And so I found myself journaling about, what else, singleness.
It's in those moments where I actually pause in life that I seem to wax on about this state.
Why?
I think part of it is because in my actual life--in my life as a teacher--every day I fail. Every day, or most every day, I could come home, consider my day, and despair about a myriad of ways I have failed both in Christian character and academically, though mostly in my behavior.
So when I come home in the evening, if I have been able to put aside the cares of the day, if I have dealt with the lingering issues that must be mentally dealt with before having peace, then I have very little desire to stir them all up again by even thinking about them in prayer.
Ok, so this blog post is becoming a processing sounding board. A public journal. Soooooorrrry.
When the moment comes to settle into a dark leather chair with a hot drink in hand on a Saturday morning, when the scene is idyllic, Instagram-worthy, and not at all my usual (I'm not a hot drink person), when I am coming to God Almighty when focused prayer time has become a confusing maze of where do I start and how does one do this, I always, naturally, come back to singleness.
Eh, and maybe it is because another friend got engaged and just posted it on Facebook.
Maybe it is because I have always equated the desire for marriage with hope. And when I come to God in a quiet moment, I come to the One in whom I hope.
Maybe--allow me to get ridiculously metaphysically philosophical, cuz this is the first time I've considered this--maybe, very seldom, I am not praying about marriage at all, but rather a desire for the day when He will make all things beautiful.
There's a book I read eons ago by Ted Dekker (but this wasn't a novel) called The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth. Although I don't remember much about it now, I believe that is where I first awakened to this idea of HOPE. That we are created to hope. That hope is so, so powerful.
Of course, the hope that our souls crave is really Heaven.
There is so much about our perception that needs to be corrected. I mean, I was journaling today about wives being submissive and quiet and was thinking about how meekness is strength under control and how women have all this social-emotional strength and, unwittingly, I kinda realized that when we say everything we are thinking--measure, condemn, and demolish a man with our words--that that is not using our strength, that is like a city with no walls where what was meant for good has run amuck!
Perspective. Perception. A tweak here, a tweak there.
Goodness, this is not the blog post I was planning to write. Oh well, I didn't plan what I was going to write anyway.
We have to keep growing. Learning to see things more accurately.
Back to the topic of several paragraphs ago, I do desire marriage, and not for some idealistic, metaphysical, replacement hope for heaven. I have very real reasons to want marriage, and I also have sinful reasons to want marriage, like covetously wanting to join the "I have someone too" club.
But, as C.S. Lewis said, if we find a desire within us that cannot be met here on earth--a fairy tale hope, a dream of a Savior on a white horse, the call to a reality other than this one--maybe it is because we ARE made for somewhere else. Whether single, married, happy, frustrated, we are all mortals seeking a heavenly city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. We have a homeland (Hebrews 11:14).
If you are going to freeze-frame an Instagram-worthy moment of time, believe even more in the beauty of eternity, because actual life in the presence of the I AM is going to be more real, more unimaginable, more beyond-comprehension fulfilling than an unfiltered pic of a coffee cup and a leather seat on a Saturday morning.
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