Two Encouraging Words for Singles

The number of blog posts written to singles is overwhelming right now. I used to read them as they popped up in my social media streams, but after awhile I began to grow tired of them. Although I'm sure they were well-intentioned and able to encourage some, they began to feel like the same song on repeat. Some seemed to heap guilt on singles, urging them to take action. Others retaliated against the idea that maturity only comes through marriage. And some stood on the sidelines calling for a contentment that will finally silence all of the worry and anxious toil.


I do think we can gain wisdom from these blogs.  I do think we can find truths there that we still need to grow into. But I want to take a slightly different approach and share two of the most encouraging words I have encountered as a single person. This post may be a bit more personal, but I am sharing some of the words that have stilled my heart in paralyzing anxiety and fear of the unknown.  I hope it can bring you some Christ-centered sanity in seasons that feel like chaos.

1. The point of dating is to gain clarity.  

I got this one from John Piper. His words gave me a sense of freedom, because suddenly I could see how dating is meant to be simultaneously serious and transient. You start a relationship with a certain amount of uncertainty, but its success only depends on whether you discover if marriage is God's plan (or not) for you. With these lines in place, a break-up (something we all fear) is not a sign that the relationship was a failure. It may still be heart-breaking to end a relationship, but if the end result was realizing marriage is not a good fit for the two of you, the relationship was still successful. 

2. God will give you the life circumstance that most glorifies Him.  

One night during a small group meeting, we were all discussing how we can understand the gospel better. "I know one way," one young mother spoke up. "Get married and have children. God will teach you a lot about Himself through that." For reasons entirely out of her control, my heart sank. I felt robbed of something I emotionally desired along with the thought that I was also missing out on a deeper knowledge of God. In the midst of these troubling thoughts, the Spirit reminded me that God gives me everything I need to glorify Him. He provides all of the temporary circumstancial elements needed. And He alone knows what those are. One day it may be marriage. But right now it is singleness, because that is what He has given me.  


I don't know who you are or what season you are facing in life. I hope you find some courage here to take the risks of dating, or trust God with patterns of diligence despite a lack of prospects, or to consider how you can glorify God with whatever tools He has placed in your hands. We can know that He will care for us as a good Father through it all.

There is one kindergartner at my school who seems especially shocked by her mortality. The smallest hairline scratch is a marvel to her, as if getting hurt at all is an unnatural thing. She tumbles around with the twenty-something other children every day on the structure, climbing and skidding and yelling around. But the tiniest friction set against her near-translucent skin is a subject for scrutiny in her eyes. When something isn't fully functioning, she furrows her brow and trudges over to a teacher. She lifts a small finger, cradled in the other hand, and begins to describe her emergency. Her voice is stricken with surprise and a kind of offense at the way of the world.

The temptation of the grown-up is to brush aside the child's sensitivity, to pat her on the head and tell her to go back and play. But perhaps there is something to her sense of dissatisfaction with a world of stubbed toes, paper cuts, monkey bar blisters, and hangnails. Maybe we become numbed to the small evidences of fracture in our world that play out in our relationships, in our homes, in our cities. Perhaps we become resolved to some of the sorrows and begin to imagine they were intended to be there in the first place. Perhaps it takes someone so full of the vision of Heaven to remind us that sin is a foreign thing we should never become comfortable with.

Hitting the Spot

   (Drawing by Julianna Kunstler) 

I have never been much of a sports fan. There was only one year when I felt excitement over a game. My mother, the daughter of a football player, grew up rooting for teams and taking part in cheer. At some point she began watching basketball on tv with my brother and I. We began to yell at the square screen, calling out players by name, waving pom poms in our team's royal purple. Our living room became the stadium seating where we watched men move with an agility our bodies could never achieve. 

I'm not sure what happened that year. I'm not sure why I began to feel an enthusiasm that dissipated so soon after.

Every day after lunch I spend two hours overseeing recess for third, fourth, and fifth graders. I pace the blacktop for two hours, making sure balls hit walls and hoops rather than bodies, and mediating when anger flares up. One day a PE teacher stuck around the blacktop with the kids, dribbling and shooting hoops. A few boys were shooting with him, in awe at the way his target seemed to draw the ball in like a magnet. He began to model and explain, correcting when their efforts continued to veer to one side like a twisted grocery cart wheel. Suddenly, every failed release of the ball became the tension of the story, and the coach's effortless ability to consistently make it through the net felt like he had learned the resolution of it all. When he made a shot, everything happened the way it was meant to. He had learned the secret. He could meet the standard, and watching it happen again and again gave you the satisfaction of hitting the spot.

I began to get a glimpse of the beauty of sports that day. There is a pleasure in applying yourself to a form and pattern, and learning how to emulate it with precision. I think this is a good gift from God. But without throwing away or diminishing the goodness of this gift, I've also begun to feel the ways my sinful heart can turn small standards into ultimate Standards. We all fall short of the glory of God, and we all try to fulfill the glory of lesser things.

In the midst of a busy schedule, it's tempting for me to reduce my life to meeting concrete standards of success. Jesus said not to worry about what we wear or eat, but sometimes it feels easier to worry about what I'm going to eat next week than how I can spend more time in devotions before work. Eating Whole 30 is easier to complete than killing sin. We lower the Standard required for us when we blow up the rules required for small things.

There's an unhealthy satisfaction in biting off something small enough to chew for the sake of feeling in control of something. There are two common ways we try to achieve sovereignty in our lives: we either climb up ladders or try to shrink the world down to a size that makes us stand tall over it. I am one who shrinks down the world, but perhaps you are the ladder-climbing kind. Either way, both ladders and worlds collapse on us eventually. We are shown to be declawed and noodle-limbed, branches that can indeed do nothing apart from the Vine. His glory is far greater than the flowers of the fields. We can be weak, throwing balls that refuse to be centered, and walk in a way that pleases God. His law is higher than any we can create, but His sacrifice is also more complete than any we could afford.

   
     

Even with the curse
Holding creation as it groans
Still the river sparkles
Still the wind stirs up
Hands of a million leaves
Giving another standing ovation
To the One
Who was
And is
And is to come
Repeating the refrain
That all was once not like this and
All will once be not like this
Again