Still, especially when I’m feeling emotionally thirsty but busily swimming in a sea of salt water, I’m not immune to the feeling of an emotional “pull” to make people my savior. Conscious of it, I sometimes must simply choose to resist the pull. While, as one friend says, it’s “much harder and not nearly as instantly gratifying to allow my needs to be met from a whole array of resources,” it seems to be the strategy that is the most life giving. I’ve got to believe that God will give me, today, my daily bread. And I’ve got to trust that, as another friend put it, such provision includes food for my heart.

²⁵ Lori Rentzel, Emotional Dependency: How to Keep Your Friendships Healthy, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1990.
²⁶IBID, p. 18

Adapted from "Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the Life I Didn't Expect," © 2006 by Connally Gilliam.  Published by SaltRiver Books (an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers).

Connally Gilliam earned a Master's of Teaching (English) from the University of Virginia and has taught high school and college writing.  She now works for Navigators as a Life Coach for Twenty-somethings in the Washington, DC, metro area.  She loves sharing coffee with friends and discovering how God is real, even in a crazy, changing and unintentionally single world.