The call to singleness

Waiting is hard, especially in our culture that says instant gratification is the best way to live your life, especially in a Christian culture that says good Christian girls should marry good Christian boys and support their husbands and raise a family.

For many, marriage is looked at as the ultimate means of happiness. How could it not be? For the rest of your life, you have a best friend, someone to stand by you through everything, someone to share your life with, someone who loves you and wants to be with you.

For others, however, it is the ultimate means of holiness. You are happy, because that person who loves you and wants to share your life, who wants to be with you "until death do you part" is also your greatest source of growth. Not just someone who makes you happy, but someone who makes you think. Not just someone who makes you laugh, or holds you when you cry, but someone who pushes you to be better, to do better.

Of the two camps, I tend to fall in line more with the second. But knowing that also means that my choices are limited. In order to find someone that challenges me, I need to say no to the one that just makes me happy. Which brings us to the reason behind the title of this post.

I don't believe I am "called to singleness" as the saying goes. But I'm not sure that that particular calling really exists. You see, I always looked at that saying as something that meant God had chosen a select group of Christians and determined that He would not give them the desire to be married. Instead, they would be above our culture's saturation of romantic comedies and love love stories. They would look at those things and say "that's nice for them, but I'm doing alright on my own. Me and God? That's enough :)."

I thought of these people like they were some sort of superman for being so content in their walk with God that they didn't need anyone else. But a recent conversation with a friend of mine made me start to think.

What if the "call to singleness" is not a lack of a desire to get married, but a willingness to wait on God for what His absolute best? What if the "call to singleness" simply means knowing without a doubt how you are supposed to serve God, and a refusal to settle for someone that would lead you to do otherwise? What if the "call to singleness" is just not the lack of a desire to get married, but instead the willingness to say "Ok God, you have given me a call to service, and that requires a very specific kind of person. If I never meet that person, I'm ok with that. I'm willing to place my service to you above everything else."

Am I called to that? I have no clue. So far it seems that I may be. But like I said, waiting is hard, and as so many others do, I may one day decide that the person who is right for my personality is more important than the specific service that I want to spend my life doing. It's easy to compromise. Who's to say I won't? But for now, I'm willing to wait. I've got all the time in the world :).

Learning to fly

I often find myself struggling. With what? Well, a lot of things. I struggle with contentment, I struggle with Joy, I struggle with peace, and a knowledge that everything will be ok. I struggle with those aspects of my faith that are generally considered things that "mature" Christians do, such as going to church every Sunday, or even spending a few minutes doing my devotions. But what I find myself struggling with most of all is my faith.

You see, all those other things I struggle with really boil down to a lack of faith. I don't have the faith to believe that God will really provide for me, so I worry. I don't have the faith to believe that the holding pattern I feel I am in is temporary, so I am discontent. I don't have the faith to believe that God really knows what He is doing in my life, so I fight against it. I refuse to allow Him full control, because I don't really believe that He can do a better job than I can of making my life what I want it to be.

How arrogant! How selfish! I say that I am called to serve others, to translate the Bible so that they can have access to the same life changing words that I do. And yet I refuse to treat them as the life jacket that they are. Instead I say I can do it myself. I don't need anyone else's help. I can work 18 hour days, because that's what it will take to pay my loans off. Or, I can feed myself on next to nothing, because if I don't, the money won't be there to pay my bills. I don't need to read my Bible, my novels are more interesting, anyway. I don't like that my life feels like it's not moving forward fast enough, so I'm going to change it. I'm going to do xyz. I'm, I'm I'm.

But that's just it. It's because I too often leave God out of the equation that life feels like it's not moving forward fast enough. It's because I too often leave God out of the equation that I ever HAVE to work an 18 hour day. It's because I leave God out of the equation that I HAVE to do it on my own. And quite frankly, that's just plain exhausting.

Well, God decided to pursue me from a different direction, this time. He did it through one of my books. For Christmas, I got a few Ted Dekker books, two of which were the Caleb books, Blessed Child, and A Man Called Blessed. Co-written by Dekker and Bill Bright, they are the story of a boy raised in Ethiopia, who comes to America, and takes the world by storm. In the second book, we see him all grown up, after being taken back to Ethiopia, and how he has changed. You see, in the first book, he has the power to heal. In the second book, he has become like every other Christian you might think of in America. He is normal. But he doesn't have to be. He is because he has "misplaced his love." Through a series of events, he winds up in the desert, with a band of monks. These monks do nothing but live for God. They pray, they eat, they interact with each other, and all of it is done to the glory of God. There is one thing about them, however. They have power. God's power. They are truly living out their faith. It is this run in with the Monks that shifts Caleb's perspective back to where it was when he was a child. It brings his focus back to God, and he again begins to display power. Not healing this time, but the ability to influence people in order to prevent a fair amount of chaos that would have resulted had he not been able to influence them.

Here's the thing, though. These books are all about faith. I think my favorite line was when Caleb is talking to the head Monk, Father Hadane, and in an attempt to understand what he is being told, Caleb clarifies that "If I say I believe, but do not follow, then I do not believe at all." That's it right there. The whole point of everything is belief. And what is belief without action? "Faith without works is dead." I always thought that meant that if we said we were Christians, we needed to do good things because that is what Christ would have done. But in this case, I think it more clearly applies to living out the knowledge that Christ is the one who is caring for us. It isn't anything I can do. I've seen enough lately that you would think I would understand this by now. It's all about taking the leap of faith, and allowing Christ to catch you. Like cliff diving. Like a trapeze artist who lets go of the bar because he knows his partner will catch him.

Faith is like that. It requires that we step out into what looks like thin air, knowing that Christ is there to keep us from falling. Most of the time, I don't even realize that I'm still holding on for dear life to that which I think will save me, when all it's doing is preventing me from the exhilaration of flying. 

Father God, I want to see. I believe Lord, help my unbelief! I don't want to be blinded by my doubts, or my fears. I don't want to be frustrated by my failures, or lack of progress. Lord, I want to do things at your pace, in your will. Rushing things will only result in a half-baked attempt at greatness. I don't want my life to be nothing but shadows of what you have planned. Help me Lord to slow down, and appreciate what I have. Help me to see you in everything as I live the life you have given me. Help me to not look to the past, to try to change it, and help me to not look too much into the future, to arrive there before it is time. Help me to live in today, and to be grateful for what you have given me here and now. Amen.