I walked around the grocery store, the cloth handles of the shopping basket digging into my forearm as I looked for the next ingredient on my list.

As I made my way down the baking aisle I passed all sorts of people going about their Saturday errands: an older gentleman pushing a full cart behind his wife, smiling at her while she compared the prices of pie filling. A set of toddlers sitting thigh to thigh in the cart of a mum who looked like she was on a time sensitive mission. A young couple debating if they had syrup at home.

As I continued on towards the flour, my left ring finger started feeling a little bare. My thumb absentmindedly found it, trying to twirl a ring that doesn’t exist there. It’s a habit my right thumb has had for a while, adjusting the gold band that lives on my right ring finger, but sometimes I can only assume my left hand feels left out and joins in the routine.

That finger – the one that displays the outward signs of commitment and covenant – is not one I’m aware of often. There was a time where I was, when I tried rings on, but no ring was given then.

But in my work, in the lives of my clients, I’m very aware of the presence of a ring on that fourth left finger in people’s lives.

I don’t care so much about what the ring looks like, but more so about the story behind how it came to be on someone’s finger. Not the proposal, but the life each person lived to get to that point. The things they learned about themselves, about how to love someone well, about sacrifice and holiness and laughing at themselves when they messed up along the way.

But sometimes – sometimes my left ring finger feels naked. I intentionally don’t wear a ring on that finger; in my mind it’s reserved for someone remarkable to slide one on in place himself. A ring is just a ring, but as a symbol of promise, of love, of a future together – I’d like to keep the place on my finger for that symbol open until that gentleman comes along.

That naked feeling comes every once in a while. When it does, the lightest breeze seems to only affect the place where a ring doesn’t live. Everywhere I look there are women with at least one band of promise on their hands. I wonder what it would feel like to have a ring there and switch my well-worn ring over from my right to my left hand. It feels a little clunky, my fingers uncertain of the metal pressed between them.

When that feeling comes and I’m not wearing a ring on either hand, my right finger – indented from how long I’ve had that ring sit there for – still feels less naked than my left one does.

Slowly, as I moved on from flour and started comparing the sale prices of brown sugar, that naked feeling started going away. My thoughts moved from wondering what it’ll be like to wear a ring on that hand and carried on to what I wanted my afternoon to hold.

It was nothing dramatic, no tears spilling over into the basket over my arm, just a passing thought of what life may be like one day.

For the past few months I thought God had invited me into a season of intentional singleness. I still think it’s true but, as a friend recently pointed out to me, it’s not so much about being single for a certain amount of time. It’s about being openhanded with this area of my life. Trusting that God’s timing is worth the wait, believing He knows what I need, choosing to live in that knowledge instead of trying to control the who and where and when of a relationship.

My filter on every conversation with a man has become more about the person in front of me and less about whether I like the sound of their last name. I’ve stopped looking around the pews before mass for men of marriageable age with no ring or girl nearby. The decision to go to parties has little to do with the matchmaking opportunity and lots to do with hearing about other people’s opinions about the world.

And dancing. Parties are real good for dancing.

It’s freeing. This way of interacting with the world allows room for me to see men without the question in the back of my mind of whether or not I’m interested in dating them. I can learn about the guys in my life simply because they are friendly, kind, interesting individuals. I’m not trying to read into anything they’re saying and I’m definitely not reading into anything they’re not saying.

Life is more fulfilling thinking about what God is inviting me to experience in every area of it, not just about the thing I don’t have. It’s less exhausting, too. Years ago my prayers used to be like a broken record, over and over filled with things like, “Who, Lord? When, Lord? Why not now, Lord?”

This change in looking at the world has been an unfolding process over the last couple of years. The last few months have been a renewed commitment of trust in my heavenly Father. I still ask about my future, still sit with Him in teary silence when the days of being alone feel like too much to keep in, but the main theme of my prayers has made a profound shift.

How can I best use the gifts you’ve given me, God? What’s the next step I should take? What in my life needs to change to become more of who you created me to be?

This intentional openhandedness with this area of my life has brought about beautiful intimacy with the Lord. I’m learning about this sacred place in my heart that is only for Him. There are things He teaches me, prayers He answers, experiences I wholeheartedly share with Him that are only for Him and I to know about. It’s not inauthentic for me to keep those things secret, but really rather necessary that I do.

To be learning about this special thing only between God and I – it’s rocking my world. It’s rooting me in relationship with Him deeper than ever before. It’s the thing I go back to when I start feeling uncertainty about my future creeping in, when the enemy is trying to distract me from my calling, when that left ring finger starts feeling a little naked again.

I hope a ring sits on that finger one day. I hope the story of the man who gets to put it there is richly complex, full of adventure and risks taken and running after a life full of heaven-meets-earth experiences.

I hope when that day comes my story is, too.

Photo of yours truly by Kaihla Tonai.

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