A TIME TO BE SINGLE

By: Norberto Betita

While the skies may have been darkened by thick clouds of a coming rainy day this early morning of November 23, 2017, still the poetic words of Parley P. Pratt (1807-1857) rings ever anew:

The morning breaks, the shadows flee;
The dawning of a brighter day,
Majestic rises on the world.
(Hymn No. 1)

The dawns of life come in glitters of unending sequence while her mortal journey is yet in its forward trail. As the new day and the new year of her existence shine brighter, the shadows of the past fade and a brilliant hope of tomorrow is majestically flashed in immaculate panorama of a new and broadened horizon.

While new challenges may arise and some hard times frustrate; the stifling power gained from the seasoned past may well administer and disperse such barriers for her to move forward to a glorious day and satisfying moments of a contented life. 

Once she posted, “Betita forever.” She might have been dismayed for not being married soon enough as to enjoy the blessings of motherhood. But God will never in anyway deprive His daughters of that opportunity. The blessings of eternal happiness with God, in which sphere, “neither is the man without a woman, neither the woman without the man” (1 Corinthians 11:11), is promised to all the faithful, “whether in life or in death” (D&C 58:2).

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:3). A time to be single and happy and a time to be married and attend to the greatest responsibility of being a “mother,” magnificently described as, “…she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take” (Cardinal Mermillod). The timetable, however, is well written in God’s calendar. While such wished-for event remained on hold, she may for the moment, enjoy her youthful eternal summer, which will never fade no matter the refining tests of life, nor lose its hold on the beauty she owns, not even when she grows to a ripened age. So thus Shakespeare wrote:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
(Sonnet 18)

As the 365 days circle of life opens anew and the stadium and showground of life’s race is cleared of past failures, frustrations and impediments for a fresh start, it is our best wishes and hope that the gifts of the Spirit which she had been so abundantly blessed may ever contribute best and influence further her quest for personal growth and development.

She is now 27; the last of the best age to be married in so far as preparing for motherhood is concerned. For her this is yet a time to be single. Marriage can wait until the man of her choice and of whom he can trust appears in God’s appointed time.

HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR LAST BORN---THE BEAUTIFUL SHAUNA MEGAN! May you enjoy the wonders of a single life, while ever looking forward to the day when you will have been given an eternal partner. May it be so, is our prayer!