273: God's emotional dichotomy at the same time

Sometimes we feel like our feelings have to be on one extreme or the other. I'm finding when I read Scripture that God has strong feelings on both sides of the spectrum at the same time.

In Jeremiah 31, the nation of Israel has been exiled to Babylon and taken into captivity there by kings more powerful than themselves because of their sin. Their sin has been so great and consistent for so long, that they aren't even allowed to stay in the land that God had promised all the way back to Abraham. The land needs a break from their wickedness. In Jeremiah 2 and 3, God likens Israel to an adulterous wife: "[W]here have you NOT lain with men?" (Jer. 3:2).

And yet, at the same time, in Jeremiah 31:4 God says, "Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel!" And again, "Turn back, O virgin of Israel . . . . How long will you gad about, O you backsliding daughter?"

Nothing about Israel's behavior was virginal. God had clearly condemned her for having the opposite behavior. His wrath against her was that of a husband and protector betrayed, but His love for her is equally fierce, so much so that He calls her a virgin, as if we can pretend none of this ever happened. "'[Y]ou have played the harlot with many lovers; Yet return to Me,' says the LORD." (Jer. 3:1)

He does the same thing in the book of Numbers. Ever since Moses arrived to deliver Israel out of Egypt, they have been one complaining, disbelieving lot. In Numbers 21, they say, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread." (Num. 21:5) Yeah, that would be the bread that God Himself provided miraculously with the dew every morning. In response to this round of hostility, God sent fiery serpents that bit the people, until they were willing to repent. That's God's relationship with Israel at this point.

In Numbers 22, the king of Moab hires Balaam to come and speak curses on Israel so the king can overcome them. God takes charge of Balaam's mouth. Don't you know, God can chastise His people, but no one else better mess with them! Balaam declares about God, "He has not observed iniquity in Jacob, Nor has He seen wickedness in Israel." (Num. 23:21). What. on. earth?!

This is our God. According to Scripture, He seems to have these fierce dichotomous emotions--at the same time! He fiercely hates sin and punishes it, and He fiercely loves His own and protects them despite their sin. He is big and grand enough that He can feel and act on both emotions at the same time! Isn't that what the cross is too? The intense affront to His holiness that sin is must be punished with blood, but His intense love for His creation results in Him shedding His Son's own blood on our behalf.

Both/and, without devaluing either emotion in the process.

272: happy with this

I've felt guilty wanting to be in a relationship when I just came out of a relationship with a wonderful man while several of my friends have never had that chance. It feels greedy of me. But someone recently reminded me that it is natural to want to be in relationship. It is a human desire and shared by all humans, no matter your dating history.

And so I stand here in the middle of the night in the kitchen typing on my laptop, emotionally eating pumpkin bread leftover from a girl friend who visited tonight. I had the delight of introducing her to a favorite TV series--one of those that perfectly combines drama and humor and character development and just a hint of romance. But, she has gone home, my parents are asleep, I am here with a free weekend ahead of me, and--

And I am thinking about how happy I am teaching this year.

I am thinking about how if I was doing anything else, I would still want to make time to teach Bible to kids.

No, my "career" is not a relationship. My students go home to their families, and I go home to my parents. I do not currently have my own husband and children to pour into. But I have my parents to honor, and I have students with whom I can share so many things that God has taught me since my youth. I am living life. I am pouring out what God has poured into me. It makes me happy.

I also found out I never watched last week's episode of Chesapeake Shores, and that kinda makes me happy too. :)

Notes to self: It isn't a comparison game. It is about living the cards you've been dealt, knowing that you aren't at the mercy of fate but under the will of God.

Addendum to self: Don't stay up too late or you'll stay up til 2am trying to avoid the feeling of aloneness.

271: a selection of 15 unhelpful things people say to singles

I recently asked a group of Christian singles for unhelpful things people say to make us feel better in our singleness. I got some doozies! 

Birthday flowers from a student's mom

1) If you stop looking, it will come to you.

This doesn't even make sense. First, we don't use this logic for anything else we want in life, like a job. Second, it's not Biblical (just clear your mind of all thoughts and what you most desire will magically appear). Third, if I'm not looking, then why would I say "yes" to a coffee date?

2) Maybe God is waiting for you to ____ first. / Once you become content, then God will bring a spouse to you. / God will bring you someone when you're ready for marriage.

Marriage isn't a bargaining chip! Marriage isn't something you earn. One person insightfully noted that the idea that we're not married/dating because we're not ready "gives the unhealthy and damaging notion that singles are defective by default." Also, were you ready when you got married?

3) Don't be so picky. / Perfect doesn't exist.

Please tell me what it is I'm too picky about because I don't know what it could be. I don't want to be picky--maybe you could teach me what you mean--but I also want to marry someone I WANT to be married to. The world is full of people who SHOULD have been more picky. 

4) I don't understand why you aren't attracted to so and so or so and so.

I don't either (or maybe I do!), but you can't force yourself to be attracted to someone. That doesn't sound like a good basis for a happy marriage.

5) Maybe it's because of your physical touch boundaries. / How do you expect to get married if you dress modestly?

Y'all, if this is the issue, we've got bigger problems than delayed marriage.

6) Be less able to do manly things and men will like you more. / I think you might be too put together.

I've never personally been accused of either of these, but it seems unfair to ask someone to hover in a state of incapability or weakness years on end in order to catch a man.

7) Have you tried online dating?

Yes, I have. Have you? It's not all it's cracked up to be.

8) Get out and meet more guys.

This was said to a girl who meets Christian guys all the time--know your audience!

9) You're trying too hard. / You need to flirt more. 

Just. can't. win.

10) Have you ever prayed about it?

Yes, actually. :)

11) I'm jealous of all the free time you have. / You're so lucky you can do whatever you want without worrying about a husband/kids.

I WANTED the hard sanctification of marriage and kids. Your life would have been my first choice. It was GOD who gave me this life. So, please don't make me feel guilty for having the potentially "easier" life, because you have no idea how many years it's taken to be okay with God choosing a LACK of what everyone else experiences to sanctify me.

One lady added, "That's the thing though, it's not easier. It's different...different challenges, different joys, different heartaches."

Also, you don't have to downplay your married life to make us feel better. Aren't you grateful for your husband and kids?

12) Singles are naturally selfish. They can't help it since they don't have a spouse or kids.

This was a quote from a speaker. God help us all.

13) ...when you are asked to babysit, dogsit, etc. BECAUSE you are single.

It's not that we mind helping, but you aren't doing us a particular "favor" by asking us to help. Just because we are unmarried doesn't make us the perfect candidate for jobs that have been traditionally teenager jobs.

As two commenters put it, "Contrary to popular opinion, not every single woman is dying to hold babies and listen to four small children scream simultaneously," and there is the false assumption "that babysitting someone else's kids will make me less sad about not having my own kids."

14) One day someone will want you.  / I'm so proud that you're content with having no one.

Someone needs to repent of their insensitivity. Also, with the second statement, do you know me, my journey, my current desires? If not, then shush.

15) God has someone special for you. It's just a matter of trusting and waiting.

A good marriage partner is NOT a guarantee -- fake news! To me, this is the worst of the well-intentioned statements. It's saying something about God that isn't true, and it gives false hope.

~*~

Maybe this selection of things said to singles will help us all evaluate the platitudes we dish out whenever we are trying to soothe wounds or mend any situations we have no control over. I hope to do another post on HELPFUL things people say!

270: purpose of my singleness

I've been through a lot of life change since my last post. Or, rather, maybe it hasn't been much change as much as much change of hope. Since the last post, I both got engaged and got un-engaged. Then I spent my short two month summer break busily going hither and thither and yon to keep myself from spiraling with the reality that what I had unconsciously been setting my hopes on was now...nonexistent.

Now I'm continuing the process begun years ago--wrestling with the possible reality of never getting married.

I am not discarding hope. Hope for marriage and family and to be a homeschool mom is so ingrained into the fiber of who I am that it is going to take either a complete metamorphosis or a knife to cut that expectation away from me.

Last week I had a good week. I fought every day to remind myself that my life has purpose, and that I am (generally) happy with my life, and it's okay to not have the life scenario I wanted (who does?). But by the end of the week I realized that it had been a good week because I had fought constantly to uphold those truths.

And then, I became too tired to fight I guess and plummeted back to earth where I have to fight again to scrape myself up.

The reality is we have to mourn, and as any counselor will tell you, grieving doesn't end, it comes in waves, it just changes. The other day I saw my hair (yes, my hair) in a far-away mirror, and I had to wrestle with the grief that no one will ever (permanently) admire my hair. That my hair is worthless beyond being part of what makes me feminine to the world. All those who have not gone through long-prolonged singleness may not realize even the little things that we have to mourn that are meaningful losses to us.

Every one has a different reason why singleness is so hard for them or why a future marriage is so important to them. For me, it's been mostly purpose. If I were married, I'd have a built-in purpose in life, I've thought. Recently I asked a question in the Facebook singles group I'm part of (PtL to know we're not alone!!). "What is one purpose you can see God has for your current singleness, one way He is using you?" I typed. I had already thought of a few ways before asking the question, but I lay back on my bed and decided to ask God the same question.

The answer was unexpected.

He took me right back to one of my life verses:

"You are My witnesses," says the LORD, 

And My servant whom I have chosen, 

That you may know and believe Me, 

And understand that I am He. (Isaiah 43:10) 

He is using my singleness to increase my knowing of Him. He is using my singleness to know Him and believe Him.

"[T]o be a witness to God is, above all, to know, believe, and understand Him. All that He asks us to do is but means to this end. He will go to any lengths to teach us, and His manipulation of the movements of men...is never accidental. Those movements may be incidental to the one thing toward which He goads us: the recognition of Christ."--Elisabeth Elliot, The Savage My Kinsman

If He is using my singleness so that I can know Him, who am I to argue? If He is using my singleness specifically for His eternal weight of glory, if He specifically has me here because He wants me to believe Him more through this circumstance and this is His pick for how that knowing and believing occur, then that is amazing. Painful in the loss, but amazing.

I was reminded of my other life verse, earlier in my late teens and 20s:

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ (Phil. 3:8)

I'll be honest: I don't want to count all things loss. Listening to a friend talk about child-raising today knowing I may NEVER experience what she is talking about, knowing I am still in the SAME life stage and lack of experience that I was 20 years ago, is a LOSS that I did not choose (besides saying no to relationships for non-flippant reasons).

But, if that loss is for the EXCELLENCE of the knowledge of my Lord, that is something I can remind myself of as I fight for stability and happiness. This loss is not just loss. It is in exchange for knowing the excellent eternal Lord and growing in faith and believing.

The desire for what I have always wanted does not go away. The mourning does not disappear even as I look around and really enjoy the life I have. The fight continues on for stability. But, He has given me an amazing group of both friends in the same life stage and friends who are not who lift up my hands so the battle can go on. Whatever is going on in your life--and we all have something--keep fighting, keep wrestling, keep holding on, not letting go until He blesses you, even if you continue with a limp (Gen. 32:26).

269: the security

I look out over my kids (students) as they take their science standardized test. It is a moment of silence and calm in an otherwise hectic career. Having just taken some moments myself to reconnect spiritually via the last several day's devotionals in God is on the Cross (Dietrich Bonhoeffer), I am ready to  not just see the frustration of trying to educate willful and sometimes ignorant human beings, but now to catch a glimpse of the potential of each individual life that is sitting in these desks before me. Every person here is so unique, with their own interests, looks, desires--futures.

I pray, Lord--may they know You.

Why?

I mean, because that is the way of salvation, obviously. To have their sins covered, washed away, so they do not have to bear the punishment for their own sin.

But also--

That they can have the security that comes with knowing God.

With God, I am never alone.

With God, I have an all-powerful loving Father willing to work on my behalf.

Perhaps most impactful for me in my singleness, with God I have a reason for living, for every moment of my day. I live for a kingdom not of this world. I may not do it well. I may not live it fully. But I have an eternal purpose outside of my temporal circumstances. I do not find meaning only in loving a husband, in showing the world that God's design of marriage is good, in being sanctified as my selfishness is put to the test in living with a man to whom I've pledged my life, body, and heart. That's what we as singles want so badly. But--

Glory be! My life has MEANING and PURPOSE apart from my circumstances. Apart from any and every circumstance. Not just that *I* have value, but that my little life living at home with my parents, teaching at a country school, visiting with my friends, trying to hear God's voice through His Word and prayer--THAT life has meaning and purpose because the whole point of life is not either to endure xyz situations that seem to be the most spiritual OR to be blessed with xyz dreams, but rather in whatever we do, in word or deed, to live all for the glory of God.

Does it sound trite? Yes. But has it the power to change my perspective from despair over a wasted life because I'm not married to hope that God is still God? Yes.

And with that, I can hold my desire for companionship and intimacy and maternal satisfaction and separate it from the value of this single life that keeps slipping by with each birthday that makes me older. I can still want, I can still "need," all those physical things, but I don't have to feel subpar or under my married peers.

And that's simply from knowing the Lord.

So yes, I want my kids to know that they have value, no matter what family situations or future situations they face, simply because they are part of the kingdom of God. They have a Father to whom they are eternally connected, who directs the path of their lives, and who is with them every second, and wants their hearts.

268: between the realms + friendship

I was crying at the dramatic end of a show tonight (what can I say--
I'm tired!), and I found myself thinking of the guy I'm dating (boyfriend? can I use that word?).

It was another reminder that I am entering a season different than the one I've known.

A married friend once told me that getting married to her husband felt very natural. And, although I'm not even engaged, I can see what she means. I feel very much still myself. I actually like that. I don't wake up with dread in the pit of my stomach, like I have in the past. I don't have to wonder day by day if the guy I'm dating will change or if something will be revealed that will shake my world. His consistency is what I value. And in that consistency, I can trust and, yes, relax (now that I've gotten through the most trying stage--another story for another post).

But, back to feeling natural. I still feel very much like me. I haven't become someone else. I don't feel like I've attained something monumental by virtue of dating for 10 months. It's just...natural.

But I know that I am nearing the zenith of all the dreams of my singlehood. And not only mine, but the desires of all my single friends.

I know that if I were to marry, they would feel like they have been left behind. That they would feel alone, with unanswered prayers, and no companionship--or some combination thereof. Because that's how I feel so many times. Have felt?

See, that's where it gets weird. I'm like, oh, I so understand. But, then I go and think of my boyfriend instead of thinking of some mythical future guy or thinking about how it's just God and me, and it smacks me in the face that there IS a difference between single and not-single. It's frankly hard to reconcile the two--the friend I want to be because I'm single (ie. in the same season of life), and the friend I'll be despite not being single (in a different season of life). I feel the same. But I won't be the same. I won't be the same, but I wish I could be the same, and still not be single.

And the other problem is that God has brought me amazing settledness in the last few years of being in my 30s. Maybe even contentedness, if one can still strongly desire and still be content. But I don't know if that's because I've had sequential infatuations the last few years that have kept me from feeling all the pang of loneliness, or if it's that I've forgotten after almost two years of having my guy on my radar, or if it's just truly that I've felt more settled. (A friend in her 30s once told me that this decade was better than the 20s because you're more settled, and it's proven true. Now she's about to turn 40, so we'll see how that turns out.) So, sometimes I can't currently relate to my single friends who are in the thick of the desperate loneliness. Because I haven't felt that as much now as I used to.

More thoughts--

Part of me is like, once I'm married, I can hang out with all these married couples. My friend circle may expand.

Part of me is like I am still hanging on to my current friends! Don't you dare think I'm different just because I'm married!

Part of me thinks if I didn't make a point of hanging out with married couples when I was single--if they didn't include me, and I didn't make a point to try to be included--then it would be hypocrisy to join in the crowd now as if my status has changed my--or their--value.

*sigh* So many thoughts.

Meanwhile, I live betwixt the realms.

267: Letting Go of the Unknown

I wrote the following a week or so ago and sent the draft to a small chat group. Someone strongly encouraged me to publish it because she resonated with the concept and wanted to share it with her readers. So here are my thoughts from then, with a couple edits.

The journey from singleness to union is not what I would have expected. I would have thought that once you "arrive" at having found the one and fallen in love, that all former memories would pale in comparison. They'd practically disappear.

But, like a friend once told me, saying yes to one thing means saying no to another.

As someone who holds on to memories and clings to journals as mementos of who I have been, I find myself betwixt mourning what will never be again and embracing the fulfillment of all my hopes.

The other day I was thinking about how fun some past camping trips have been. But you know what was scintillating about some of those trips with other young people? Heading out of your tent to head to the campground bathroom in the early morning, knowing that few people have had the privilege of seeing you with sleepy eyes and messy hair, but feeling awfully scandalous (scandalously delighted) if the guy you have a crush on sees you. Or coming back from the shower with your hair wet and him seeing you. It's that hint of what you've always wanted--marriage with someone permanent--but it's like the whiff of chocolate chip cookies. You don't get the cookies, but the whiff excites you. But in marriage it seems like I'll get all the cookies. It seems like the teasing of the senses will be absent. I'll have someone who already sees me in my disheveled morning state every day, without the enticement from a chance meeting while camping.

Meet-ups too have lost their glow. The best part of meet-ups is the thrill of when someone you like makes eye contact, or talks with you, or when you serendipitously on-purpose find yourself sitting next to them or in their vicinity. But with marriage, you literally never experience the thrill of a slight acknowledgement from your crush ever again. Those 30 seconds of eye contact that you experienced at 17 years old that you STILL remember because it was so life momentous? In marriage, you don't experience the wondering what may happen: Will he contact you? What does this text mean? Could he like you back? The solidity of reality takes away the wisp of non-reality.

All we've wanted as women is certainty and a love of our own. But all we've known is uncertainty and the hope for something more. I feel a little bit of loss letting go of the hope in exchange for the reality. Hope projects fantasy on an un-actual future. Reality incorporates two people's current emotions, abilities, and mass and volume states, to create something that is very concrete and less ethereal than the hope that has kept me warm every day as a single.

I think I may need a rest-in-peace moment for all I've had...or haven't had.