The Parable of a Single Sister, the Night Before Her Brother’s Wedding

How I found community, not competition, & joy, not jealousy, in my brother’s holy union

My brother Malik is pictured, seated with a yankee cap, smiling in a powdery blue sweater and blue jeans. There’s a hotel tv in the background.

The day is May 22, 2025. The New York breeze is cool against my face and the Brooklyn Sun is warm against my skin. Today is Malik, my brother's last day as a bachelor. He visits us--my mom, dad and me-- at our hotel in Williamsburg- Brooklyn. He gives us the run of show for tomorrow and in his military way he tells us what time to be where, ensuring we’re up to speed. I can't help but think that this weekend is a splendid time of celebrating him—even while aching for a love of my own. I’d like to meditate for a moment on how these two things coexist—the joy of his union and my yearning for a love of my own—and this makes me deeply human.

Tomorrow, he will marry the love of his life and tomorrow I will cry tears, part joy and part quiet ache. When I first met his future wife, I knew that he would marry her, but I didn't say anything because my brother is the type of guy where things have to be his idea. The days and weeks prior my mom kept asking me how I felt about him getting married. She thought I might feel jealous because I'm currently abstinent and I'm not partnered, but honestly, his love brings me so much hope that there is someone out there for me too.

Malik and Dom, his bride are standing, post-nuptials, on the NY Supreme court steps in Manhattan, NY. Malik is standing with his arms wrapped around Dom’s waist and her arm is wrapped around his shoulder with the other hand holding a bouquet of white flowers. She is sporting a white backless silk dress and he is wearing a Black tuxedo, white shirt and black bowtie. He is staring at her lovingly in admiration and she is smiling at the camera.

And suddenly, I’m aware—I'm not desperately searching. I'm simply content, knowing my brother found his person. I can celebrate that he's been blessed, knowing my blessing is forthcoming because God is in the neighborhood. My mom probably thought that I was jealous because her sister, my aunt, reacted rather rashly when my mother got married to my father. A few months after my mother married my father, my aunt found the first guy she could to marry her. My mom felt that I might do the same thing and out of fear she openly broached the conversation with me.

I know she intended well, but the conversation was cloaked in the assumption that single people must be desperate or envious or bitter when those they love find a love of their own. However, to love someone truly you find joy when they find joy. You hope when they have hope and you love who they love so I'm thankful not just that my brother found a wife named Dominique, but that my brother found me a new sister aka Dom. A sister with chocolate skin and golden hair and beautiful eyes and a button nose who honestly gave me what I needed—I always wanted a sister.

Here Dom and I are pictured smiling wide grins as sisters. Dom’s hair is parted to the side in curly waves and my hair is braided back. I have on a blue jean jacket and green top and blue bag over my shoulder. Dom has on a silk white dress. Behind us is the NY Supreme court steps.

I want to dispel the idea that because my brother found love and I have not yet found love I, in some way, wish I was him. I do not wish I was in his shoes or wish ill upon him. I want to dispel the myth that his love is somehow a disruption of the self-love I hold internally and tenderly. And I'd like to demonstrate through the way I live my life what it means to love someone so much that their joy embraces you like a hug. Their happiness feels like a prophecy of the love you will one day have—not an opportunity for comparison or competition.

So, no, I'm not desperately searching. I'm simply content knowing my brother found his person and his love grounds me in the divine love, I experience every day when I lay my head down at night. And every morning when I lift my head from my pillow. In fact, the love I have for myself will no longer allow me to open my legs for strangers. The love I have for myself will no longer allow me to sleep with men who know my intimate bits more than they know my name. So, as I am ruminating in a season of intentional singleness, I realize that singleness is not synonymous with lack.

Singleness allows me to show up in an abundance of ways for myself—to pour into myself. I'm in a season of transition—a season of deep tension—a cusp between waiting and hoping. As I embrace this season of transition, career wise, artistically, educationally, what centers me is my faith in God. A God who also was never married to a partner in the traditional sense. A God who celebrated at the wedding, even when there was no more wine. A God who made more wine just to t’up with the guests when they ran out. A God who saves the best wine—the newest wine—for last.

So, my theology is not one of desperation, but one of dedication and devotion to being and giving myself the love that I hope to one day receive. My theology is one that sees the love between two people—whether it be my mom and dad or Malik and Dom— as a love of communal blessing. Love as communal blessing means that love is contagious and therefore the blessing of joy is contagious. I believe my brother's love story is not a reminder of what I lack, but a preview of what is possible—a foreshadowing of a love foretold in scripture that states whoever I marry will one day love me like Christ loves the church a love.

This scriptural love will not simply die for me, but this love that will live for me too. My trust in God means that I believe in a God who does not withhold love, but who is already preparing a love story with my name on it. A love story so sacred it's anointed with holy oil. A love so mine and beautiful it's taking years to be written. A love so heaven-sent it feels like I’ve been waiting an eternity for it to be set in stone. A love story so healing that I had to wait and worship for it to develop. I had to water this already-not-yet love with my tears of lonely nights in isolation and prepare for it with prayer. I had to give it the sunlight of my expectant joy, while watching others be in love. I had to plant it in the dirt of all the other bullshit niggas I've been with before them because that manure was fertilizer to make me good ground for God to plant the seed of a faith for a love becoming.

So I wait but I dance in the waiting. I sing ballads of belonging in the waiting. I do my hair and makeup as I yearn for a love to call my own but I don’t weep tears of envy or lack. The only tears I shed are one of joy that love is in the room. Love is in the building and love has made a home right here in NY at my brother’s address but also right here in the four walls of my heart. For my heart softens at seeing him love someone so properly, so effortlessly, so abundantly. For my heart aches not because love is absent in my life but because love has softened me to see it in and around me, showering me profusely with joy, with presence, with hope, with prophecy, and with the will to believe Love is like the wind—something invisible but undeniably present. I may never see the wind but I can still feel her nestle my cheek, blowing me a kiss in the breeze. As the winds of change alter my brother’s life in his marriage, may the winds blow ubiquitous blessings my way so much so that I may never even have the room to receive them all.