A year ago at this time, the hustle and bustle of prom season had only just subsided, and I was very sleepy to say the least. I was drained socially, mentally, and physically, and I really just wanted to stay at home alone and sleep all Sunday afternoon. However, this time I had set aside for sleep was filled with thoughts of the drama that I had only just experienced the night before. I was mad at my date (because who isn't mad at a boy at at least one point in their lives?) for no good reason, and I was annoyed because what should have been the perfect night I had dreamed of for the entire year was just not.

It was that simple.

Flash forward to fall of this year, my senior year. I was all gung-ho, ready to begin planning the Homecoming dance with my fellow student council members, convinced that with my new positive outlook on life this would be the best Homecoming yet. That's the way it should be, right?

The night was almost completely planned by the beginning of October, and there was one small aspect of my personal experience still to be solidified: a date. I had a dress that was being altered by my grandmother, I had shoes which I had bought for a wedding years before, I had my makeup and hair and nails planned out, but there was no boy in the picture. I definitely did not have a boyfriend at the time, and there was no one even the least bit in the picture until a little later. Would this be theguy? I asked him to go with me, going out on a limb since I had only known him for about two weeks, and he said what I expected him to say: no (we dated later on, and I now know that that was not a good path on which to embark).

This was it. I was going to my senior Homecoming alone. Solo. Single.

Strangely, though, it was ok. A year beforehand, I freaked out. I was so afraid I was not going to have a date to prom, I was afraid that all the slow dances would find me crouching in a bathroom stall willing no one to see me in this most pitiful state.

The point of this post is that it is ok not to have a date to every school dance, and I think it's important that you go alone to at least one and learn to embrace it. Not only does that make you appreciate yourself for who YOU are, but it also causes you to stop relying on something so meaningless as a date to define who you are.

When you walk into a dance alone, you are forced to see yourself as the beautiful YOU that you are. You don't have to be attached to anyone, and you don't have to live up to anyone's standards. You are you, and that is all you need. This may not sound appealing now (I guarantee you if I saw this article when I was a sophomore in high school, I would skim right over it and completely ignore the purpose), but I promise you that it is! The fact that I was forced to find my identity not in a boy but in the fact that Christ created me as beautiful and in His Image caused my heart to be changed. For a very short time, I was incredibly confident in who I was. The thing that caused me to change for the worst was-- you guessed it-- a boy. Not only was this boy the key factor in my reduced confidence, but it was also the fact that I had begun to find my identity solely in him and no longer in the God who created me.

When you walk into a dance alone, you have two choices: you can either choose to believe the lie that you don't have a date because you aren't enough, or you can choose to believe that cold, hard truth that Christ is enough (just as the song says). You don't need a date to every dance in order to be whole. You don't need all the boys to be interested in you in order to be whole.

So, I say all this to say: Go to that dance alone. Be confident in YOU and in God in you, and you are beautiful.