Wow – seems that I have certainly hit a nerve of some kind this singleness issue. I have to admit that I still find it amazing that – while my blog has a small following – that still there are some people out there that actually find what I have to say readable. Its fine actually if no one did, cause I just enjoy writing my thoughts out so much – and later reading them and cracking myself up at some points and nodding my head in agreement at other points…and still at others wondering what in the world was I thinking there?
 |
| Wow – found this on Facebook. Click to join! |
Any how, having a week off from writing – while good and needed – I now have created a back log of about 5-10 other posts that I have running through my head at any given moment. I really wish I could take a week off just to write – now there is an idea! – just so I can catch up, work out some ideas about my life and faith and journey that are surfacing, etc. But now I am digressing….so let me get back on topic before I need to run for the day.
a) have something inherently wrong with you and therefore are unsuitable to find another person (even though ALL of us have something inherently wrong with us folks – its called being human).
OR
B) you must have been too self focused with your life and thus missed your window of opportunity to get paired up for life with the right person, who is now married to someone else and you will forever have to “live with the fact that your husband is married to the wrong person” (somewhat quote from “When Harry Met Sally” – love that movie!)
I challenged this thought and still challenge this thought. I have to think that perhaps those that are single might have something up on all of us that choose to get married. Maybe not – for maybe they are desperately seeking to find their mate and do really have something wrong with them that is keeping them from doing this. But I would challenge that some singles are very well adjusted citizens of our world that can and do enjoy all the benefits of being single in this modern age.
Yet, there is a pat answer that many in the Christian world give to those who are “still single”. It is a cliche to say the least. If you have been around the Christian world long enough, I know you know what this cliche is. You can almost hear it now before I even type it and you read it…”Don’t focus on finding the right person. Focus instead on becoming the right person.”
I am so not sure I ever even heard any one define this statement, give me any steps on how to do this when I was just coming out of college. I am sure if they had given me some type of roadmap I would have followed it to a “T” for I am generally a rule follower. I know I was pointed to books like Elizabeth Elliot’s among others for women. I know I was encouraged to continue to pursue my love of Christ…and I know I even read the original Boundaries book. I had sought some biblical counselor during my college years who asked me a few questions, gave me a few books and told me I was doing good – that I had no problems with my relationships (especially with the opposite sex), gave me a pat on the back and sent me on my way. I was told that marriage is a lot of hard work, it is not a cup of tea by any means and that if I was willing to commit to that, with the option that divorce wasn’t the option, along with following the prescribed Complementarism order for marriages – that I would succeed at a having a life long marriage and all that it promises to bring in this life.
The thing is if I was to ask my 22 year old self if I was becoming the right person – she would have enthusiastically, emphatically shouted, “YES!” I really thought at 22 I was the right person. I was educated, responsible, in love with Jesus and looking for ways to serve Him – albeit not doing that last part very well. I knew what I liked, what I didn’t like, and what I was looking for out of life.
……I was generally a happy person that fully believed the verse, “the old has gone the new has come,” meant that my past didn’t matter, that that was my past and my future could be as bright as the attitude I chose to have about it.
….I had studied the verses and seen the “beauty” of the wife submitting to the headship of the husband…that just like any couple dance – both people need to know the steps but that only one could call the shots or the dance would be chaos. I fully believed this with my whole being.
…..I had fully bought into the Christian world view that my life call was to raise children in the traditional role as a stay-at-home mom – that there was no greater call on a woman’s life than this. I had fully bought into this was what I wanted and was so privileged to be able to do it.
…. I had fully bought into the idea that I was to be the woman behind the man, bringing out his best qualities in order to serve others. Encouraging him down whatever path he saw fit best for him – whether to stay in the business world or to chuck it all and become a youth pastor – or something in between. I fully bought into the idea that my role, based on what I had understood from pastors and the bible was to serve him, rear our children (albeit with the buck stopping with the man) and taking care of everything else he needed from me.
Looking back from this vantage point though – I can now say I was utterly and completely in DENIAL about who I was, who I wasn’t and what I really wanted out of life. The scary thing is I can also look back and say I had absolutely NO clue I was in DENIAL. I mean how could I? (I’m sure someone could tell me there was a way.) But when everything around me that was “feeding” me was telling me that this was who I should be – when it seemed that everything in the universe was working to tell me this was the way the world works – how could I have ever had the opportunity to know really who I was?
I guess maybe that should have been my first clue – was to question all of those ideas I bought into – but I didn’t even think there was a need to question how the universe works…it is just how it works.
I wonder how many other young ladies and gents fall into this type of thinking…that they believe they are really becoming the right person in order to meet the right person? And perhaps the reason they haven’t found that right person yet is because in trying to “become the right person” – based on what the world or the Church tells them is right – little parts of their true selves keeps getting exposed or keeps trying to come out. Others see this and scream “agh, she’s too strong willed to ever be in a marriage,” or “he’s too passive to ever be able to live up to his call to be a man,” or something along these lines…and we as the singles listen to them and think these voices are right. And instead of trying to figure out why that little edge keeps popping back up like a nasty habit
…we try to shove it back down, try to keep shoving our square selves into the round hole or vice versa
…becoming more bruised, tattered and worn out in the process
…. all the while still wondering what the heck it means to “become the right person” after years of trying to “become the right person” and it still isn’t working how it is meant to work. How our dreams continue to get further and further away from being fulfilled and our hearts become more an more hardened to the reality that – for lack of an analogy or a better way of saying it – that life, quite frankly at many, many points in time – sucks.
Postscript – this is also what I love about writing. This post took a completely different turn than I was trying to or originally set out to write. I hope that it all makes sense! And as you can see by the title – it looks like there is still more trapped up inside me that needs to come out!
Becoming the Right Person #2
