Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
When you look a certain way or act a certain way or come from a certain place, people make automatic judgments about you. This is true across the board for everyone, and it’s just human nature. We have to assume things about people and places and moments in order to catalog them for ourselves. Nothing innately wrong with it, but it can be frustrating when people’s perceptions of you are out of line with your reality.
For example, people, specifically men, seem to find it hard to understand why I’m single. (I have trouble understanding it myself.) But even if it seems crazy and even if you think that I’m the whole package, those thoughts don’t negate the fact that I am single and that my dating life is a comedy of errors.
This weekend a married guy I know cornered me in the bar after the gala dinner and proceeded to tell me for 30 straight minutes, “I just don’t get it. Seriously, explain it to me. Do you just want to be single? You have to know how attractive you are,” he said. “You can’t tell me you don’t know that.” Well sure, I get that I am attractive. It would be disingenuous for me to say otherwise, but here’s the rub: what you look like really has zero to do with how lucky you are in love. It’s meaningless. And that’s the misconception: most people assume that attractive people have an easier time getting dates or finding someone who will love them when that’s just not true. You don’t have to look any further than Halle Berry to realize that. It’s one of the big Lies in life.
And while it’s flattering to hear that people think highly of me, it’s also frustrating. I’m not making it up for editorial sake when I say that I don’t have a lot of luck in the relationship realm. And while I certainly make my share of bad choices, I finally realized that none of it is an accident or chance.
There is a reason, known only to Him, that God has held back in this arena of my life. It was whispered to me in a fleeting moment of pity that He can choose better for me than I ever could for myself. For reasons I’d perhaps like to leave uninvestigated, I tend to pick men with obvious flaws, like being unemployed or, heaven help me, 32 and living at home.
When I left for Vegas I was dating someone and when we came home, we weren’t dating anymore. (Yeah.) I’m still not exactly sure what happened and while there have been apologies exchanged and I’m trying to move on from my disappointment at how the weekend turned out, the reality is that I have to chalk another one up and carry on.
The accepted truth is that unmarried women of a certain age are bitter or weighed down by baggage, and while stereotypes always have a base in reality, that’s not what I see when I look at my life.
But it’s a reality I fight every second of every day. I don’t want to be bitter and I don’t want to think less of myself or my life because I’m 30 and unmarried. That’s fruitless. My joy won’t be found in marriage and my joy won’t be found in motherhood or in a McMansion. My joy is found in Him, no where else, and the moment I accepted that the easier it became to laugh about all the crazy things that happen to me.
All of life is carrying on. Every one has their Thing, and maybe this is mine. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s not such a bad Thing to have to deal with. I always have stories and I’ve met more people than I ever imagined I would, when I was a little girl and I lived out my life in dreams. I have memories that I wouldn’t exchange for anything – of rooftop kisses and heart-to-hearts over pints of imported beer; memories of road trips in convertibles and camping under Southern skies. Sure, I’ve been rejected and ignored and hurt but I’ve also been pursued and loved and worshipped. And I still have that Moment to look forward to, that moment my friends still talk about whether they’ve been married four years or two months – when they saw the man in front of them and saw their husband. That’s pretty heady, and most of the time (most of the time), I feel so fortunate that it’s still ahead of me.
All of that to say, don’t be annoying and act like you can’t understand why I’m single. I’m single because I am. Hallelujah.
Paris in Vegas
Back from Vegas. There’s not much you need to know about Vegas except these simple truths:
1. People will do things while they’re in Vegas they would never ordinarily do. Sometimes this can be good: karaoke, getting excited about an Elvis impersonator, wearing a bikini in public. Sometimes this can be… bad.
2. God seems to be missing in Vegas and it’s palpable and it made me very uncomfortable.
3. Americans are gluttons, there’s no denying it.
This was my fourth trip to the Strip and I can safely say it was my last. I’m a different person than I was the last time I was there, and I don’t know if it was maturity in general or maturity in my faith that allowed me to see things for more of what they were, but see them I did.
There is some beauty in Vegas: the way the lights shine in the dark desert; the amazing buildings sprung up from nothing; fine linens and art and food. But there is ugliness there too, and so much darkness. (Despite the bright lights.) And people who are looking for happiness in places they’ll never find it.
Viva
Heading out the door for Las Vegas. It’s always wise to pay all your bills before you go, even if that leaves you with like, $20. It’s also nice to go to a city like that with a bunch of lawyers – at least if you get in trouble there’s someone to help you out. Not that I plan on getting in trouble, but it’s one of those weird comforts, like sitting next to a pilot on a transcontinental flight.
Until then!
Things Happen Fast
Um.. So I think I am now going to Romania in July to help implement a Sunday School program in a partnership church there.
I’m mildly freaking out.
It is Good
“The path to the cross tells us exactly how far God will go to call us back.” – Max Lucado
Because I was raised in a church-going household there has never been a time in my life when I didn’t know who Jesus was or know what He did or that it was done for me. I may not have understood it intellectually but I knew it in the same way I knew my mom loved me and my dog’s name was Sugar and my brother would always be able to outrun me. I went to Vacation Bible School and learned how to sign “Jesus Loves Me,” and played the part of an angel or a lamb in our church’s Christmas pageant. I loved God and I loved His stories and my favorite Biblical heroine was Esther. I listened to drama tapes that told the stories of Daniel and Jonah and Meshack, Shadrach and Abednego via song.
But it wasn’t until a very dark night when I was 12 years old that I prayed for God to save me. My world had fallen apart and I laid in my bed huddled under the flower sheets (so much more grown-up than butterflies), and cried out to Him and I knew that was it. I consider that the moment I became a Christian because in that moment it wasn’t my mom’s teachings or my Sunday School songs that told me who God was, it was God showing Himself to a broken little girl whose daddy had left her, whose heart was broken and I clung to Him. I committed my life to him. Because this was 1988 or so there were Michael W. Smith tapes to buy and Bibles written just for students (the Bible I still use, actually), and I flung myself headfirst into Christian culture. I went to youth group every Wednesday and to weekend retreats with other high school students. I went to Christian music nights at Astroworld and learned how to repel down the side of Enchanted Rock and saw it as lesson about leaning on faith. I was a member of Bearkats for Christ and attended Meet Me at the Pole prayer gatherings. I was a baby Christian and I probably clung to the culture and early ’90s mass marketing a little too much. Those things aren’t bad, per se, but my lessons about Jesus’ true nature were, in retrospect, a little far between. But I loved Him and when I look back at the notes in my Bible that are dated ‘92 or ‘93, I see the truth in that.
And then I walked away. I rebelled in the most typical ways and I spent the next decade or so running back and forth and sideways and upside down. I wanted to be someone I wasn’t; I wanted to have some kid of life that I thought I deserved because I was white and blonde and pretty. I’d spent my high school years longing for a boyfriend and popularity (when why?), and since I didn’t find it in the Christian community, I ventured out to find it on my own. I wanted to go to parties and kiss boys and be That Girl, the one with all the friends and the shiny hair and the fraternity t-shirt. So I became her. I was that girl for a long time, but not for real, not really. I was playing a part and like a patient parent, He waited. I would have briefs periods of recommitment where I would attend Campus Crusade worship sessions or Friday morning prayer meetings in one of Miami’s small chapels. But those never stood up in the glare of date parties and $4 Mind Probes and packs of Marlboro Lights.
I graduated from college and the story is much of the same, back and forth, back and forth, whatever fit my life at the time. My path was rarely narrow and I sat on the fence for a long time. Like all rebels, like all fools, I knew exactly what I was doing and I did it willfully. I am, if nothing else, a strong-willed person. I wanted to plan my own life with my own rules and my own desires. But the beast of it is, I was never going to get what I really wanted trying to do things my own way. And even though I knew that, I knew that down to my soul, I thought maybe, just maybe, I would be able to do it. Like maybe if you repeatedly hit yourself with a 2×4 eventually it won’t hurt anymore.
So I dated the wrong kinds of guys and had the wrong kinds of relationships and I flew my rebel flag and called it happiness. Even when I concentrate, I’m unable to pinpoint the moment when I stopped doing that, when I gave up trying to do things my own way. I’m sad it took me almost 10 years, but at least I was given the opportunity to finally get it. I’m an imperfect person who continues to make incredibly glaring mistakes but I am forgiven. I am saved. More importantly, I am healed. I don’t know what kind of life God has in store for me, but I’m fairly certain now that it doesn’t contain the big house and the successful husband and the three kids before 35 that I was planning on for so long. That was the ill-fitting piece I was trying for so long to jam into the puzzle of my life. I try not to think that the years I laid out my own road as years wasted, because I know that they’re not. I know that I had to venture onto my own path in order to get to this one. It was my detour, the road He had paved for me all along.
So on this Good Friday, for the first time in a long time, I have a home church to attend. I have Christian friends who will sit beside me as we take Communion, as we remember His body, His blood. As we cry out in anguished worship for the awesome, painful sacrifice our savior made to see that we are free, that we are saved. That we are healed.
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Compassion
