As you reflect on 2024 and begin plotting your path for the New Year, whether married or single, you may start to feel a sense of delay and uncertainty. This familiar but unwanted presence will want to convince you that you're 'x' years behind the plan, moving too slow or that you've even completely gone off track. That your marriage or relationship took an irredeemable turn to the left when it should have gone right. This is the moment when it's tempting to sink into self-blame, regretting the 'one' that got away or the different choice(s) you could have made.

Or worse still, you feel as though you are in a holding pattern - circling the same mountain and runway repeatedly but still waiting for permission to land. Still waiting for your physically present spouse to become emotionally available. Still waiting for the wandering child to call, to make their way home. Still waiting for the promise of the flesh of your flesh and the bone of your bone to take on human form.

This wasn't what you planned, and you find yourself skating on thin ice. Hope is fragile, despair clings on without your permission and time is ticking. After many servings of prayer and fasting, reconciliation eludes you and your spouse, the relationship of your dreams is still just that - a dream.

Whether married or single, one thing unites us all - we are all waiting for something. So church, let us spend today contending for breakthrough in our marriages and for our singles. Let's pray for renewed strength and hope in the waiting (Isaiah 40:31), an unshakeable conviction of God's good plans (Jeremiah 29:11) and humility to perceive God's voice and obey his instructions (Psalm 32:8). Let's ask for God to restore and preserve marriages (Joel 2:25) and that strength and provision be multiplied for single parents (Philippians 4:17).