Lately, in the midst of doing life as a 34-year-old single woman in the marketplace, while believing that ministry starts at home and overflows into the lives of others, I’ve been reflecting on something I’ve been reminded of again.
We can get so caught up in doing the things we think make us good women that we forget that so much of who we are is expressed in the way we live ordinary life.
Especially when we look at Proverbs 31, it can be easy to focus on what she did. How much she accomplished. How well she managed her home, her work, her relationships.
But I’ve been reminded that the point was never perfection or performance.
She was willing.
And willingness looks different depending on the season you’re in.
As a single woman, I don’t have a husband or children to serve in the ways Proverbs 31 describes. But that doesn’t mean the qualities she embodies are reserved for a future season.
I can practice hospitality now.
I can respond with grace now.
I can cultivate gratitude now.
I can create meaningful moments for the people God has already placed around me.
I can be diligent in my work and generous with what I have.
The point isn’t to recreate someone else’s life. It is to live faithfully in the life God has given me right now.
To be clear, this is not the recipe for a perfect woman. She is a willing one. Her hands are willing.
Willingness is not the absence of failure. It is the presence of continued offering.
Choosing Grace
You respond with grace under pressure, and your peers are watching.
This one feels especially relevant when you spend so much of your life in the marketplace, surrounded by people who don’t necessarily share your faith, your values, or the way you see the world.
We can sometimes feel like being a witness means having the right thing to say.
But sometimes, you are not preaching. You are being.
And it is teaching your surroundings something they cannot learn any other way.
That is the merchant ship bringing food from afar, nourishment that travels from a distant source into a room that did not know it was hungry.
Choosing Gratitude
You restrain complaint and speak gratitude into hard and conflicting situations. It shifts mindsets.
This doesn’t mean pretending difficult things aren’t difficult. It means refusing to allow difficulty to become the only thing we see or speak about.
That is exactly the vineyard in Proverbs 31:16. She plants something. It does not bear fruit immediately. But it grows, and eventually it feeds people.
When you choose gratitude out loud in a hard moment, you are planting something in the people around you.
You may not see the fruit immediately. But you don’t have to. Your job was to plant.
Choosing Intention
Creating memorial moments.
Gatherings, dinners, experiences.
They may not happen often, but they make an impact. Hearts get softened.
I think this is another part of Proverbs 31 that can be easy to miss. She rises early, stays up late, makes sure people are fed, not just physically, but in ways that matter.
There is something beautiful about being intentional with the people God has placed around you.
Inviting someone over for dinner. Remembering a birthday. Making a meal. Starting a tradition. Creating a reason for people to gather.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It just has to be intentional.
Because sometimes we think we’re waiting for the big thing, the right season, the family, the home, the platform.
But ministry doesn’t start there.
It starts with what is already in your hands.
And maybe that is the reminder I needed in this season. Not that I need to become someone else or accomplish more, but that I can continue to be faithful with what is already in front of me.
When you live from identity rather than toward it, it changes the atmosphere around you whether you are trying to or not.
That is not performance.
That is overflow.