Category: Uncategorized

It’s no surprise that I love television. And movies. And musicals. And books. And…any other escape from reality (that comes in the form of stories) that you can think of.

But, mostly what I like about these things are the ways I get to learn about people who are, oftentimes, so very different from me. Of course there’s always the occasional character that I identify with, or the ones that I wish I could be like. I know that it’s fiction, but I also know that we write what we know. This fiction that we get so wrapped up in is most likely someone’s reality, in some capacity.

One of my favorite things that happens in stories is when we get a fuller glimpse of the antagonist. When we get to see why the bad guy is the bad guy. There’s usually always a reason, and the reason is always heartbreaking. I usually end up loving the bad guy, while simultaneously hating him. I usually hope for change, I hope for a happy ending for their story…mostly I just love redemption.

For example, I remember always holding out for Sylar in Heroes, desperately sure that he could, indeed, be good. Or how, after watching Wicked, I’ve changed the entire way that I view the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch of the West (maybe she wasn’t so bad after all…she just had some sucky circumstances that were impossible to sort through). Or even Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th, who went all murder crazy on some camp counselors after her son drowns due to their negligence (okay, I never rooted for her, but there’s at least some partial understanding of how she got to where she did…). Most recently there’s been a certain fondness developing for Lemon from Hart of Dixie as we catch glimpses of her broken past and the ways it has shaped her into a controlling, mean and selfish southern belle.

It’s the same reason why I loved watching The Dark Knight, or X-Men: First Class, or The Amazing Spider-Man… there’s something really powerful to understanding the depth behind each character’s story, to understanding their backgrounds, the significant events in their lives that made them the superheroes we love today (despite how fictional they may be).

I don’t think we always get to know the past of the bad guys because sometimes it makes us feel for them in ways the writer doesn’t want. Sometimes it makes us cheer on the bad guy instead of the good guy and then the whole story, at least how they intended it, gets screwed up.

I’ve been wondering lately what it would look like if we rooted on the bad guy more often. Not necessarily the bad guy in fictional stories…but maybe the bad guy(s) in our own lives. Obviously, when we’re watching a show or movie, there’s a certain element of comfort as we are only witnessing these character’s stories unfold without having to do any real work…but isn’t it powerful when we finally see why a character is the way they are? Isn’t it, oftentimes, a little heartbreaking, too?

Maybe it’s someone at work who you have a hard time being around because of their constant pessimism. Maybe it’s the brat who thinks they should get everything they want all the time. Maybe it’s the woman who is controlling and nagging, seeking perfection out of everything and everyone. Maybe it’s someone who is actually just mean to people. Maybe it’s the crazy driver who just cut you off. Maybe it’s the waitress who was a little short with you when you were ordering. Maybe it’s the cashier who didn’t even look you in the eye as they checked you out.

They aren’t so much ‘bad’ guys, but they’re people that we often shut out, disregard, get annoyed with, get angry with, tip less, talk bad about, distance ourselves from. They become people that we tolerate because we have to, but very rarely are they people who matter to us. Very rarely do we regard them as people who have stories, who have souls. And very rarely do we ever take the time to get a picture of their realities, of what’s going on beneath the surface…to collect scenes of their pasts that have contributed in making them who they are today.

But what if we did?
What if, like we are forced to sometimes in these fictional stories, we took the time to figure out why people are the way they are? Would our hearts break as we encounter stories of brokenness and pain? Would we hurt for those who have lost, for those who are desperate, who are poor, who are lonely, who have been abandoned, rejected, forgotten, betrayed? Would we maybe even identify with them…?

And what if we offered them hope instead?

Maybe it’s an idealistic world I live in…but I’d like to think that if we were willing to dig below the surface or if we were willing to respond to others’ rudeness, thoughtlessness, sharpness, bitterness, anger with grace, and kindness, and compassion… that maybe lives could be changed.

It’s not the first time you’ve heard it, I know.
But, I think it’s always a good reminder.
People are people.

They matter.
Even the bad guys.
Because, at the end of the day, we’re not so different than them. The same grace and love that saves us is for them, too. The same blood that was shed for us, was also shed for them.

What if we lived like we believed that?

I don’t pray unceasingly.
I don’t read my Bible every day.
I don’t typically raise my hands during worship, sometimes I don’t even close my eyes when I pray (especially if I’m driving).
I don’t respond joyfully in all circumstances.
I don’t always think of ways to serve others well…and even when I do, I don’t always do it (I’m usually more concerned with myself, if we’re being honest).
I don’t always use the purest language or refrain from crude jokes.
I don’t always trust God.
I don’t always believe fully.
I don’t often love well.
I don’t always make God my number one priority.

These are my confessions.
There are more. Lots more. Lots more personal and specific ones, too. But, I think you get the idea.

Oftentimes I think that every other Christian out there is doing all of these things a whole heck of a lot more than I am…or at least they’re doing them better than me. I’ve kind of been wondering if we all feel the same way about each other, though. That on the outside, it looks like everyone else has it all together or has figured out this whole ‘picking up their cross’ thing and we’re the only ones still floundering around trying to get it straightened out. But maybe that’s just my attempt at making myself feel better as I recognize how far I am from getting anything right.

When I look at that list up there, at all the things I don’t do, I begin to wonder what I do do (yes, it’s perfectly appropriate to snicker here)…and I wonder how much of what I do actually matters.

There’s this balance that seems necessary in recognizing God’s grace and how without Christ we are hopeless to achieve any of these things…but then to counter that with recognizing that in Him we are made whole, we are new creations capable of much through the Holy Spirit dwelling in us.

I guess I just want to admit to you that I don’t have it figured out yet. And, I’m not sure that I will. I don’t have a 12 step solution to maintaining all the spiritual disciplines, or the secret to upholding any sort of consistent emotional connection with the Lord.

What I do know? It’s hard. It’s inconsistent…because I’m inconsistent.
And that too often I get caught up in the doing versus the being. I’m not ever going to get it all ‘right’. I’m don’t even think that’s the point.

The point is that He loves us…that He made a way for us, when we couldn’t do it ourselves.
So while we’re struggling and wrestling with the guilt that so often accompanies our inability to do any of this Christian stuff perfectly (or as good as we think the person next to us is…), I hope we fall to our knees in humility that we don’t have to.

Live your life in such a way that the Gospel penetrates every aspect of it, not just to follow some moral code and be a ‘good’ Christian.

There’s more.
And in the fullness of striving and failing…and striving and failing again, may we be constantly reminded of how necessary Jesus is. May we praise Him all the more for being sufficient.

I am thankful.

Tonight is one of those nights where words won’t do. 

Today I checked out nine books on singleness from the library. Nine. 

I think we torture ourselves sometimes.

I remember curling up in the back of my parent’s Expedition on our way home from a summer family vacation, listening to sappy country love songs and letting the tears roll down my cheeks. We were leaving behind the man I thought I was going to marry. Granted, he was actually a boy and I was a middle school girl whose emotions were fleeting (okay, okay…not a lot has changed)… but, at the time, I was sure that he was the one for me.

For months after that trip, for several years in a row, I found myself in mourning. I’d plaster up pictures of him from the trip, write him a letter or two (this was before email had really taken off), and cry alone in my room over my ‘soulmate’ who was always too far away. It was never meant to be. This is one of the first times I recall truly torturing myself over a boy.

As I got older, my torturing methods got a little more intense…especially as relationships actually happened. Post break-ups, my time was often spent analyzing old emails, looking at pictures of the two of us, listening to ‘our’ songs (no, not Taylor Swift…). Sometimes it included catching the gossip train from friends of friends, finding out what he was now doing or who he was now dating/interested in. Sometimes it meant sitting for hours on AOL Instant Messenger hoping to see his screenname pop up so I could then debate for many rigorous minutes if I should message him and what I could say, while desperately hoping that he would talk to me first. It was torture.

It didn’t always pertain to guys I had been in relationships with, either. I found ways of torturing myself with any guy I was remotely interested in…whether that meant waiting for phone calls that would never come, attempting to plan ‘unplanned’ encounters, finding reasons to email them or chat online with them, trying to get any and all information I could about their current relationship status. It was absurd. And unfortunately, as technology has advanced, I think that our ability to self-inflict wounds has gotten increasingly easier.

Think about it…
You have access to a lot of information about people that you didn’t used to have which makes stalking quite a lot easier….which, essentially, makes the torture (and the creepiness factor) much easier to inflict upon yourself.

While I can knock social networking sites and advanced technology all day long, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re the ones choosing to engage in behavior that is oftentimes harmful to ourselves. We’re the ones checking his Facebook page multiple times a day, we’re the ones finding reasons to casually text him, we’re the ones reading through all the old emails, notes, journal entries and listening to all the songs that make us think of the ‘one that got away’. We’re the ones looking for any possible reason to be jealous or worried about him moving on before us (as if we could somehow prevent it…). We’re the ones posting statuses and pictures and hoping that he’ll be jealous or interested in our lives again based off our wit and all the happenings in our lives.

You’ve done it.
You may even be doing it right now. As soon as you finish reading this blog, you’re going to check out his Facebook page one more time to stay current on who is posting on his wall (it better not be another girl…) and if his status will give you any indication of what he’s up to (maybe you can ‘accidentally’ run into him at Starbucks….).

It’s torture.
And while we’ve found ways to torture ourselves long before the Internet existed, it certainly hasn’t helped our cause. Your mind is constantly racing, you’re losing sleep, you’re anxious and worried and it seems like all you can think about is this guy…whether he’s a one from the past or future possibility. And the more you think about it, the less control you seem to have over your actions and the more you can justify doing ridiculous, crazy things.

It’s never beneficial.
The more you dwell on these things, the more you decide to do things which only prolongs the pain… the more you suffer. Each time you revisit his page, you’re inviting the wound to say open longer, to get more infected, to take longer to heal. You keep trying to fix things, to make them better, to make them ‘right’, to make him understand.

Ladies… stop.
We have to stop. The moment we become these obsessed girls in a frenzy is the moment that we lose a lot of our ability to think rationally about things. It’s the moment that we start making decisions we regret. It’s the moment we start to feel (and act) Out Of Control.

It’s another one of those times where you have to take it to the Lord… and it’s definitely one of those times where you need to implement self-control. Establish boundaries for yourself. Do other things with your life so you aren’t just waiting around, going mad that he hasn’t returned your phone call or texted you back yet (or, even better…don’t give yourself any room to call him or text him so you aren’t waiting for his response). You have to start making healthy decisions for yourself, decisions that allow you to be a real person not driven solely by fears and carnal desires….decisions that are also honoring of the other person (even if that means allowing them to move on and develop relationships with other people).

But you love them, you say?
Sometimes letting go is the best way you can love them. Sometimes letting them make their own decisions without you influencing their every step is the best way you can truly care about them. Sometimes relinquishing control is just necessary–for both people. And sometimes letting go is the best way you can give them a little space to figure out how they actually feel about you.

I think you’ll find that the less time you invest in them, the less you’ll be thinking about them. If you can set up boundaries to help dictate the number of times you get on Facebook each day, or maybe banish yourself completely from ‘stalking’ them via social networking sites, or make sure you’re not the one initiating contact with them…I think you’ll begin to recognize how in the blatant attempts to not torture yourself, the better you’ll feel. Find a friend to help keep you accountable in these boundaries.

You don’t need to make the pain worse by choosing to continually invite it back in again…and again… and again.

Do yourself a favor. Move on. Live your life.
Let it be out of your control and see what happens.
Remember that there’s much more than this.
And stop torturing yourself.

The comment:

My problem is this; I feel the need to be very honest with [someone]. [This person’s] belief (or lack thereof) and his status….are causing him to make a fool of himself. In a word, a hypocrite. I struggle with fear of saying such strong words to him, with saying something even more damaging than what he is doing to himself. I’ve never considered having to tell someone something so…raw. I don’t know what his response to me would be, and I don’t know what he would do if he agreed with me….I need some outside perspective.

There’s obviously a whole lot more to this comment than the paragraph above, but I chose to leave a lot of it out for a few reasons. Essentially this person is asking how to handle a situation where another believer is doing something/living in a certain way that doesn’t line up theologically with their beliefs. It begs the question: do you say something? And, if so, how?

It’s a good question…but it’s a hard question. Every situation is going to be really different and this one is particularly tricky given the circumstances. Honestly, I go back and forth on whether it’s our place to ever call someone out on hypocrisy.

Why?
Because we’re all hypocrites, to some degree. It immediately takes me to the verse of needing to take the log out of our own eye before attempting to remove the speck from someone else’s eye. And if this person is a Bible scholar of sorts, I’m not sure that anything that you say to him is going to be enlightening in any sort of way. I fear it might only distance you from him, causing a chasm to form that doesn’t need to be there. What would be the benefit of saying something? What results are you hoping to accomplish? Do you really think that confronting them in this manner is going to achieve those results?

So I know I haven’t been in seminary for very long, but just in my three weeks of classes I’ve been overwhelmed by how much I don’t know. I don’t know enough about Scripture. I don’t know anything about Greek and Hebrew and historical context and while, yes, you can read the Bible without a clear understanding of all of that and fully accept the Gospel, and glean a lot of truth… I’m way more hesitant to take firm stances on things that I think the Bible says without doing research on it first. I say all that because I think we need to be really cautious when we decide to ‘call people out’ on things we believe to be right or wrong–especially things that we don’t necessarily have a clear understanding of.

Proceeding carefully when calling out ‘sin’ in others is vital (unless it’s causing someone else harm- and even then, we should proceed carefully, but quickly). It isn’t always our place. And, it isn’t always up to us to determine what is sin and what isn’t. There are things in my life that I feel like that I know are sin for me, but it doesn’t mean that it’s sin for everyone. I can’t possibly expect everyone to adhere to my own guidelines, my own convictions, my own interpretations of what I believe scripture is saying about things. I think the moment we start living like is when we unknowingly invite self-righteousness and judgment to be our friends and suddenly we start thinking we’re better than everyone else and that we have all the answers. I say this because this is what I’ve known a lot of my life…this is who I’ve been a lot of my life. As much as we desire absolutes, I fear that there will always be situations where things are trickier than how they appear, where our moral codes are challenged and what we think we’ve always known and accepted as right and wrong will be called into question.

Having a conversation with a friend about their life and things that they are processing through and wrestling with can be a really good thing…but to have a confrontation with a friend in a way that makes them feel like they are judged, that you think you have all the right answers, in a way that highlights their hypocrisy while you ignore your own….? I just think it’s sketchy. I think there a better ways to handle it. I think that oftentimes we need to let God be the righteous judge, I think we need to pray that the Holy Spirit would be the One who convicts when we are unsure about things… and we need to trust Him to handle the areas of sin in each other’s lives.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely think confrontation is necessary at times, but not in a way where we say, ‘Hey, you hypocrite… get your life together, don’t you know that you’re being a moron and making terrible decisions?’ And not that you’d ever be that harsh, but there’s a lot going on beyond the surface that we sometimes forget about when all we see are the actions of someone. Our limited view doesn’t enable us to know their hearts (no matter how close to them we are), to know what the real issue is, to know what the wounds truly are. If it’s not a situation where someone has personally sinned against you, I’d really encourage you to approach this person as your friend… as someone you really love and care about, in a way that makes them know that you care infinitely more about who they are and how they are than you do about their actions.

In the end, you’ll probably do what you feel like you need to do…but I’d urge you to back up every choice you make with Scripture. Dig deep into what it says. And remember that you’re only spotless because of the blood of Christ. Remember that each day you sin…you screw up…and sometimes you probably do it knowing full well what you are doing, but, for whatever reason you decide not to care in that moment.

My point is that when we think it’s our responsibility and duty to tell someone how much they are screwing up…sometimes we need to be willing to remember how much we are screwing up, and how much we need Jesus (as much as the other hypocrites). It’s not always our responsibility to speak up, it’s not always our place. We are all sinners, saved by grace.

Pray for discernment and wisdom…but sometimes I think that it’s better to be quick to listen and slow to speak, especially in the instances when we feel the anxious need to speak.

Be a friend.
Not another to cast condemnation and judgment in someone’s life.
Not another to throw a stone…

My house currently hosts ‘The Bachelor’ parties every Monday night.

Before you get all judgy on me, though, I want to assure you that these nights were established before I ever moved on. You can resume judging me now because you can also be assured that I was already hooked on the show prior to my transition up here. It was actually a perfect fit.

Regardless, it’s been a hilarious show to watch among mixed genders. We have strict guidelines while we watch, of course. No talking during the show (unfortunately we aren’t always the best at following this one). During commercial breaks we immediately mute the television and debrief everything we just saw, including predictions over who the bachelor is going to kick off that night.

It’s a serious matter. Lots of depth, thought and energy goes into our psychoanalysis of each contestant. This particular season has been one of interesting speculations and hypotheses. Mostly I’m just disappointed that I didn’t try to get on this season, as I’m quite sure Sean was the man I was meant to be with (just kidding, Mom).

I’ll probably have more to say about this show, especially as it nears the end and has a million great examples of what not to do in relationships…but this particular post I want to focus in on kissing. Yep. Kissing (well, and other physical things). Every week we watch Sean kiss five hundred girls and most of us cringe every time it happens. It just always seems bad…which naturally produces at least one or two comments about kissing every night we watch The Bachelor.

Here’s what I want to say to you about it:
Kissing can be a bigger deal than you might think it is, in the moment. While, sure, it can seem fairly harmless… I think there’s a lot that goes on physiologically once we start making out. In fact, I’m not really sure our bodies are all that prepared to go into kissing mode and then stop at that. It’s pretty natural for kissing to quickly progress into a whole other realm of possibilities.

No, this isn’t a blog about how you shouldn’t kiss. I’m not against kissing. But, I do think you need to be super careful with it…and that sometimes there are probably occasions and situations in which you should definitely not be kissing.

For example…
I’ve been a ‘ducker’ in my past.
You know… the girl who probably teases a guy to the point where he thinks that if he goes for it, he’ll probably land a kiss…and then when he actually tries, I duck? I don’t mean to…I honestly don’t. But, sometimes it happens. There’s a pretty vivid moment in my history where, during high school, I was all cuddling with a guy in a movie theatre and when we headed back to the car afterward he, of course, thought he was going to get a kiss. I had given him no reason to believe otherwise. But, I just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t feel ready. I didn’t even really want to. I wasn’t sure I liked him. So, he tried. I ducked.

This is one way to really emasculate a guy, in case you’re wondering. But, for some stupid reason, I felt bad about the situation and so I recanted my non-kissing stance with him and encouraged him to try again. I should have never changed my mind. Worst Kiss Ever. Seriously. I can’t even begin to tell you how bad it was, and I definitely don’t want to try to describe it. Just trust me.

I kissed him because I felt guilty for not kissing him. And I regretted it.
I wonder how often we are prone to do things like this. Not even just in regard to kissing…but other physical things with either our boyfriends or other guys that we somehow find ourselves in back seats with. Feeling guilty for not giving them what we think they want, and so we find ourselves compromising, giving in, and making decisions that we inevitably regret. I wonder how often we make these decisions because, on some level, it also just feels good to have someone want us physically. Maybe it makes us feel beautiful, or desirable, or sexy… or whatever it is.

And this is where I have to urge you to be careful. To not do things out of guilt. To not do things because it makes you feel good about yourself. To not compromise. There have to be things that you are set on, rigid in, ground in. Before you go on a date, set some boundaries for yourself. I promise that if he’s a cool guy, you’ll get another chance to kiss him… and if he’s not, you’ll be glad you didn’t.

This is one of those times where living in the moment is usually a bad idea.

This matters.
Purity matters.
And the things that can easily lead to tearing that away from you are better to be avoided.
You are called to holiness…being set apart.

Please, by all means, watch The Bachelor and laugh about it (but not if it messes up your heart and your head and makes you think things about love that simply aren’t true)… but don’t go try to live it out yourself. Don’t go around kissing randos and flirting with boundaries and rationalizing that ‘just because you aren’t having sex‘ that it’s all okay. It’s not. Plus, there’s all that stuff in between kissing and sex that you might be trying to justify, while knowing that it’s not okay at all for you to be doing.

If you’re in the midst of it, stop (I know, I know… easier said than done. At least talk to someone about where you’re at…openly and honestly).
If you know you’re entering into a situation where temptation is likely, pull out. Ask someone to hold you accountable (someone who you trust…someone who has the same values as you).
If you feel too far gone, talk to someone about it. My inbox is always open, but I imagine you have someone else close to you that can be a good, wise ear for you. You’re not too far gone. Of that, I am sure.

I realize this is a big topic and that there’s a lot left to talk about. But, for right now I want you to know that you should never feel guilted into doing things, that you should be cautious when making sexual decisions quickly and spontaneously, and that there’s always hope even if you feel like you’re stuck in the midst of some bad stuff. There’s redemption. There’s second chances. There’s freedom.

And when you duck? Trust your gut. Don’t change your mind. Be thankful that your body was reacting before your head got a chance to over-think things too much.

Stand firm in these things.
You won’t regret it.

After a post like yesterday’s, I always feel super vulnerable and pathetic.

I’ll get the occasional pity text or email where people check in to make sure I’m ‘doing okay’. It’s nice and all… but not necessary. And when I run into people who I know might have read my blog, I always wonder if they’re feeling sorry for me, or what conclusions that they’ve made about me. It’s especially awkward with people who I don’t actually know that well (which is almost everyone here at this point) and yet they know these deep wounds of mine. It’s why blogging is ridiculous, on some level.

But, the purpose of the post wasn’t for people to pity me, or know a ton about my life just for the sake of knowing it. I believe there’s a lot more going on in the blogging than I’m even aware of… and I continue to pray that it would be a forum in which my being honest allows others to relate and feel hopeful, and ultimately be reminded of who Jesus is.

There’s a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head lately… a lot of emotions…a lot of confusion. But, in all of that there’s been a steady reminder that sometimes all I need to worry about is today. With deadlines and tests looming in the future, with getting anxious about what could be and what might be… I’ve been assured that today has enough going on that I need to focus on.

Matthew 6, right?
That passage we recite to ourselves about worry and anxiety and typically it doesn’t do a whole lot of good. It’s become one of those that I just roll my eyes at because I’ve heard it so many times and it doesn’t seem to do a lot when I get caught up in the middle of an anxiety attack, freaking out about something that is actually minute but seems catastrophic at the time.

But, what if we really took it to heart?
What if…when you wake up today, you actually set aside all the things that happen outside of today and didn’t let your mind worry about them? What if we set goals for ourselves that were just for today without getting too overwhelmed by the word ‘forever’? What if we begged that the Lord would help us in these choices, these actions, these things that we need to do… for today? That we trusted Him to be our portion, to sustain us, to fulfill us…?

It can happen with a lot of things…

• Maybe you’re stressed out about feeling like you need to lose weight. Instead of feeling the daunting task of what it will look like to lose weight over weeks and months, focus on today. What can you do, today, to make healthy choices? How can you eat better? How can you exercise? Today… not for the rest of this week, not tomorrow, not for the next month… but today? 
• Maybe you’re anxious about a relationship. Maybe it’s ended and you know you need to cut off ties. Instead of looking at the long term of life without this person and letting the overwhelming loss of that consume you, focus on today. Get through today. Don’t call them, don’t text them, don’t email them, don’t stalk their Facebook. Just for today. 
• Maybe you’re a student or in a job and you feel overwhelmed when you think about the deadlines and tests and all the things that have to get done in a certain amount of time. Do what you need to do today and be a good steward of your time. Don’t get wrapped up in what you need to do in two weeks or the end of the semester, but plan accordingly and do whatever needs to get done today without worrying about how the rest of it is all going to happen. It’ll happen. 

Ask yourself each day what matters for the day.
And, hopefully, each day we have one thing at the top of the list that everything else flows from.

Today.
It’s a good day.
A day that the Lord has made.
You’ve been given new mercy every morning.
Praise Him.

Honesty, you say?
You value it? You want it?
Okay.
What I’m about to write is very near to my heart and hard for me to admit. But, I do believe that somewhere, somehow, in some way that the Lord can use it for good and so I feel inclined to share. It’s probably nothing that will surprise you, especially if you’re an avid reader of mine… but it doesn’t make it any easier to confess.

I’m an idolater.

The gross reality of my current state has been alarming to me recently, yet not exactly surprising. I’m 28 and I’m single. While I spend a majority of my time convincing others (probably unsuccessfully) that I’m fine with it, I realized that I had only been trying to fool myself. This weekend the mask came crashing down and I was hit by the pain of my singleness. And, beyond that, I was hit with the stark realization that I have made an idol out of desperately trying (whether in thought or action) to not be single any longer. It was consuming.

I was heading to my brother’s house to babysit for my nephew, chuckling at the irony of how I’d be the one crying instead of the four-month-old. It seemed a fitting evening…an evening to wallow in my own misery and despair. To allow myself to really feel the pain that I had been denying existed. My brother saw through my fake smile and immediately probed further to find out what was going on with me. The questions brought up more tears and I shamefully admitted to my brother and sister-in-law how pathetic I felt, how hopeless I felt, how desperate I felt…and how this pain felt truly insignificant in the grand scheme of life. Why did I even have to care about this? I was frustrated.

As I talked about just wanting to not desire a male companion or a family, my brother gently reminded me that these desires aren’t bad. That when we don’t get something we want, our natural tendencies are to go really hard after it, or to pretend that we never wanted it at all. We often live in the extremes because it helps us deal with the pain better. But, sometimes we need to sit in the tension of wanting something even if we aren’t getting it…to not deny ourselves our desires, but to not try to control them and make things happen that don’t need to be happening. He was right. It is harder to sit in this tension of wanting but not having…

I don’t necessarily know the fullness of what that even looks like, but I know that I have to exist in that right now. Wanting, but not having. Wanting, but not controlling. Wanting, but not pretending that I don’t want. Wanting, but not idolizing…not letting it consume me.

I got a chance to talk to two older, single women recently and as I confessed this wound to them, they expressed their own, similar wounds. I’m not alone in this pain. I’m not alone in this tension. One talked about feeling as though she was always waiting for this missing key (a husband) before really selling out to the Lord. That she had heard a voice calling her toward missions, but she kept waiting for the last piece of the puzzle before she felt like she could go. Another discussed a decision to go abroad and how she had unknowingly made a deal with the Lord. A deal that essentially said, ‘If you’re not going to give me a husband to do mission work with, then you’ll provide someone along the journey for me.’ But there was no one, and it wasn’t until there was no one that she realized the deal that she had conjured up, even though it was one the Lord had never agreed to.

These are the things we do.
And as we get older, the pain thickens and we choose to cope with it in different ways. We deny. We throw ourselves at men. We manipulate. We control. We pretend like men don’t matter (even though we think they’re all that matters). We make our careers our number one priority (to avoid the fact that we’re alone). We strike up deals with the Lord. We’re either masking the pain or we’re overcompensating for it. We slowly become women we don’t even recognize.

I’ve become an idolater, placing this idea of an earthly relationship above God. Wanting it more than Him. Caring about it more than Him. Thinking about it more than Him.

I’m slowly becoming a woman I don’t recognize. A woman I don’t want to be.
It’s awful to admit.

And this is where I must surrender.
This is where I must hold loosely.
This is where I must trust Jesus and exist in the better plan that He has for me.
This is where I must beg that only He would be my savior and that I would learn, especially in my time of singleness, what it means to be content…what it means to believe that He is enough…what it means to let Him be my portion.
This is where I must sit in the tension. Where I must sit in the pain of wanting and not having…and continually take it to Him… again…and again…and again.

Ultimately, I would beg that my heart and mind would be so focused on the Lord that everything else would truly be considered rubbish next to knowing Him. That there would be no more room for idols in my heart.

May we become women we don’t necessarily recognize, because we are becoming a fuller version of who we were always meant to be. As we exist in the tension, may we find God to be the fullness of who He truly is: good, sovereign, faithful, redeeming, gentle, love….willing to take our shattered hearts and tenderly mend them and mold them.

There’s hope for change.
I don’t have to be this woman caught in idolatry any longer.
The power of Christ reminds me of that.
And I hope it reminds you of that, too.