Category Archives: Single Parenting

Let’s Reclaim the Value of Singleness

It’s 7:00 on a Friday night and the lobby is filling up fast. The women are dressed to the nines, sizing up the other women, trying to get a read on the “competition”, while the outnumbered men – looking a little awkward and uncomfortable themselves – are checking out the women.  There’s a band starting up in the auditorium and the air is electric with expectation.

It’s not a rock concert.  It’s a singles “Kickoff” event at a suburban church.

The newcomers have a hard time distinguishing between the pulsing bass and their own thrumming heartbeats.  The seasoned pros practice looking nonchalant, bobbing their heads and tapping their fingers to the beat of the music.  Everyone is nervous and hopeful.

A young widow fights the urge to turn around and run back to her car. A newly-divorced accountant wonders if this was such a good idea after the stressful day he just had.  The single mom hopes the evening won’t end with her wishing she had stayed home with her preschooler. The never-married machinist hopes no one remembers the unintentional slur against “40 year old single guys” from the pulpit a few weeks ago.  And the professional woman debates whether to tell the men she is in law enforcement or make something up, just for tonight. 

There are people there with secrets they don’t want anyone to know and others with gaping emotional wounds. Most are just lonely and longing to be understood. And truth be told, all of them are hoping to find someone who will want to know them, value them, and make them whole.  

 

The scene above plays out regularly, year after year, in churches nationwide:  Singles looking to get out of being single, wanting to find someone with whom they can enjoy and share life.  Many never realize they could be taking advantage of a remarkable opportunity for personal healing, meaningful community, and unique intimacy with Christ as a single, whether or not they eventually marry.

They are missing their chance to be “Whole-Hearted Singles”.

What if singleness was not just a life stage to get through on the way to something “better”, but a status of great significance to embrace, whether for a season or a lifetime?

Do you believe singles really can enjoy a deeply satisfying intimacy with Christ and a thrilling experience of the true community He wants for His followers?

Did you know there’s a Biblical basis for singleness that raises the value of singles and gives them equal status and significance in the eyes of God?

I’m writing a book about this with a seasoned pastor at my church.  Your input – whether you are single or married – is more than welcome!

Reflections on Life as a Workaround

Since “Reflections on Life As a Workaround” is the current subtitle of my blog, I thought it might be helpful to elaborate on the idea a bit here and in future posts.

I suspect I am not alone in the realization that this life – the one I am living now – is not at all the life I would have predicted when I was younger.

What was I envisioning?

There was a time when I thought I would be a missionary to a foreign country because as a young child, I had this idea in my mind that God would love me more if I worked really hard for Him.  I desperately wanted that love.

But I never became a missionary.

I majored in advertising in college, worked in radio, print, public relations and promotions for about a decade after graduation and wandered away from God for a long time.  It wasn’t until years later that I began to truly understand grace and His desire for a relationship with me, whether I “worked really hard for Him” . . . or just accepted His immeasurable, unconditional love.

I also thought I would be a schoolteacher because I loved the idea of making charts, writing down the grades for all the students, and keeping track of information.  I wanted to collect the milk money on Mondays and make sure all the children got one of those little cardboard half-pints at the mid-morning break.

But I never became a schoolteacher, either.

I didn’t even like kids all that much until I had my own!  Instead, after I grew disillusioned with the advertising world, I became an FBI agent.  I made plenty of charts, kept track of lots of information and wrote reports of everything I did on each case.  I made sure criminals got what was coming to them, too, and it wasn’t half-pints of milk.

As a young girl, I assumed I would someday be happily married and have twins – one boy and one girl – and my perfect little family would live on a ranch with acres and acres of property to explore, always on horseback and always at a full gallop.

But I grew up in Key West – no livestock there! – and my track record on marriage turned out to be less than stellar.  I had one beautiful daughter who I would have instantly died for the moment I laid eyes on her.  And I found myself raising her alone from the time she was about 17 months old.

During those years, I taught single parents as a volunteer leader in my church, coaching them along in their spiritual journeys as they struggled to understand that with Christ, they could pass more than just a “broken baton” to their children.

A lot of how my life turned out was just the way circumstances unfolded.  Families move, interests change, people disappoint.  But a good part of my plans also got derailed because of my own bad judgment and ill-advised decisions.

Let’s just call it what it is:  sin.

The consequences caused pain and heartache, and required a lot of adjustments along the way.  But I realize now that God accompanied me through all of it and looking back, I see how He continues to redeem my life, even through all these workarounds.

My now-grown daughter, Allison, gave me a wonderful book for Christmas by Rainer Marie Rilke, a young poet writing at the turn of the last century.  It is called Love Poems to God and is translated from the original German.  Here is an excerpt from the collection that expresses with wrenching beauty the reciprocal loving relationship God invites us into:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us

then walks with us silently out of the night.


These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going.  No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.