

At the end of that calendar year, I did meet someone.

I felt I had known him since the world began even though we had never crossed paths in our lives. We  had lived in different continents, moved in different circles, lived lives with zero overlap. We should not have met but we did.

It dawned on me that the reason he felt like home was because he was the kind of man God had been sketching out for me all my life.  

On our first Valentine’s Day as a couple, I spent my day weeping for someone else who was hurting very badly.

The Man was making me soup that he delivered with a shoulder to cry on. It was exactly the sort of heart God loves. The sort of heart I didn’t know I wanted.

The clincher came when The Man told me one day that meeting me was like being taken to a gem in the vault, set apart from the display pieces in the store.

I choked. 

It had taken 20 years. But God had never forgotten.

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