275: at this moment in the singleness journey

Where are you on your singleness journey? I'm curious. It seems everyone has different seasons within the season of singleness.

Currently, I am in an odd-to-me season.

9 months ago I was wearing a beautiful ring on my finger. After months of hoping that I might finally be able to do life with a real guy, maybe this was actually happening. But the hopes were cut short, and I adapted back to familiar singleness. But, with some twists.

For one thing, I didn't feel particularly needy. Maybe that started earlier in my 30s, but something about just coming out of an intense relationship left me feeling a bit less empty, oddly enough. Like, I don't need to jump into something else right now while my heart is healing.

I've also realized how not-lonely I am. I have my friends, my work, and my online community of fellow-singles. I can barely remember life before I had this network zigzagging across the United States. I really don't know if it's because I'm in my mid-30s and am thoroughly entrenched in single life or if it's because I rarely feel "alone," but I generally do not struggle with loneliness or lack of companionship.

Which makes it weird because I am writing a book about wrestling with prolonged singleness. One of the huge pieces of singleness is that desire for a companion, and I just haven't been feeling it enough to be able to write about it as accurately as I like. Thus, why I want to know how everyone else's season is going. Is it just me? Or is this common to one's late 30s?

Something else about beginning this writing project shortly after my breakup is that I had to start dredging up all the feelings I've ever wrestled with regarding singleness, even though I wasn't necessarily feeling them right then. I have done so much of the deep wrestling via this blog. Since I've wrestled it out, the feeling of lack is more often in short bursts than long periods of angst. I've been trying to relive some of the angst in longer-fashion so I can, again, be accurate about the source of those short bursts. It's a bit odd to try to stir up and hold onto genuine painful feelings on purpose. Writing life?

One thing that has been surprising is how I still experience late-night, painful mental overdrive thinking about the ended relationship. That has nothing to do with writing. That's just my current life.

While I may not have this constant ache to not be single--because I honestly don't--I do still really miss having someone to set all my hopes onto and feel that perhaps it will be reality that I will spend my life with this real guy and we'll have a real, ordinary home and life together.

So, again--where are you in your singleness journey?

194: ...and a sound mind

Fear. It's powerful in relationships. It's no coincidence that when 2 Timothy 1:7 says that "God has not given us a spirit of fear" that the corollary is His giving us "a sound mind." Because when I am fearful about a relationship, I do not have a sound mind. Obsessive. Overanalyzing. Worried. Stressed. Predicting the future. Jumping to conclusions. Reading into things. Seeing doom. Giving up. And all within hours of the last interaction.

There is no buoyant hope. No steadiness. No waiting to see what will happen next if I let it rest a day in God's hands.

If I squint and cock my head, I can vaguely see the writing on the wall, and even though I have no divine interpreter, I can agonizingly surmise it says, "This person has been weighed on the scales and found wanting; this relationship's days are numbered." The former butterflies in my stomach transform into a knot that drags me under. No more information needed. It's the end. I'm going to bed.

Been there, done that, Lord, please, teach me to have a sound mind.

The other day I was sitting across from a little girl who deals with possessiveness when it comes to friendships. And one of her male friends had been particularly chummy with another person lately. Not good. So as we sat there coloring, she told me resignedly, "So, I think this *her name* and *his name* thing is over." After I got over the humor of hearing a little girl refer to herself in the third person, I started talking to her about how friendships go up and down, and, yes, it's hard when we have to wait. She was like, "I know. It's been TWO days." Inwardly chuckling, I replied, "And it feels like FOREVER." But it's not. It's hard to wait. It's really hard. But things will change. (I may have even promised her chocolate if it doesn't . . . I don't always have wisdom when interacting with kids.)

I know firsthand how hard it is to wait and want a guy and try to surrender him to God and then see him get married and want any guy and get one and lose one and spend months recovering from the loss and wait some more. I literally know emotional pain very well, like the back of my hand, like an old blankie actually.

I also know that God has been there with me in every painful season of my life. He has been so close. I also know that the days upon days that sucked me under were seasons. They did not last. Two days is not forever. A painful day or two (or week) where the anxiety over a guy makes me want to keep sleeping and I'm eating two bowls full of chocolate ice cream and yet my stomach still is in knots? It will not always be like that.

But even if the disappointment is more severe, God has been with me through so much emotional turbulence already, and He's continually taking me back to the basics of who He is as my baseline. He is my baseline. THE baseline, apart from me. My life will have highs and lows. But the Rock does not change. Do you know how much having a sound mind is related to clinging to that Rock and knowing He'll get me through even this, because I've seen Him do it in the past over and over? My memorial stones were agonizingly set, but they are there, witnesses of God's faithfulness.

God has also blessed me with people who listen when I'm hovering at irrational highs and dragging through irrational lows. Sometimes they just listen; sometimes they speak steadiness and insight into my crazy, rubberbanding, emotional self.

Fear. It's powerful in relationships. But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

During a very hard season,

I played/sang this song over and over.

184: on pain . . . what a happy post for Christmas Eve

I did not think I would be sad on Christmas Eve.

(This isn't another post about singleness--just hang in there.)

I sorta thought I had reached a level of contentment and self-contained happiness. Being sad as a single on Christmas is starting to sound cliché. I've got plenty to be thankful for (*cue Holiday Inn song*).

(Ok, it touches on singleness. Got to have a starting point!)

And yet, getting ready to go to my sister's this afternoon, a sadness and insecurity did start settling on me like a snow-less cloud.

Then we arrived, and I found myself in an odd in-between stage that didn't match anyone else present. There were the decade+ older-than-me marrieds/widowed, and there were the decade+ younger-than-me dating couples/families (and my single nephew--but he's only 15, give him time). I have an adorable and smiley great-nephew, but what is it about young relatives having kids before you are even engaged that makes feeling happily content more difficult?

Feelings. I'll admit to having them today. Unavoidable blah.

"The idea that my pain sets me apart from the rest of society is another isolation trick by the enemy. My pain is real, but it is not the only pain." --Natasha Metzler, Pain Redeemed, chapter 4

The last several months I've been trying to sort out what to do with pain--mostly how to deal with it when I see it in other people's lives and I can't do anything to help. [Note: I'm not talking about singleness anymore.] [Note: Seeing the pain of others added to the blah feelings accumulated today.] I've tried praying for miracles. I've tried focusing on my own choices and then ignoring the pain of theirs so it wouldn't hurt me so deeply. I've wrestled with discounting their pain because they are suffering the consequences of their own choices and so they have to just live with it. In an attempt to not have to take any responsibility for suffering unrelated to me, I've sometimes thought, well, that is life, the same could happen to me, we all just have to deal with it. Pain is common to all mankind.

Did I mention December was "compassion month" at school? Think I have some ways to go.

"And that girl who has never tasted infertility and this girl who has never buried a baby--together we're not alone. When I reach out from my pain to offer her comfort in hers and when she looks up from hers to comfort me--Satan's lies are buried in an avalanche of truth and none of us are really alone. . . .

There is no strength, no hope in comparing pain. . . . They are different, we are different, but in binding ourselves together we are the same.

Alone we'll slice each other to pieces.

The mother of five, who spent months in the hospital with her youngest child, does not need her ability to have children compared to my lack of ability.

We need to bind ourselves together, acknowledging that we both experience pain. She needs me and I need her and together we'll walk through hardships." --Natasha Metzler, Pain Redeemed, chapter 4

Does it really matter if a hurt sounds illegitimate? Does it really matter if that person is hurting so much that they annoyingly cannot stop talking about it on social media? Should I care less that it's because of choices made five years ago that that person is about to emotionally collapse?

What do I do with it all, Lord? I cannot help. I cannot fix it. And I cannot say "deal with it." Because while pain and hurt and unfairness are common to all humanity, pain isn't any less real or less legitimate or, well, less painful, because it is common.

You know what I think the beauty of this year is? In Isaiah 9:6--sung during Handel's "Messiah" this time of year--Jesus is declared to be the Prince of Peace.

You might have a family of 5 all sick with the flu right now. You might be only getting 4 hours of sleep every night. You might be in the hospital with a loved one, again. You might be handling the load of parenting alone. You might be feeling like you're never good enough and always misunderstood.

All I can say is He is the Prince of Peace. He is the Wonderful Counselor. He is the Great Reconciler and the Redeemer of hurt and pain. He came and took up residence among us. He is the God who sees. Who knows. He is the Mighty God.

A Light shines in the darkness. Together, let's cling to that Hope, for ourselves, for others. Lord, You who see and know, and in whose hands are the hearts of those we are feeling for, shine in this darkness! We cannot cut the darkness. We cannot solve. Help us shine Your light however You direct us, and when they are alone, visit each with Your Light that blinds out the darkness. Bring peace. Bring comfort. Do what we cannot. Come quickly. In Jesus' name, Amen.

"When I abandon the foolish idea that I'm the only one writing in sorrow I get the privilege of watching and rejoicing in more victories than just my own." --Natasha Metzler, chapter 4 of Pain Redeemed: When Our Deepest Sorrows Meet God, 2nd Edition (2015). I highly recommend this book and Blindsided by God: Disappointment, Suffering, and the Untamable Goodness of God by Peter Chin.