Taboo Topics: Singleness – meet Sueihn Lee

[Sueihn was our housemate at the Simple Way – she has been an absolute pleasure to live with and it has been incredible to watch her connect with people and especially children on the block as well as with churches and organisations in the area – i tag teamed with her on Mondays to share lemonade with the people in the food lines as well as talk to and pray with them – i am so thankful for her bravitude in sharing part of her story here with us]

I’ve been boy crazy since the age of five, when I used to daydream about riding flying unicorns together with one of my kindergarten classmates. It only progressed from there – Leonardo DiCaprio back when he was on Growing Pains, countless other celebrities, and boys at school. Once adolescence hit and my teenybopperdom reached its pinnacle, so did my severe low self-esteem and depression, which began as melancholic sprouts in childhood. I thought the only solution would be to find a boyfriend and get married. Maybe then I’d feel beautiful and good about who I am.

As God healed me of the lies attacking the core of my identity, I also began to realize that marriage is not a cure-all. It has its blessings but also its own set of serious challenges, just as singleness has both its unique gifts and difficulties. I love the freedom that I have in making choices, especially spontaneous ones, without having to take into account how it would affect a life partner. I’ve never been in a serious relationship (had a boyfriend in 10th grade whom I dumped after a month and a half), so this freedom has given me the opportunity to have some unforgettable adventures and shenanigans in my 20s and now early 30s.

Though I enjoy the perks of singleness everyday, I also wrestle with the struggles, which were exacerbated by the loss of my dad from lung cancer in 2007. I know I’m incredibly blessed to have dear friends from all the stages of my life dating back to kindergarten, despite being horrible at staying in touch. The most tangible sign of God’s grace in my life is demonstrated through my friends’ love for me. Yet, no one loves you like parents or a spouse. You will always be the center of their universe. Since my dad died, I can’t help but to feel significantly less loved. And when my mother passes on, how much more bereft will I feel if I’m still single?

My dad was also my main source of verbal and physical affection. My mom is great at loving me through sacrifice and service, but I miss having tenderness shown to me in more direct ways. I recently saw a picture of Obama watching TV with his daughters, snuggling cozily on a couch with an arm around each of them, and it was a slap in the face since I no longer have a healthy outlet to experience that kind of physical connection. My friends are very demonstrative, but ever since my dad died it feels like embraces are too few and too fleeting. The only exception is when someone leaves a hand on my shoulder while praying for me – I don’t think others realize that this comforts me as much and sometimes more than the prayers themselves. Honestly, when couples show some PDA, I often have to look away to avoid feeling a shroud of cold emptiness wrapping around me. I don’t think that people should have to censor themselves in front of me (especially not the married couple I live in community with – that would be so unfair!), but I have to fight hard to continually abide in the embodiment of Love who lives in me.

I know that God’s attention is always on me, and that He sends signs of His affection in various ways, using interesting disguises – like the 4-year-old stranger who demanded to hug me on the street today, or the random female pastor that held me for hours while I poured out my grief at a conference last year. But I wonder if that emptiness will ever be completely filled in this lifetime because of the fallenness of this world (2 Corinthians 5:4). These days, I’ve actually been more comforted by communing with Jesus in any suffering of His, so that I might also share in His glory. I think about my trip to Jerusalem, when we visited the high priest Caiaphas’ house and descended to the tiny, dank dungeon where Jesus likely spent the night in chains before He was executed. As I listened to my professor read the most depressing chapter of Psalms (88 – it ends

with “darkness is my closest friend”), I realized that Jesus truly took on my pain, brokenness, and emptiness upon Himself. Any time I feel any twinge of loneliness, I think about Jesus’ own experience of abandonment and know that I’m not alone – my pain is a drop compared to the ocean that Jesus endured, and He went through it all to be with me forever.

Married folks, if I had to give you just one suggestion on how to bless your single friends, I would encourage you to celebrate their lives well. Weddings are very extravagant celebrations of the couple’s entire lives – complete with photo slide shows, speeches and gifts. There are also bridal showers, bachelorettes and engagement parties, along with baby showers later on. Sometimes I wonder if the only milestone in my life that will warrant this much commemoration (and money) will be my funeral. So, I decided that I would be more intentional about celebrating my own landmark moments. When I turned 30 and graduated from seminary last year, I threw myself my first party since the cake-fight incident of 1995 (my 14th birthday party). I also threw a going away party before I moved to Philadelphia. It was actually really hard for me to allow myself to be celebrated – I felt a nagging sense of unworthiness and shame. Then I saw that God is exposing and breaking down the barriers that are blocking deeper intimacy with Him, preventing me from receiving more of His love and loving Him more fully. At the end of this painful process, whether He uses marriage or not to help accomplish it, God will give me the greatest gift in existence – union with Himself.

[to read my friend Kate Hurley’s story of Singleness click here]

[For an inspirational post titled ‘I don’t wait anymore’ click here]

Taboo Topics: Contents Page

Taboo Topics is a series dedicated to sharing stories from real live people [mostly who i know] on real life issues, situations or experiences that are seldom spoken about for various reasons. So far the topics that have been addressed [with links to all the stories] are the following:

Abortion

Adoption

Eating Disorders

Infertility

Losing a Baby

Pornography and Masturbation

Singleness

I hope these will be of encouragement to you and to friends and family who you know who have been through similar things – please feel free to share the stories or send links to people who you think might appreciate them.

love brett “fish” [brettfish@hotmail.com]

Taboo Topics: Singleness – meet Sammi Taylor

So I’ve been putting off writing this for a while ever since Brett asked a few weeks…ok maybe months ago now. For many reasons I didn’t feel ready to write this and to be honest it’s still something I don’t feel quite equipped to write. Not because I know nothing about singleness…ha! But because the emotions and stages and experience changes daily and is sometimes hard to pin down and describe.

I have been single most of my life and I’ve just turned 40 early this year. I have never been married and do not have any children of my own. I live on my own with 2 cats that I feel quite comfortable with posting pictures of on Facebook as often as some people post pictures of their kids…well maybe not that often! But I can quite easily be described as the archetypal old maid cat lady.

But that is not who I am. I am not defined by my marital status. I refuse to be. It annoys me when the first thing people ask when they meet me is “so are you married? Kids?” as if that is a woman’s only purpose in life. And then proceed to tell me that I shouldn’t worry about it as they know so and so and they recently got married after being single for a few years and now they have 2 beautiful children and you never know, anything can happen and lots of people are having kids now in their 40’s…ho hum. Do I sound a little jaded or cynical? I don’t mean to.

I appreciate my friends who care about my happiness enough to know that I would love to meet the right person and share my life with someone. Because that is a truth I will not deny. Even harder than being a single woman in your 40’s is being a single woman in your 40’s when you don’t want to be.
A friend was telling me recently about an article that described how a non-event in someone’s life can have as much impact if not more than an event. For example a person gets married and that is a defining event. From then on you are married and you learn to process and grow in that relationship status. However someone who doesn’t get married doesn’t experience that “event” and so it’s not something that you can pin point to a date on a calendar. It just slowly develops until you realize that relationship status.

Most of us don’t consciously make a decision to be single. But over time and through relationships that don’t work out as hoped for or choosing at different stages to prioritize work or studies we find ourselves on our own doing life slightly differently to our married friends.
In this journey we have to slowly let go of some of our hopes and dreams. We let go of the dream of being a young mother. We let go of the hope of falling pregnant easily without the help of medical technology. And finally we let go of the hope of having children at all. We start to hope that we’ll maybe meet someone who already has kids. Or maybe we’ll adopt.

For me the question of children has been a difficult one since I was 24 and told I would most likely not be able to have children due to severe Endometriosis. So those dreams and hopes were let go of a long time ago. And then resurrected after having related surgery in my early 30’s and being given hope by my doctors only to have to go through the process of letting go of that hope again when life didn’t quite turn out the way I had hoped.
During the last two years I had to let go of the dream most daughters have of dancing with my father at my wedding and seeing him holding my children because he lost his battle with cancer before I met the right person.

And then you start to let go of the hope of meeting anyone at all.

It is a slow process of letting go of your dreams and your hope.

And in the process there is hurt, pain, loneliness, anger, disappointment and if you nurture it even resentment, bitterness and envy. In the process it’s easy to get drawn into unhealthy friendships and damaging relationships, and when these don’t work out we start to protect our hearts to the point that we may stop letting people in if we are not careful.

There is a very clear message in the Bible that tells us that neither singleness nor marriage is more desirable; that the one is not better than the other. It is our society that has exalted being married and having kids above singleness. We design our church programs around families. It is subtly implied when we as singles are not included in “couple” events or disenfranchised from church leadership because we don’t have a spouse.

We teach our children through fairy tales about the handsome prince who will rescue the princess and everyone lives happily ever after and we all want to be the princess, but no one mentions that we may end up being the spinster Godmother or ugly Stepsister!

But life is not a fairytale and there are all types of families that make up the world. Mine includes my mother and brother, my two cats and a crazy group of friends, married and single who make my life fun, interesting and joyful.

There is a difference between the patronizing attitude of so many and the support and understanding of people who love you. And to the marrieds out there who have single friends my advice is simply:

Don’t treat my time as less valuable than yours. Don’t treat me like my life and attitude is selfish because I haven’t had children. Don’t expect me to always be available when it suits you. I have my own priorities, demands and responsibilities. They are no less important to me than yours are to you. They are just different. You don’t have to “fix” me or my life.

In the midst of the struggles and journey of being single there is life. My life. And it is valuable, good and blessed. It has a purpose beyond marriage and children. A purpose that I’m constantly working at uncovering and developing and some days I “get” it and some days I don’t. And it’s still strangely hopeful.

[to read my friend and housemate Sueihn Lee’s story of singleness click here]

[For an inspirational post titled ‘I don’t wait anymore’ click here]

Taboo Topics: Singleness [Intro]

SINGLENESS is a topic that usually does not get addressed well, if at all.

There was a time when particularly within the catholic church the focus was on singleness as the way to have reached it – nuns and monks and the gift of celibacy were the way to go and being single meant you were seen as more spiritual and closer to God and there were bible passages that could be used to ‘back this up’.

Then the protestant church swung the pendulum completely the other way and being married and then being married with children [must be biological children!] was the way to have arrived and so this unspoken goal of life seemed to be what was put on the pedestal and held higher than anything else.

i believe, as with most things, that both extremes are problematic and now that i have had five years of marriage [and having had a good run of 35 years of largely singleness] i believe that i can speak with some measure of authority to both of them.

Neither being single nor being married is ‘the better way’ – Paul, in his letter to the church in Phillipi [and us by extension] says this, specifically speaking into the aspect of financial well-being, but i believe it carries over into every area of life: ‘I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’ [Philippians 4.12-13]

Contentment is the key – be where you are and enjoy where you are at – if you are single then embrace your singleness and make the most of it in every way possible – and if/when you get married then live that to the full. Don’t sit in the place of one desperately wishing that you were in the other. BUT, that doesn’t mean that if you are single and do want to be married that you should not keep on gently presenting that desire before God:

‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ [Philippians 4.4-7]

As much as God already knows your heart and your desires, it is by presenting them to Him that you invite relationship, that you invite Him in to minister to aspects of loneliness or rejection or bruised dreams or hopes that may be in you.

i LOVED my singleness and when i look back i don’t desire that i had gotten married ten years earlier and missed out on all the opportunities and possibilities of adventure that happened because it was just me. and so i really learnt [for the most part, i had my bad days… weeks… months…] to just really make the most of the situation i found myself in… but at the same time i really believed that i had too much love for one person and so i wanted to be married [especially around singles table time at weddings] and i took that to God regularly and sometimes with gentle request and other times more with ‘C’mon God, don’t you like me or what?’ less graceful questioning, but for the most part, the overall was a sense of let me be content where i am while i am here and keep my prayers, requests and longings before God.

i got to a place where i had largely resigned myself to the fact that i was going to be single for life [and somewhat largely, with much intermittent sighing, okay with that] and then the beautiful Val came along and the rest is history… or presentcy or something.

one of the hardest things in my life, especially since i got married, is seeing a bunch of really incredible friends of mine who are around my age [which is approaching old] and who are desiring to be married, but yet are still single, because i get it. to a large extent i really do. [which is possibly why a huge part of my 51 minute wedding speech was focusing on single people] it doesn’t feel right or fair and you get to a point when it doesn’t feel hopeful any more. people who view marriage as the end point make you feel stupid and sad and unfulfilled and your friends who are dating and getting married and having kids [again, if this is what you wanted] make it really hard to be around them sometimes [often through no fault of their own]. and the thing is a bunch of them are incredible amazing people who, it feels like to me, deserve to find their life partner a lot more than other people [if there is such a thing]. so i will keep praying, and hoping, and trying to be as encouraging as i can to them and challenging them to live singleness well while it is a reality. but don’t stop laying that desire before God if you are wanting something more.

And to anyone who EVER says to a single woman, “let Jesus be your boyfriend”, you honestly deserve a punch on the nose.

There are some brave people who are going to be sharing their stories in this regard and i honour you for doing so:

to read the story of my good friend Sammi Taylor – ‘The emotions and stages and experience changes daily and is sometimes hard to pin down and describe.’

to read the story of my friend and housemate Sueihn Lee – ‘I’ve been boy crazy since the age of five.’

to read the story of Kate Hurley aka ‘The Sexy Celibate’ – ‘I just needed to let go, insinuating it was my own fault i was single.’

to read the story of my friend Kate Sherry – content with being single right now

to read the story of my friend Cilnette Pienaar – ‘The whispered hope that a shared adventure could actually be in the will of God for my life.’

to read the story of Dani Scoville [and a look at Deconstructing Boundaries]

to read the story of my friend Beverley Rufener – ‘I wish I could say that being single was easy but at times it is outright overwhelming.’

to read the story of my new friend Alexa O S Russell – ‘Is there space for Bridget Jones at church?’

to read the story of my Island style friend Deborah Dowlath – ‘I realise that being single in my 30s is a whole different dynamic from being single in my 20s.’

to read the story of 26 year old Angela Saint-Truth – ‘I didn’t want the sacrifice that love demands or the growth it requires… I just wanted the emotions that relationships produce…’

to read the story of Amanda Kuehn – ‘His banner over me is single.’

to read the story of Lynley Pillay – ‘I was engaged once. So technically I’m disengaged now.’

to read the story of Phil Barlow – ‘I’m single and I love it! Sometimes… sometimes not so much.’

to read the story of my friend and possibly brother-in-law Dale Nunes [his brother married my sister]

some other blog posts i was directed to that contain some great stuff on the topic are:

‘Singleness is not a Prelude’ [on a blog called ‘broken cameras and gustav klimt’ guest posted by Jennie Pollock]

‘I don’t wait anymore’ [on a blog called Grace for the Road]

Singles and the Church: Why it Sucks to be Unintentionally Overlooked [Kate Hurley

What my Married Friends would like their Single Friends to know

Also a series on What my Married Friends would like their Single Friends to know

remembering the unique within the deluge…

i said to my beautiful wife Valerie the other day something along the lines of ‘what do people write statuses [stati?] about on Facebook if they are not entering into a relationship or having a baby? [or these days in americaland making some kind of staunchly pro this party or anti that one political statement] as it just seemed like the majority of statuses [stati?] i was reading were about one of those…

and two things come out of that, the one for those of you who are not the ones celebrating is this:

it is easy to get caught up in the fact that in the last week you have witnessed thirteen new relationships, seven new engagements, two weddings and heard that four of your friends have announced their pregnancy, an adoption came through and two other friends had a baby just from reading statuses [stati?] on Facebook…

it can begin to feel like a deluge and “aw no, not another one” can quickly become the response and the temptation to write some less than authentic comment on the latest pic can be strong…

but it is important to remember that for each individual involved it is not “another one”, it is their one. it is important and significant and it is beautiful and worth celebrating and it is special and life-changing [at least for today but probably for the rest of their lives] and that as much as it might feel like a deluge for you, the witness, for them it is unique… and has to be treated that way.

[which may be extremely tough if you are the person who has just broken up with your significant other, or been broken upped upon, or not been able to fall pregnant, or lost a child]

and so the call to get your mind into that place of realising that each announcement or declaration or celebration that happens on the social networks you are a part of, means something significant to the people posting/sharing it and to not simply treat it [even in your mind] as “aw, another one” but to try and celebrate with your friends and let them grasp the fullness of the uniquity of their occasion.

i think a great way of doing that is by stepping beyond the social network – making a phone call or taking them out for some caffeine-enriched beverage or inviting them round for a meal or something live where you can face to face [or mouth to ear] let them know that their thing is a big deal… and you choose to celebrate with them.

thoughts?

to make sure you are aware of the deluge in your unique, read this