Not Alone

(by Anne Sims)
Source: Relevant Magazine

I know, I know. You’re already looking for holy, sanctimonious, snobbish “it’ll be worth the wait when your prince (or princess) comes and makes it all worthwhile.” Not so, I say. And it’s not easy for me to say that at all. I’ve been married seven and a half years, was single for 27 before that, and I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be single. Don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not looking to be free of my husband … not at all. Seven and half years later, I think we’re finally getting to the good stuff. We know each other way less than we thought we did on our wedding day, and much better than we did that next morning when we woke up as Mr. and Mrs. We’ve been through some really tough stuff together: We’ve both had surgeries, mine minor, his less so. We’ve struggled to pay bills—really scary ones, like the one from the IRS. We make an odd couple—both tremendously damaged by our childhoods, and healed in some painful and wondrous way by one another. But I digress… Singleness. I never valued it when I had it. My goal was always not to be alone, and since I make friends with male people more easily than with female people, that meant I was “not alone” with male people quite a bit. Emotional intimacy was easily had, and I mistook that more than once for love, and that led to sex and the giving away of bits and pieces of myself.

And the older I get, the more I wish I hadn’t given so much of myself away. I wish I’d learned to like myself better as a single person, valued myself more, given more of my heart to God and less of my body to men who didn’t love it like I should have. The older I get, the more I realize how deep God’s love is, and how like a father I have broken God’s heart in the past—not irrevocably and not with rejection, but with sadness for how little I thought of myself, how much of myself I gave that I can’t get back, how little I trusted myself when I was so determined not to be single.

By the time Ben and I married, I had grown up a little. I’d sort of given up on not being single, and was working on learning to love my single self. We actually had a very deep conversation about how we were not dating at this point in our lives, over a dinner that started as a convenient grab-a-bite-after-class and was, by the end of the evening, looking more and more like a date. I liked myself, and so I didn’t just jump at the chance to date someone, to be “not alone.” I found that because I valued myself and had a sense of who God was calling me to be, I felt freer to hold back, to be “wooed,” to wait for a sense that this time it would be the time to give my heart definitively and not try to buy love with the rest of me.

What I think about singleness is this: It’s a time to come to know who you are, to be at peace with yourself and with God. It’s hard to feel all that comfortable when you know you’ve left bits and pieces of your self and your soul behind, and failed to value them the way God does. But they can grow back.

Singleness for me was mostly years of failing to understand that true love doesn’t ask for my soul, but receives it, shares it and grows it. It was years of failing to realize that I had “true love” in my platonic friendships and in my relationship with Christ and in my family, and that it was time to stop looking elsewhere for love. And singleness was the incubator in which I grew up, from a childish seeking for comfort anywhere I could get it, to finally feeling that in Ben I’d found a love and acceptance only God had felt for me before. It was years of learning to face myself in a mirror and see contentment reflected back.

So yeah, I’ve been thinking about singleness. Part of me misses it, but only to the extent that I failed to value it when it was mine. There’s freedom there, to travel and to think out loud, to take the crazy job or paint my toenails purple (he hates it when I do that). You can eat what you want and watch the ball game without worrying about what anyone else wants to do. Singleness was right for me for a time. It’s been right for my best friend all along—she’s my age, and, I think, secure enough in God and in herself to enjoy it while it lasts, while staying open to the possibilities of being not-single. It’s right for another friend, who find it to be her calling in life, to be satisfied with who she is and comfortable in her own skin.

Singleness is about adventure, self-esteem and growing up. And it’s about you owning your soul, until it’s time to give it away to the one who gives it back to you, with theirs. Here’s my word of wisdom from the other side of singleness: It’s who you are when you’re single that sets the course for who you’ll be all your life. Be whole, and yes, holy—don’t give yourself away. You’ll miss the pieces you let go.

Let Your Relationships Refine Not Define

(by Cliff Young)

Companies spend billions of dollars a year for celebrities to endorse their product. They believe our culture wants to wear, look, eat, drive and be like a celebrity, and they are probably correct. We often try anything to be like other people or someone other than ourselves.

I have thought about this when facing a questionnaire or personality profile, “How I can skew my answer to be perceived ‘more favorable,’ be like someone else or be what someone else would want?” I look back and see how I applied this premise to some of my past relationships.

There was a time when I tried to be and do everything I thought my girlfriend wanted. I changed my lifestyle, I changed what I ate, I changed the sports I played, I changed the way I acted—I became a different person. After noticing I was emotionally up, down and all over the place, a close friend shared with me that I wasn’t being myself.

I discovered I had let my relationship define who I was.

Define Yourself

Years ago a popular advertising campaign stated, “Be like Mike” (Michael Jordan). As a result, millions of people ran out to purchase basketball shoes and apparel imprinted with his image. The only person it defined was Michael Jordan.

So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

We are all created in God’s image, not in an image you see on a magazine cover, on television, or in the movies. Unfortunately, we tend to spend more time absorbing these images from the media than we do absorbing God’s Word.

The Lord gave me a message. He said, ‘I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as a spokesman to the world’ (Jeremiah 1:5).

It must pain the Lord when I try to emulate another person rather than embrace who the Lord created me to be.

He knew me (us)
He formed me (us)
He set me (us) apart
He appointed me (us) as a spokesman to the world.

Define yourself as God’s creation in God’s image for God’s purpose.

Refine Yourself

Precious metals are often mentioned in the Bible in correlation to a person’s character. The process of purifying a metal or making it precious requires high heat, hammering, cooling, and forming along the way. Our journey to become precious requires us to go through difficult times and struggles so that we may grow strong, pure and complete.

I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure, just as gold and silver are refined and purified by fire (Zechariah 13:9).
I love that the Bible translates to use the term refine. The definitions of refine are descriptive and depict a positive result.

* To free from impurities or unwanted material
* To free from moral imperfection
* To improve or perfect by pruning or polishing
* To become pure or perfected
* To make improvement by introducing subtleties or distinctions

We all have impurities and moral imperfections that can be refined and perfected. We can work on areas of our life to improve who we are. However, our instinct may be to avoid situations that will stretch us or reveal our weaknesses because we don’t want to “deal with it.” It’s easier to blame others (or take it out on others) for our circumstances rather than face our own shortcomings (or take responsibility for our own actions). This is often highlighted and magnified within a relationship.

How Relationships Can Help to Refine

I used to work with a person who, when asked, “Why did you marry your wife when you are treated so harshly by her?” responded, “I’d rather be married and miserable than be single and alone.” What?! Is that why God created him in His own image, to be married and miserable?

Many relationships experience difficulties because two “incomplete” people enter the relationship wanting the other person to “complete” them (thank you Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire). Instead of looking for someone else to complete you, look to the Lord.

Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you (James 4:8).

Grow closer to God and learn His will for your life and your relationships.

Evaluate the things you like and dislike about yourself and about those you have been in relationship with.

Determine how you can become a better person (and mate) and the type of person you want to be with.

The closer we are in relationship with God, the closer we will be to God’s will for our life and the healthier we will be in our relationships with others.

Where are you in the process of being refined, hammered, and purified? How close are you to being what God created you to be? Don’t give up God’s dream for your life in order to settle for a relationship, follow someone else’s dream, or because a prior relationship didn’t work out. Don’t allow your unsuccessful relationships to define who you are, rather use them to refine you into the person God has designed and planned for you to be.

I will keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven (Philippians 3:12-14).