Acknowledging our fears, our idols, and our hopelessness, that we may begin to seek for hope.
In the epilogue of this series I mentioned the need to confront my own feelings of hopelessness and frustration surrounding the idea of singleness before I could actually start searching for hope and a new perspective. Well, that journey of unpacking all that baggage started well over a year and a half ago, and it started with a breakup (how all good villain origin stories start…)
I had just gotten properly dumped for the first time and was wallowing in the melancholy of it all. I felt like my heart was bleeding out and I didn’t really want to think about getting married, which was absolutely a first for me. I had always wanted to get married, and had always assumed it would inevitably be the case, and in my mind, had never been given cause to think anything to the contrary. But post-getting-dumped me was mad and sad and bitterly disappointed in men and so… I tossed that potential future in the bin and began assessing my future as if marriage was not an option. And quickly I realized that I had been holding space (and I do mean acres of space) in my heart and mind and future to make sure that marriage happened for me. I was suddenly and painfully aware of an unconscious mindset that had embedded itself into every decision or thought of future plans and dreams… I was literally chained to the idea of my future marriage. And this was just the tip of an iceberg that had been causing unseen wreckage throughout my life for years.
And so I began my noble, messy quest into the tangled lands of Marriage & Singleness. My first stop? The Idolization of Marriage.
Growing up, I worshiped the idea of marriage. Can you relate? The conservative Christian culture worships the crap outta marriage. I grew up in such a culture, in such a church. My own natural desire to be married morphed into something of an obsession, fueled by the ideology that marriage is the be-all-and-end-all of the Christian life. As in so many other instances, the leadership in my community never intended to convey this message. They were attempting to counter the immorality of what the world whispered, to combat a desperate divorce rate and encourage healthy, Bible-based relationships. I acknowledge this and I am not here to throw shade or place blame. But the resulting effect for some (if not nearly all) of us is nonetheless grave – marriage gets put on a pedestal, and singleness is degraded to nothing more than a miserable waiting room, something to be endured. Consider an excerpt from an ‘angry rant’ blog post draft, which attempts to paint the picture of how we often idolize marriage:
“What happens when we worship something? Our life revolves around it. Our sun rises and sets on it. It is what motivates us, what drives us, what we simultaneously hope in and fear. We derive our joy from it, and it can be the cause of incalculable pain, disappointment, and misery. We are controlled by it, both limited and liberated by it. We live and we die by it.
Consider: the above paragraph can describe our relationship with God, or…
What if our lives revolve around the idea of someday getting married? Our sun rises and sets on the hope that eventually someone will make us incandescently happy. We’re motivated by this desire to be married, driven by the need to be needed, hoping desperately for that day to come, and desperately afraid that it never will. We derive our joy from attention from the opposite sex and are horribly wounded by failed relationships and our own deeply broken, mangled hearts. We are controlled by this equal desire and fear, making choices based on the ‘need’ and hope to be married. We are often self-limited in our opportunities because we ‘must’ put our hoped-for marriage (which is not guaranteed) above all else. We believe we will be liberated from all that ails us when we finally tie the knot. We practically live and die by the ardent desire and undying hope to be married.
And when we do finally get what we’ve always dreamed of, it will not be what we’ve always dreamed of–because no earthly thing that we worship will meet our expectations. And we will be left having wasted untold years of our solo season, with a perspective that does not provide us with good chances of a meaningful marriage season, either.”
Does this feel at all familiar?
It’s oh, so easy to idolize something that we naturally desire and that is lauded and celebrated so uniformly throughout our Christian culture.
And when one thing is loved and worshiped, oftentimes the opposite of that thing is despised, or at the very least, disliked and discarded. Such is the unfortunately terrible PR that surrounds the idea of ‘Singleness’.
Pause for a breath and consider the instinctual thoughts, feelings, pictures, etc. that arise when you think or read or hear the word singleness. What’s the initial impression? Positive or negative? Desirable or undesirable? Easy or difficult? Popular or unpopular? Does it ‘describe’ you? Does it ‘define’ you? Do you prickle like a perturbed hedgehog when those three syllables meet your ears? I used to.
It didn’t matter which way I looked — the media (social & entertainment), my friends, my role models, my education, my church, the world in which i tread — everyone told me, whether with exact words or strong suggestion, that being with someone is infinitely better than being without. And so for a long time, I let this mindset become my guideline for living life. I didn’t consider pursuing certain passions because it might somehow lessen my chances of getting married ASAP. I ignored God’s voice on more than one occasion because I thought obeying would mean missing out on what I thought was so essential to my own happiness. I wanted to be happy single, but had very few role models who were walking out abundant life singleness. And when I finally realized how entrapped I had been and began to untangle myself from the lies I had always believed about marriage and singleness, I became very, very angry.
For I was beginning to recognize the lies that intertwined with the lie ‘Marriage is better, marriage is best’:
If you are single, then…
You are incomplete.
You are not good enough.
You are not desirable.
You are missing out.
Your ministry is inferior to the ministry of marriage.
How would you feel if someone beat you over the head with those statements?
I was pissed.
You’ve probably heard that anger is a secondary emotion, always rooted in some other pain point.
I waa feeling hurt, rejected, and profoundly discouraged. It seemed that the voices of church, culture, and community were all repeating over and over that singleness means second-class citizenship, and, to put it simply, that feels crappy as a single person. It seemed I was being branded with the red-hot, shameful label ALONE. I am alone, therefore I am less, unable to truly live an abundant life.
I sat in this anger and pain for quite a while, processing, crying, untangling.
It sucked.
I want you to hear this part of my process because it’s essential to acknowledge where we’re experiencing hopelessness so that we can accurately apply hope to those wounds. If you don’t show your wounds to the Doctor, He won’t be able to heal you.
Show your wounds to the Great Physician.
I told God I was angry, frustrated, feeling rejected and put down. I alternated between flaming rage and tearful pleas to rescue me from feeling so bitterly worthless.
He listened. And then He answered.
He began to lead me gently towards resources that would speak truth to the wounding lies I had been believing for so long. He spoke directly to my hurts, through His Word, the Holy Spirit, and worship. He walked with me. He walks with us.
The next installment of this ‘series’ will be a blog post entirely made up of links and references to those resources that have been so powerful and uplifting in my ‘singleness’ journey. Because there is hope. There is.
But first… I encourage you to bring your hurt before Jesus. Whatever emotions, fears, insecurities, hurts, frustrations, etc. that you’re experiencing in this area of your life… Those things are best laid at the feet of your loving Father. He treasures your heart, in all your brokenness.
To finish on a note of hope, this is from a journal entry I wrote during a very painful, uncertain season of brokenness, one that, in some ways, I’m still picking my way through. It encapsulates the peace and comfort I’ve found as I’ve brought my brokenness to Him over and over.
“There’s something beautiful about being broken at the feet of Jesus. For here is a safe place, a quiet place. whatever pain rages is calmed & quieted some in His presence. Whatever aching & bleeding remains is like a sweet offering when brought before Him. It’s safe to crumple here. It’s safe to admit to our brokenness here, for He is the One Who was broken for us. In His presence we do not resign ourselves to brokenness, we are able to acknowledge it, to forsake the fragile bonds that hold us temporarily together and come crashing down in His arms. We are made bare in His presence but instead of being exposed, we experience the sweetness of being seen, being known. If I am to be broken, let me be broken at the feet of Jesus; poured out for His glory, poured out in the presence of His love.”
He is so good.
Big love,
Em
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