u·nique

  [yoo-neek]  Show IPA

adjective

having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable:

“I’m not like other girls.”
It’s something that people say to make themselves seem mysterious or to feel special in some way, when in reality they’re probably fundamentally like the others.Or so I thought. Recently I came across a pack of letters that people had written to me during my Discipleship Training School with YWAM and I noticed one word that kept cropping up. “Unique.”

Having grown up despising the girls at school (at least on some level) whose attitude revealed they thought they were better than the other girls, I always thought it was an abhorrent quality to think that you were special in any way and as a result never thought there was anything particularly interesting or desirable about me. I grew up under the radar, known mostly as “shy” or “smart” or even “snobby” as a side effect of my extreme introversion. The boys whose attention I coveted always found someone else more to their tastes so I always felt as if I was hovering somewhere at the edge of their awareness, my presence merely tolerated. People over the years would tell me that I was creative but I always felt like I had fooled them somehow, that everything I did was just a weak copy of someone else’s. I was always the last of my friends to do things. The last to have a first boyfriend, the last to have a first kiss, the last to move out on my own, the last to be married.

It’s starting to make sense now why I wasn’t open to receiving a lot of the things that the Lord was speaking over me during my time with YWAM. For a long time I felt like there must be something wrong with me or that I wasn’t worth it to the people in my life who I felt never understood me or left without a thought or backward glance.

I’ll admit as a 27 year old single woman living in the bible belt where the average age a woman gets married is 22, I’ve doubted that it will ever happen. After each failed relationship the doubt sets in all over again. Yeah I’m unique all right, so unique that it feels sometimes that no one will ever want me. I felt this very deeply during my DTS because just before attending I lost the only person I felt like I had ever truly loved and who had ever really understood and loved me. But this of course is a lie and certainly not what the Lord has been trying to get me to grasp over the years. The following is a list of the things that my outreach team had to say to me during our time of debrief in Nepal. I want to stress that at the time these things were said, I was exhausted in every way that a person can be. The three months that I lived in Nepal were not easy in any way and I felt like my time had been wasted, that I hadn’t made a difference, maybe even wasn’t meant to come, and that I had been more of a hindrance than a help. I was doubting my calling and feeling pretty hopeless that I would ever find what I was created for. This could be why I’m just now accepting the truth of these words.

“-Picture: The Lord outlining a star and cutting it out. He has created you uniquely. He is preparing you for good works.

-God’s going to use your deep caring heart. You know when someone is hurting. You are a blessing.
-Stepping out in speaking and writing. Very clear and direct. Don’t doubt the wisdom from God.

-Trying new things. You will find the way that works.

-Strength, even when things were tough.

-Beautiful language and words.

-Always there when friends need you. Loyal friend.
-Courage. Took courage to come here, will take courage when you go home.

-Perserverence. James 1:2-4. Strength in God. Be proud of what you’ve done.

-Great love.

-Speaking and writing. Genuine.

-Picture:window into your heart and what God is doing in you.

-Blessing people with being real.

-Memory and love of stories, beautiful gift.

-Beauty for ashes.

-Picture: You and the Lord in a field. Song of songs 6:3,5,9 let the Lord read this over you.

-Picture: opening a door from darkness to light. Excitement. The Lord has new things for you.

-He is with you.

So yes, I am created uniquely. I may still be single and seemingly without purpose when the rest of my friends have been married for years and have settled into their careers or their role as a parent. I may feel like my life is a joke sometimes and find myself laughing at the irony of it. I may have no idea what I’m doing with my life and just living out one big process of elimination until I figure it out. But I was created this way with purpose. As were each of us. The Lord knows my love for small details that other people don’t notice, He knows my love for storytelling and for authenticity in other people. He knows that I am gifted with faith and that all of this will come to fruition one day in a way so complex and beautifully crafted that I will be overwhelmed by the joy of it. He knows because he created me to be this way. And I have no idea where I will be five, ten or fifteen years from now. Maybe I’ll be a caravaning gypsy, or living in a developing nation with dozens of kids that I’ve adopted, or writing the screenplay adaptation of my first published book. Who knows? But I do know this with certainty now.

I am not like other girls.