Twenty-second birthday, Part 1

At 22, I have reached the point. It's probably not the only time I'll reach the point, and it's a rare woman that gets married before she reaches the point, but the point is this:

maybe not.
maybe I don't get married.
maybe he isn't actually out there.

maybe it's a two-strand cord,
just me and Jesus.

maybe that's really okay.

it seems silly to be reaching the point at this age- a bit young perhaps.
well, call me precocious but I think I will sort this out now.

I have always been afraid, even as a little girl, of being an old maid.
When I was seven, my parents helped with an international singles Bible study and there were several single women in their late twenties, early thirties and forties that were a part of it. I heard enough of what they said about it to pick up on the language about struggling to trust God with the desires of their hearts and blessed singleness and seasons of life, etc. As a kid, I picked up on their attitudes even more-- they were so sad and lonely! They wanted husbands and children, and God gave them careers and small groups and Himself instead, and it wasn't enough. Could God really be enough for me if I didn't have a family? Would God punish me the same way? Would I be happy like my parents or sad like these women?
The clincher is that it was also presented to me early that my dad wasn't even interested in my mom until she had found contentment in singleness. So, in order to get a family, I had to stop wanting it. As long as I was single and miserable, and afraid of staying single and miserable, I would stay single and miserable.

Paul the Apostle and I will have a long talk about this someday. He write all kinds hard things for women to hear, not the least of which is the his whole spiel about blessed singleness. He actually writes that it is better to be single like him than to be married. Yeah, right. One look between the single and married people in ministry with me in Berlin pretty much disproves that. The marrieds have to say "No" and have boundaries because their families need them to eat and sleep and be around like normal people. The singles have only themselves to take care of, so they lose the ability to say "No" until they lose all margin and time for things like relaxing or sleep or meals. Also, I feel that what Paul writes about singleness is all very well for a man, of whom I have met many that I feel sincerely enjoy being single, but I have yet to meet a selfless woman who truly doesn't want a man and a family. I have met a few non-Christian women who are happy without either of these, but that is usually in my opinion because they are too selfish to do well with children and have had too many bad experiences with men to hazard another try. Also, they swear by their vibrators. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have one.
There is also the pursuit aspect: personally, I'm pretty convinced that traditional roles work pretty well for successful relationships-- men like to feel that they "won" their wives, women like to feel that they were "chosen" and "pursued". Men want to be respected, and no woman respects someone she was able to manipulate into a relationship with her. Women want to be cherished, and no man cherishes a woman who dominates him.

The Joseph Heller of it all has finally caught up with me at the ripe age of twenty-two.
I firmly believe that for higher goal of walking closely with my God, I cannot meet my man until I truly and deeply believe that God can be enough for me.
I don't think I've ever met an unmarried woman whom I felt was really at peace with this. I think I can say this with confidence without insulting anyone-- such a woman would have stood very far out in my mind. Perhaps even changed my life.
That I just don't believe Paul is really the problem. I have met plenty of married women who had this deep knowledge-- they had discovered that their husbands couldn't fill all their loneliness and God could. I may amend this-- I've met widows who had the same assurance. They had taken human relationships as far as they could go, still found them lacking, and invited God in to take that center. I do trust them when they say you can be lonely in a marriage, that problems you had with yourself alone can be magnified when another person is a part of you. Intellectually I believe that God alone can be enough, but my heart thinks God needs to use a guy as well. I need a lot of hugs and cuddles-- can God do that?

Now is the time to defeat the resentment-- if there is no husband for me, I need to still know that God is good and that that was best. I need to trust that His plans are best for me and that if there is no family in them, that was the best for His glory. I need to know also that I'm not being punished if I have no family. This is where I sound too young to be freaking out about this, but I have already reached the point where I have not gotten where I thought I would at this age. I want to have my freak out now, get it over with, and go forward into my twenties being alright with just me and Jesus and merely surprised joyfully if someone else wants to share this life. I don't want to spend the next ten or twenty years as a ticking clock, having mini-freakouts that increase by the year, sitting on slowly mounting panic as my ovaries and uterus lose their zip. I wanted to be a young bride and a young mother. Looks like I will be tracking with my aging generation instead. BUT GOD IS IN CONTROL. This is not my failure, this is His plan!!!!

But maybe I have to deal with the disappointment in small doses when I get to it. I just believe that if I reach 30 and I'm not married, I will be so sad. Forty, no kids? Why bother?. It's time, according to my plans, to move to that orphanage and take care of someone else's babies. It's my ideas about child-rearing that get in the way. Well, also my ideas about relationships. It's all my ideas actually, because they don't matter. Only God's.

More to follow, as God continues to work this out, and as my birthday draws near.