After my retreat this weekend, I had to explain to W that single is a noun these days. As in "I am a single." It's used in church language to mean "anyone who is not married"... although I suppose it technically means "any full-grown adult of marrying age who is not married." However, the problem with being categorized as "a single" is that it doesn't provide a lot of clarity about your actual status as a non-married person. You could be a single that's in a relationship, a single that's engaged, a divorced single, a widowed single, or a single single. Whew! Now, many of those singles actually aren't quite that single are they?
So here in the middle of the dating fast, I've been trying to come to terms with being a single single. Wow... not sure if any other phrase possibly makes you sound quite so lame or alone! haha
Seriously, though, I am happy to report that I've been recognizing progress lately. What a blessing! So much of the time we don't even realize that we're making progress... we just wake up one day and all of a sudden we've arrived somewhere without really being aware of how we got there. As such, I take it as a great gift from God to be able to notice progress. It helps me to know that He is working in me, that I'm on the right track, and that I'm steadily headed somewhere better than the place I left. It's exciting!
I've been praying lately that I would find my heart more captivated by God's love than I do by the hypothetical love of some future man. This, it has become clear to me, has been the crux of the problem that I'm dealing with in the dating fast. Relationship and marriage has been an idol for me because at the end of the day I tend to see it as more exciting, more enticing, more important, and more valuable that God's love. Eek. It may be more tangible, but that's about it in terms of its superiority.
So I've been praying for God to help me understand His love more. I figured I'd learn to love Him more if I first better understood His love for me. The great news is that God has been faithful in answering this prayer! I've been reading through Genesis again lately, and truly internalizing the story of Adam and Eve and the fall of man. Truly, the story that the Bible tells is one of the unending heartache of a loving God who just desperately wants to be loved back by His children. I don't know that I've ever really thought about how God feels about all of this. When I try to wrap my mind around God's emotional qualities, I start to better understand His love for us. He tries over and over and over and over again to win our love back. He gives us chance after chance after chance to run back to Him. He pursues each person on earth mightily because it breaks His heart to not have them as His.
As I type this, I recognize that these are all statements that I have heard and known for some time. That said, I feel blessed in that it is penetrating my heart in a new way these days. I had a moment over the weekend where it became awesomely clear to me... there's a song that we often sing called "How He Loves Us" and it has a verse in it which says "if grace is an ocean we're all sinking..." Now, I've never quite liked the song because it's unfortunately forever tied to Mr. Sleepyhead, who was the one who introduced it to me. But anyway, as we were singing it this weekend, I imagined myself floating in the middle of this giant ocean, and God's waves just crashing over me. One wave was love, one wave was grace, one wave was forgiveness, one wave was a second chance, one wave was sustenance, one wave was goodness... repeated in a cycle as many times as real waves crash upon the shore... for eternity.
Sorry if that sounds strange or melodramatic, but the reality is that that's how much God loves us. The waves never stop, never run dry, never grow weaker, never retreat. Crazy to think about, right? I mean, really... really think about it.
In conclusion, I find myself slowly letting go of my death grip on marriage as I start to let first things be first in my heart. Not to say that I don't want it (I still do, at times desperately) but that I'm growing in my peace about it day by day. Being a single single isn't that bad after all, when you've got God on your side and you know that you're still desirable and wanted even if no one's choosing you right now. I pray that I can continue to think this way and continue to grow during this single single season! Here's to progress!
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