Women's ministry and the single girl

Women's ministry is a strange thing to me. 

I have to say, the church I attend has come a long way since my first encounter with the ridiculous tactics that women will go to, but it often seems like we are still so far away from the mark. As of late, they have given up the soap making retreats into the woods. They rarely use flowered table cloths to differentiate the women's ministry table in the lobby. And large, elaborate floral centerpieces are rarely used.

I'll start with a little background about myself. I am 25, single, no children, working, and living in my sister's basement. To many, that can lead to a belief that my life experiences are very minimal. For example, it can lead people to believe: 

• I have no experience taking care of a home. 

• I have little experience working with children (except when I'm called on to help in the nursery so actual mothers don't have to step foot in that war zone!) 

• I don't have experience in ministry. 

• I have all the time in the world, so naturally I should be more involved in ministries with all that free time.

• Or that there must be something wrong with me because no man has snatched me up yet.

(Believe it or not, I have heard some version of all of these examples from the lips of women around me.)

I want you to know, and maybe you already do know, that I am none of these things, and neither are my fellow single ladies out there.

I have never felt a sense of belonging in women's ministry. I have always felt like it tells me that I am not enough. Maybe they don't mean to, but I get the clear message that I have very little to offer because of a perceived lack of experiences and therefore a lack of knowledge. 

I can't tell you how many times I have gone to women's events and sat through talks about loving my (non-existent) husband, the trials of raising my (yet unborn) children, the importance of intimacy, house-cleaning, canning, baking, decorating, etc... But I don't think I have ever heard a single woman asked to speak on the trials of being single in today's sex-crazed, messed up world where people are trying to marry you off to the next single guy they see and ignoring your standards (or even your taste/age/goals/dreams/etc) because of some belief that you'll be better off that way. I have never been challenged to live a pure life that points back to Jesus, even when He seems silent. And forget the message encouraging me to wait on the Lord, in whatever situation I am in. 

I don't want to hear a cookie-cutter message about salvation or the grace of God. Those are good things, but, I want to hear practical words about the struggles that we all go through, single, married, divorced, or widowed. I want someone to look me in the eye and tell me the importance of prayer in my life. I need to learn how to guard my heart from the attacks of the enemy and the deceitful lips of others. I want you to invest in my life in a real way. Not by sending me a card once a month with a verse and signed "The ladies of _____ church". I want someone to send me a card telling me that they are praying for me in real ways and sign their name. I want a person. A real live person who takes the time to know my story. I don't want you to try to sympathize with me, especially if your singleness ended before the ripe "old" age of 23. I want someone to verbally smack that person who believes that there is something wrong with me for not being married already! 

I know that you are busy with your husbands and children. I know that our schedules don't always make meetings easy to arrange. I know that we both have a lot going on. But if you don't take the time to invest in my life and be honest with me, who will? Am I just supposed to float out here on my own until I'm finally caught by a man and have a couple babies? Then will I be welcomed into your ranks?

I'm not asking for someone to be assigned to meet with me every week. I don't want my name to appear on a list that you have been told to send text messages to once a week. I'm just asking that we get real. Can we do that?

i'm no good at waiting

I hate waiting

I hate waiting, especially when I don't know what is about to happen or at least what the time line is. If I am supposed to go somewhere with someone and they have to push back the time at the last second I don't know how to fill that extra time.
I also hate waiting when I know things are going to change but I'm not sure exactly when. I am so tempted to sit around and do nothing in anticipation of that change. Since I moved home from college, I have not done anything to redecorate my bedroom to fit my taste now. I know that living in a small room at my parents' house is not forever or even for much longer, so why go through the trouble of decorating when I may not be there much longer? But when I don't decorate, it makes me less satisfied in the here and now. I see my bedroom as a sign that I am living more for the future than for the present. That isn't healthy either.
The same could be true about the rest of my life. I know that I won't be single forever, so I am tempted to just sit around and do nothing because it won't be a place that I am for a long period of time. But that's not what God asks of his servants. He asks us to be doing his will now AND hoping for the future, winning people to Christ WHILE looking ahead to his kingdom.

One of my favorite verses is Psalm 46:10: "He says, 'Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.'"
Something that I struggled with for a while with this verse is the difference between "being still" and "doing nothing". What I have learned is that "being still" is more mentally and emotionally and "doing nothing" is physically. You can (and should) be still while still doing something for the kingdom of God. But you cannot do nothing and be still at the same time.
Being still seems to be more of an attitude of serenity with God and his guiding in your life. I can rest in his will for me and still be doing something.
Another great verse that I recently discovered is Isaiah 25:1: "Lord, you are my God, I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago."
I don't have to worry about the waiting, because God has wonderful things planned. He has perfect faithfulness to bring them to pass because they were planned long ago for me.

ALMOST everyone is doing it

 I ran across a blog on CNN about the new trend in unmarried Christians. It's not really a new trend, we've seen it all along, but now people are broadcasting it. It is the sad fact that unmarried Christians are now reportedly having as much premarital sex as non-Christians.

What happened to "True love waits" or purity pledges that actually made a difference in how people acted behind closed doors?

It is no surprise that while premarital sex is on the rise, marriages are crumbling because of sexual sin, more kids are being raised by single parents than ever before and divorce for any reason is so high that it makes people question marriage in the first place.

God has called us to live above that. I know that it is not easy, trust me, I know. But it is not impossible.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/27/why-young-christians-arent-waiting-anymore/

here goes nothing

I have been toying with the idea of writing a book for quite some time now. But I haven't done it yet. When people ask me why I haven't written it yet I have a variety of excuses that I use, depending on who is asking.

If it's my parents I say, I'm too busy right now. If it's my friends I say, I have had other things on my plate and the idea has been pushing to the back burner. If it's a guy that I am interested in I say, I am not in that headspace any more. If it's someone that has heard me say that I will probably be single until I write this book I say, I haven't had any inspiration.

All of these answers are grounded in some truth. But the whole truth is that I am TERRIFIED to write it! I am terrified that it won't be any good and I'll be mocked relentlessly by the people that I know. I'm terrified that it will be good. I'm terrified to be rejected by countless publishers. I'm terrified of the recognition I could get. Just all around scared!

So maybe I will start out by writing some of my ideas here and get them out of my head and into cyberspace, just to see how they go over.

Blogging always seems like an easier forum to express your innermost thoughts and feelings.

So here goes nothing:

I am a single girl in my 20s, and for the most part I am ok with that label. I definitely have my ups and downs, but I enjoy my life right now. That is not to say that I want to be single my entire life. Actually, I would love to get married, have some kids and be a stay-at-home mom and home school my kids. But for now, I am in the exact place that God wants me and I am trying to embrace that and learn as much as possible while I am here. The way I see it, while I am here I may as well be useful! In order to be useful, I help at my local church as much as possible. I volunteer with the youth group and love on as many middle school and high school kids as possible with the love of Christ. I help in the nursery every week. I am active in the young singles group. And I help with as much as I can. I'm not telling you this to magnify how great I am, just to say that I am a busy girl! And to show you that there are plenty of ways to get involved at church.

I have always felt a little out of place at church though. Don't get me wrong, I love my church and the people there, but church is difficult for singles. For one thing, where do you sit? If your family doesn't attend the same church, or doesn't go at all, things are even more uncomfortable. But if you have a group of equally single friends, that makes things a little easier. And then there are the fears that everyone in the church will recognize that you are all single. There is nothing worse than when the older, happily married women of the church come by during the welcome time and shake your hand with that sympathetic look in their eyes. That is when you know they are racking their brains for some distant nephew or friend of a friend of a friends' son that they can set you up with.

Sometimes I want to scream "I am trying to be content over here and your sympathetic smiles and seemingly kind words of 'I'm sure he's out there sweetie, don't you worry' are making it that much harder!" They have good intentions, but I wish they would stop.

A new year

With my birthday and New Years being so close together, I can't help but start to think about what the next year will bring. I used to be excited to see another year pass because it meant one less year of school or being a teenager or something. Now it has lost a lot of its appeal. I graduated from college and don't intend on going back anytime soon. I am now mid 20s. And I feel kind of stuck. There are things I am looking forward to and praying will happen in the coming year or 2 but I am afraid they won't happen the way I want them to happen. I really want to get married in the next couple years. Get my first ever full time job with benefits and all that. And maybe even start planning for kids. Honestly, I'm beyond terrified! I'm afraid that it will happen! It is definitely something I know I want, but the reality of it is sobering.

There are so many wedding shows on TV that I love watching, but those show the fantasy and the happiest moment of their lives. Those shows don't show the reality of what marriage is. Marriage is hard work. It's a daily struggle to continue to love someone who makes you consider smothering them in their sleep! It's ups and downs. It's victories and failures in the most extreme ways.

But I strongly believe that a good marriage is possible, even possibly a great marriage. I pray multiple times a day that God would bring me the man that I am meant to spend the rest of my life with, but that still terrifies me more. The rest of my life? Like forever. Until death do us part. Even when I can't stand him anymore. Even when someone else is more attractive or nicer or treats me better.

But for me, marriage isn't meant to end. For me, when I say I do, I want to truly live up to that commitment. Because if I fail, I fail God. If I fail, I tell God that he was wrong when he made one woman for one man. He was wrong when he brought me this man and told me to marry him. And I am telling him that I lied to his face when I stood on that altar and said "I do". What a complete failure that would make me.

I know I'm not perfect and I know that my husband won't be perfect either and 2 imperfect sinners cannot form a perfect marriage, but God is gracious with us. And he will never give us more than we can handle. Therefore, I believe God's word when it says that all things are possible through Him. He is able to fix the things that we break in our sinful stupidity.

 I don't know when I will meet him, or if maybe I already know him but he just hasn't figured out how incredible I am yet. But I know that I have a God who follows through on His promises. He has promised to give me a hope and a future.

This is my hope for the future.

When everyone's shoes suddenly become very interesting

I know you have seen this happen, and probably done it yourself from time to time. I know that most people have sat in a class that they really didn't want to be in, or at some kind of show that required audience participation, and as soon as the teacher asks a question everyone's eyes suddenly hit the floor. If you don't make eye contact they won't pick you right? I feel like this happens with followers of Christ a lot! I was listening to a podcast recently where a panel of women spoke to a large group of college females. She was talking about her battle to finally get to the place when she could tell God she was going to be okay if she was single for the rest of her life. She said that she was afraid that God would pick her if she volunteered. But if she stared at the floor and didn't make eye contact with God (which you probably can't because I'm pretty sure you would die, or your head would explode or something!) she would be picked for sure and be sentenced to a life of hard singleness.

This is a hard truth that God has been pushing into my consciousness little by little for the past few weeks and if I'm being honest it scares me out of my mind! At one point in my life, I was completely sold out to the idea that I could be content to be single, but I am not sure what happened because I can't get myself back into that headspace for some reason. I see the advantages of being single and being able to serve God in any way that He asks. But my heart yearns for a husband that I can serve along side in ministry. I am afraid to say to God that I volunteer to be single the rest of my life and be content to serve Him alone, but I'm terrified He will take me seriously and actually pick me.

I don't have the answer for this, just something I wanted to get out of the cave that is my brain.

Gentlemen.... a dying breed?

It is no secret that gentlemen are becoming harder and harder to come by in our culture. I'm not saying that there aren't any in the world, I am simply pointing out that you don't see them as often anymore.

I was walking into a store recently and noticed that there was a man only a few steps ahead of me going into the same store. As we reached the doors, me within 2 feet of him now, I expected to at least get the courtesy of him holding the door open long enough for me to get to it and grab it myself. I was wrong. He was in the store and that door closed so quickly you would have thought he pulled it shut behind him to keep me out. I was shocked! I didn't expect the formal, hold the door open and step back to allow me in ahead of him and bow to me or anything, just that he would push it open far enough that I could get to it (covering the 2 steps that I trailed him) and hold it open for myself.

I often wonder what it must have been like to live in the era where women were cared for and men were careful to watch out for the women around them. I'm not asking for an armed escort to lead me through my life (though sometimes it would be nice!) And I am definitely not the kind of woman who can't fend for myself and kick some butt if I ever need to either. In fact, my mother once told me that when I was younger and out somewhere by myself, she was never too worried about a man trying to kidnap me because he would regret ever messing with me.

I help out with a youth ministry in the evenings and we have a bus ministry that picks kids up and drops them back off at home at the end of the night. Most nights the bus doesn't get back until well after 9:30 p.m. and in Michigan in October, it gets dark well before that. I was asked to take the bus keys back into the church after they got back. I was surprised when they got back and all the men on the buses were getting in their cars to leave, leaving me to walk back into a dark building, put the keys away, and then walk out into the darkness to my car by myself. And these are not jerks, these are, in my opinion, great men of God. I had to ask one of those men if he wouldn't mind waiting for me to do what I had to do so I wasn't alone. Then I think it clicked with all of them what they had been about to do, some of them even walked into the building with me after that!

I have heard it said that the reason men don't hold doors or offer up their seat to a woman on a bus anymore is because we, as women, have proven to them that we don't need them to do those things. We have told them, through our actions and attitudes, that we don't need them. And we let them get away with it! I will admit I am guilty of this too. I have made it clear to men that I don't need them. But now I am realizing what I am letting them do. I am allowing them to be self-centered and lazy. Not anymore!

While I enjoy my right to vote, couldn't the feminist movement have stopped there? Or maybe when we were allowed to work and make as much as men if we so choose, but that is far enough. Men know we are fully capable of doing things for ourselves, but they kind of think women are great, so they want to do something nice for us. It is a proven fact that a woman could live her entire life without a man. And it is also a proven fact that many men could not. And with sperm banks popping up all over, women can now have a baby without so much as physical contact with a man. I say all of that to make the point that men know how valuable we are to them, let them express it now and then!

It's like opening a pickle jar. Most of us are fully capable of opening a pickle jar for ourselves, but if your man is in the room, why not give him the satisfaction of opening it for you? He feels needed and masculine and all that, but it didn't cost you anything. And if he's not in the room, just open it yourself! It's a win, win situation!

I have been very blessed to know some amazing men of God who take being a gentleman seriously. And I watch them teaching younger boys to be gentlemen and it is so great to see! If I am carrying something that even looks remotely heavy, one of them will grab one of the boys and send them to take it from me and carry it where ever I need it to go. I think it's great!

But what comes with being treated well by a true gentleman is acting like a lady. Women strive to be more like men now and look back at the women of the '50s as if they were oppressed in some way. The way I see it, they were treated like queens and their actions lived up to that treatment. One such woman that I can think of that truly personifies this assumption is my great-grandmother. While I was only 6 when my great-grandfather passed away, I have heard so much about him that I know he was a great gentleman. She talked so fondly of him up until the day that she too died that I have always prayed that I would one day marry a man like him, and hopefully have sons that will be raised to be a gentleman too.

Someday I will have the life I dream of

Someday I will have the life I dream of, filled to the brim with love and kisses. I will be able to fill my home with the things I love and things that inspire me. I will have a home where I feel safe and cozy. I will have big armchairs to curl up in and a love-seat to share with my love. I will line the walls with books. And buy only things that speak to me. Like antique, leather-bound books and picture frames filled with city skylines and flowers and such. I will wear big rings and animal necklaces. And I will hunt at flee markets and craft shows to find interesting pieces. The furniture in my house will change every week and my love won't know what to say or where to sit when he comes home from work. I will have a few kids (maybe), all boys I hope, and they will call me blessed. I will be the good housewife I believe I was born to be and have dinner ready when my beloved comes home from work. I will clip coupons and stash away a little money each week to surprise my love with a romantic getaway. Our children will have good manners but know how to be messy kids as well. And I will live in the arms of my beloved until we are old and gray. If I get the life I dream of.

Roads to travel

I got thinking about my future today. It's kind of a scary thought for me lately. The way I see it, there are 2 paths that I would be content to travel down in my near future, one as unlikely as the next.

One of them would be to marry a man with a good enough job for me to be a housewife and mother. Some girls my age think I must be old fashioned to choose such a life, let alone to aspire to have it. They can think that if they want to, but to them I say good luck not feeling guilty when you drop your 6 week old precious baby off at day care for the first time when your maternity leave is over. Trust me, I have worked in day cares and know the look that every mother and many fathers have on that first morning. It is not an expression that I care to wear at any point.

The other path is to work in ministry somewhere. I presently work part time at a church as an intern. I have the pleasure of mentoring some amazing young girls and I love it! If there were a way to work enough to support myself in an environment like this, I would jump on it for sure. However, I am learning that there are sadly very few opportunities for women to work full time in ministry. But God can do anything, so now I wait.

Oh and I forgot to mention that I am not dating or engaged... so the likelihood that I will get married and become a housewife anytime soon is slim at best! Stay tuned to find out what may come of me and what path I will take.