A couple weeks ago I had the honor of sharing a little piece of my story with my church, Soma. It was such an incredible opportunity to share what God has been up to in the past 9 months of my singleness journey (and beyond). I just want to take this blog post to share the sermon and my portion of the talk I drafted up.
When my Pastor, Steve, asked me to share, I was really excited to have the chance to speak about what I had been writing in my blogs the past several months. But then, when he told me the topic of the sermon the week I would be sharing, I got a little less excited… This is what the email read: “The theme that week is the gospel and sexuality – I’ll share the biblical sexual ethic, particularly how sex is designed to build communion.”
Ummmm… never mind – I’ll pass.
But the more I thought about my season of intentional singleness, the more I got thinking about where the roots of this decision came from. The struggles not only of sexual intimacy but relational intimacy weave a thick web within my story. My desire to be known, understood, and heard, have led me down an unhealthy path of fulfilling these needs, only to be left empty. I realized, this is ALL a part of my singleness journey, not just the easy-to-share parts.
So that’s how I came to draft up this “script” as I call it. You can listen to the sermon here, or you can read my piece below (although I highly recommend listening to the whole thing! I share a bit more that isn’t a part of the script, too). Enjoy!
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It is crazy that I am up here sharing about a topic that haunted me for most my life, first, because I didn’t even live here a year ago, and secondly because I’ve never really talked openly about singleness until about 9 months ago.
My whole life I’ve been single, and not because I’ve wanted to be (you know there’s those people who want to be single… nope, not me). In fact, I can name each boy I had a crush on each year in grade school. When I was young, I remember blowing out the candles on my birthday cake each year and wishing for a boyfriend. That was kind of my thing, one more birthday, one more year single. As I got older and no longer wished upon candles on cakes, I would ask God to bring me that “one special guy.”
Just a brief outline of my relationship history with God – I grew up going to church and have been a Christian for as long as I can remember (although you may have heard me say, I’ve been a Christian for my whole life, but only a Christ-follower the past few years). Somewhere along the line, I remember being taught how God has this one special person picked out for you, and you just have to be patient until your paths meet. So that is what I believed. Therefore, literally every guy I was into became this figure of idolization as I believed “he” was the one God sent for me. So, I would idolize and pursue and then he would run away, very quickly. I would be heart-broken, mad at God, get over it, and then repeat. And then repeat and repeat. I have lost count of how often this pattern repeated itself. So, then what happens when college hits and still no boyfriend has been delivered on a silver platter? I basically told God, “Hey, I’ve got it from here, Buddy.” But the thing is, the pattern is different when there’s no rules, no parents, no curfew, and alcohol at your fingertips every weekend. Therefore, this time when I would try to impress and pursue guys, it was reciprocated, but just for a moment. The attraction was fleeting and surface level. But somehow this momentary affirmation of attention was just enough that this pattern continued – it ruled me, haunted me and destroyed me. It left me depressed and unsure of where to go.
But somewhere deep down I could always hear God’s voice calling me back home. I didn’t enjoy this life and living for the weekend, but it was all I knew, and what all my friends at the time knew. So two years ago, when I finally made the decision to turn away from the bars and turn back to the Lord, head down and ashamed, He was already running towards me, with open arms. The years that followed were insanely restorative and restful. I learned so much about the Lord and the goodness He had in store for me. About 9 months ago, the Lord revealed to me the idolatry I have for the idea of a future relationship. It all roots back to my longing to be known, understood, and heard. But I was in denial, I thought “idol” is such a strong word. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this is where most of my pain and frustration in the Lord came from.
A perfect storm of events came to pass to move me to pursue this year of intentional singleness, as I’m calling it. It all spurred in August as a challenge from a young adult’s pastor in Dallas (Jonathan Pokluda), that if you haven’t taken the time to sort out your baggage with God, then maybe it isn’t the best time to be in a relationship. He suggested taking a year, and physically marking it in your calendar, before dating again. At the time I didn’t believe I had baggage because I hadn’t been in a relationship before, but that is hilarious looking back on. Additionally, I had also just moved here to Spokane. In the past, I have had the tendency to destroy friendships with my guy friends because, yet again, I believed the friendship would eventually turn into a romantic relationship. Therefore moving here, starting fresh, I wanted to have healthy friendships. So I decided to invest more time in friendships with women, and not allow myself to get too intimate in friendships with guys (I had a rule that I couldn’t spend time with a guy one-on-one).
The first five months of my singleness journey were pure bliss. I never felt the need to seek attention from a guy. I could tangibly feel God working on this wound in my soul. It was around this time God challenged me with the thought, what if His plans for me don’t include marriage? Would I be ok with that? If I was single my entire life? I have come back to this question countlessly throughout the past few months to check where my heart is at.
As the months progressed, this honeymoon, feel-good feeling quickly subsided. Instead of healing wounds, God was ripping them wide open. I soon realized the image I so often idolized in a relationship or a marriage was also the one I feared the most. The picture of a man and woman staring into each other’s souls required opening emotional boxes that were taped shut. Um, no thanks, actually. I’m good. It was around this time that Soma hosted the Relational Soul conference – and in good timing too. When I realized what was holding me back from connecting with any human, I felt the need to fix it, immediately. (I’m a perfectionist – that’s what I do when I find something wrong). From the conference, Rich and Jim reminded us that often times we need to walk at Jesus’ pace: three miles per hour. So that is what I’m trying to do now.
In conclusion, I’ve realized I’ve been trying to fix sin patterns that can’t be fixed easily – they can only be surrendered to God each day. I truly have been enjoying this season. I feel like there is so much to learn, and so much God is revealing to me every day. I have been able to realize what a beautiful and intentional season of life I’m in. Singleness isn’t just an arbitrary time before settling down and getting married, singleness is a time where you can be 100% focused on God. You can be selfish for God. You can have quiet time in the morning, or at night, or in the middle of the day! I feel like God is showing me how much of a blessing this time is and how much He has been longing for this time with me as well. If I do end up married with children, this selfishness of God will not return easily, because there will be others that require my time and attention. I can’t really conclude what I’ve learned properly, because I’ve constantly been building upon what God is showing and gifting me in this season. But what I can say for the first time in my life is that singleness is a gift and is meant to be treasured.
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-maddy.
Confessions of a Millennial Christ-Follower 