God of Our Single Years

We see it all around us.  We hear the not so silent cries of despair.  And it dawns on us that the sobs coming from the soul are not just our own.  Indeed, we are not alone in the valley.  We look to our left and we see some who have been smacked down by the worst of what life has to offer.  We look to our right and we hear the anguished wailings of those who are tired of being sick and tired.  We look behind and we see others who have stopped trying, who have just given up.  We look ahead and we see the once bold now becoming afraid.

At times, singleness is not a pretty picture.

Right now, there are African-American Christian single women who:

• Are fighting off the physical and brutal abuse of the Black men who claim to love them.
• Have not had a positive and an esteem affirming relationship with an adult Black man in 5, 10 or more years.
• Are tired of crying themselves to sleep because they feel so alone.
• Are raising their children alone whose fathers do not pay child support nor do they live up to the title of daddy.
• Are trying to decide between having an abortion and telling her parents that she is pregnant.
• Keep hearing the ticking clock in their heads as they slowly sink into the fear of not ever having children as a married woman.
• Are tired of so-called men of God caring more about what is in between their legs than what is in their hearts and minds.
• Feel betrayed by all of those relationship and how-to-get a man books.

These women need to be blessed too!!

Right now, there are African-American Christian single men who:

• Are either hurting so bad or who are just so mean that they abuse their Black woman partners.
• Are so busy “hitting and quitting it” that they miss out on the beauty that is unequaled in African-American women.
• Desperately cling to a self-defeating view of masculinity that only leads them to berate the Black women who love them.
• Threaten their pregnant girlfriends to get that abortion.
• Claim to be the man but do not have a means of generating income nor sustaining themselves and their families.
• Have children they do not claim as theirs nor do they support nor help to raise.
• Easily misquote the scripture about women submitting but forget that real men love and protect their women.
• Are so filled with self-hatred that they do not care that they place Black women at risk of sickness or death because of their secret sexual activities

These men need to be blessed too!!

Bless us Lord because we are your children.  Bless us Lord because of your love.  Bless us Lord because of the victories already won and those yet to come.  May our hearts be forever stamped with the blessed knowledge that you are the God of our Single Years.