Season's Greetings

It's the Christmas season, and at the same time, it's a transition from my single season to married life. As I leave the single season, there are some things that I will miss--namely the groups of Christian singles I met while I was in my single season. Someone recently joked with me that I "graduated" from the singles group because I got married. It was a funny comment, but not unlike what it really is like to graduate--I liken it to college. While we are in college, we live and do life with others who are at the same stage in life. We cheer for our team. But we know it's temporary, and one day we will no longer be in college. Some breeze through college in no time, while others spend a significant portion of their lives there. When we graduate, we will look back fondly on those years, and we will still cheer for our team, but because we are no longer a student, it's not quite the same. We have moved into a different stage of life. Singleness and marriage really is so similar to college and graduation.

I am fully aware that just because I'm married, it doesn't mean I have all the answers or even that I know what I'm doing. This is definitely not the final destination of any of our lives. All I know is what God has shown me, and what I have experienced. There have been several dating blog posts that I have written over the years that delve deeper into certain issues like dealing with emotional pain, forgiveness, trust, as well as marriage itself. Through my single season, God spoke to me clearer than He ever had before. I also had the opportunity to share what God taught me and minister to others along my journey. As I no longer will have to deal with dating issues in particular, I want to write this blog post to address some of the most common things I would write about and deal with in my Christian singles group.

For me, many of the reasons for not wanting to get married were completely selfish. I didn't want to share; I didn't want to move; I didn't want to cook for him; I don't want to clean up after him. Marriage forces you to not be selfish and invest in someone else. Marriage can't be selfish, and unless I'm willing to allow the Lord to cull out that selfishness, I will always be held back. I also have to remember that marriage isn't the end-all-be-all. It isn't a destination at which we all arrive. Marriage is a journey, and it should be viewed as an extension of your relationship with the Lord--not separately. You only need to get married if you truly desire to have a deeper relationship with the Lord, because that’s the only way a marriage can work. 

Prayer: It all starts with prayer. Get your heart right and repent from your sins, then go to God in prayer. Ask Him to show you your spouse. Ask him to bring that person to you. We have not, because we ask not. James 4:2-3 tells us that we don't have the things we desire because we ask with the wrong motives. The key, therefore, according to scripture, is to explore the motives in your heart--are you wanting to marry someone just because you feel lonely? That's not the right reason to get married--or even to ask for a spouse. That's why you have to repent before you ask.

Healing: You have to receive healing from your past failed relationships before you even think about entering a new one. Hurt people hurt people, and if you are not healed from your past wounds, you will only end up hurting those whom you love and try to love you. Find a Divorce Care class, go through freedom classes like these at Gateway. Allow God to heal you from your emotional pain. It's not easy, but it's necessary to living a whole and complete life.

Freedom: You have to deal with the pain not only from past relationships, but from the lies you have believed from the devil. Satan loves to lie to us, and he will do it the most when we are already down. If we are not walking in freedom, we won't be able to readily recognize Satan's lies. I lived most of my life believing lies of the enemy. We have to experience freedom in the Lord so we can see the Truth, so we can experience the Truth and walk in the Truth. And again, freedom is a process--not a destination at which we arrive.

Expectations: If you have expectations, you will be disappointed. Period. Every date, every potential date, you should go in to it with the expectation of making a friend. That's it. So many people get overexcited and put too many expectations on their date. Questions start swarming--will this be "the one"? Will he want to take me out again? Will he be my boyfriend? Will he call or text tomorrow? Stop with the expectations. Most importantly, be open to it not working out--because it probably won't. It's a numbers game. I have probably gone on 30 first dates in my life. I've married two of them, and one of those marriages ended horribly. So that's 1 for 30. Twenty nine of those first dates didn't work out. You have to be open to it not working out--because the numbers aren't on your side. Be pleasantly surprised when it does work out, and you won't be so disappointed.

Dating: Don't take everything so seriously. It's a date--it's not a proposal. You aren't pledging your undying love to someone. You are eating a meal or getting coffee with someone. Everyone has to eat, so talk to someone new while doing it. If you enjoy the person's company, do it again. So many people put too much pressure on a date--bringing gifts, dressing up, spending a ton of money. None of those things have to occur. Just get to know someone. So often, I would see friends and other singles say they wouldn't go on a date with someone unless they already knew the person. Then what's the point of a date, then?

Guard your Heart: Proverbs 4:23 tells us to guard our heart. This means to protect your heart from those around you. You don't give your heart to just anyone.

Our lives are a process. We so often want to arrive at a destination--especially when we are single. So many singles want to be married and think that's the destination. It isn't--heaven is our final destination. Remember to enjoy the process and enjoy getting to know people and making friends on this amazing journey called life.

Can't Stop the Pain

Several years ago, I broke my ankle at Hawaiian Falls. How I broke my ankle is horrifically embarrassing, and I will only tell close friends the actual story. Following the incident, I thought I was ok, even though I could hardly walk on it. The bottom line is that I'm cheap: I didn't want to pay money to go to the ER, and I didn't want to have to pay for a doctor's visit just for them to tell me everything is fine. Except it wasn't fine. Over the next few weeks, the pain increased, and I knew something was definitely wrong. By the time I finally went to the doctor, I was told that a piece of my ankle bone had chipped off, and it had already started to fuse back together incorrectly. The only way to fix it was to have surgery. That was a big "nope" from me. There was no way I was paying money for surgery to fix a tiny chip on my ankle, and even then, there was no guarantee I would ever be pain-free.

This physically painful incident taught me much more than to just go ahead and go to the ER when I hurt myself. The lingering pain and the aches I feel when the weather changes taught me about what happens to us when we ignore not just our physical pain, but our emotional pain as well. When we hurt ourselves physically, we understand that there will be pain. We know that we need to go see a doctor and get stitches, bones set, or we may even need surgery. We understand that there is a healing process we must undertake to make our bodies whole again.

In the summer of '99, I nearly cut my left index finger off at the first knuckle joint. I immediately went to the ER (this time!) to get stitches. The pain of the lidocaine needle was worse than the steak knife that sliced through my tissue and tendons. I remember writhing in pain when the doctor crammed that needle into my wound. However, I understood this additional pain as part of the healing process. I didn't want to have to get the stitches--or the eventual surgery--but I wanted to be healed and put back together more than the ensuing pain. I had to endure the needle, the surgery, the rehab, so that I would heal properly. If I refused to take any of these steps, I would never regain the proper use of my index finger.

We understand the pain and healing process with our physical bodies, but most of us will do anything and everything to avoid the pain of emotional healing. Why should it be any different? When we experience emotional pain, we want it to go away at all costs. We turn to the bottle. We turn to pills. We turn to sex. We turn to porn. We turn to food. We turn to our phones. All of those things give us instant gratification--it makes us feel better in the moment. Each one of these things helps us take our minds off the emotional pain we are experiencing. Why in the world do we not think to go to the ER and the Doctor when we experience emotional pain? Stripping our hurts down to the bone is gut-wrenching--just like setting a broken bone. But we would all be more than willing to get a broken bone set. How many people would actually say, "Nah, Doc. I think I'll just let my tibia stay outside my shin the rest of my life. I can just cover it up with my pants, and it will feel better eventually"? That would be ludicrous.

The bottom line is that when we get hurt, it hurts even more to be healed. We have to be willing to feel the secondary hurt in order to heal. If we face our emotional pain in the same way we face our physical pain, imagine the healing that could take place in our souls! Our thought process must change from, "I'm hurt, so I want to feel better," to, "This is going to hurt to dig out all the pain, but it will be worth it so I can heal and actually be better." When we go to the Lord as our emotional doctor, and the Bible as our emotional ER, then we are able to be fully healed. When Isaiah writes in Isaiah 53:5 that "by His wounds, we are healed," why do we think it's only our physical healing? God is our Jehovah Rapha--the God who heals--there isn't a caveat that says "Sorry, only physical healing." He can heal anything--physical or emotional. So let Him, because we can't stop the pain on our own.