What's so hard about being single

Typically, I do fine with being single, but it's not all always the easiest thing. In fact, some days and situation it is extremely difficult. 

I had a really difficult day last week with singleness last week and have been concumed with thoughts since on what is so hard about being single. 

Here's my list: 

1. Hearing sermons/talks where they emphasize spending more time with spouse & kids than your job- and the importance of family. You just feel like crap because you don't have your own family, your just your own-- these talks always make me feel like questioning the point of me living-- I have to work hard to get out of this pit. 

Last semester, I was in a  women's bible study small group, and I am so thankful for one our leaders who always made  a point to say that we don't have to be a wife or mom to be a women of God, we just have to be a women of God. Every week she had to remind our group of this because someone who disqualify me from the mix with their words by emphasizing wife and motherhood as being our connection or purpose. They didn't mean it to be mean, they just can't relate to not being that, which almost makes it worst. 

2. Social awkwardness when people assume your married to someone else, then learn your not married at all.

It's just awful, you are not only uncomfortable with the person who assumed, but then the guy they thought you were married as well. I have gotten good at de-fusing the situation but it's never comfortable. And you feel a little pathetic that you can't say, "oh nope, that hunk over there is my husband"

3. Ending up at social settings meant for couples or you are the only single one there. 

You feel so alone and so out of place. And no one knows how to interact with you. 

4. Hearing married people being fearful or complaining that they need to be at their house alone for a night or two because their husband is out-of-town. 

Hello, that is my whole life. How selfish can you be, suck-it up, I do that every night of my life. Thanks for being so insensitive to be about your selfish problem. -- this really makes me so angry when people complain about this. 

5. Not having anything to talk about to strangers. You may have not of realized this, but spouse and kids are the first conversations that come out with strangers. The conversation doesn't go far when you don't have them. 

6. The utter pain and reality that no-one thinks of you first. 

This saddens my heart so much. I'm no ones first pick, so my friends are who I think and value first, don't see me the same way, they have their spouse, and kids they need to think of. You are everyone's second choice. -- that's dang hard, my eyes never not fill with water when I think of that. 

This isn't an exhaustive list, just the 6 things that keep coming to mind. Although they are all either hard or uncomfortable, there are good things about my state of life. 

For all of us, these things are different. And I don't have this great encouragement to give you, somethings in life are just hard. 

I will give you this though- it may be hard, but we shall not let it consume us, overtake us. Instead, we need to seek truth and stay anchored to God and shake off all this negative talk. 

My college roommate-who was my best friend those 4 years, caught up with me the other day. She is also single and has too experienced hardship with this life stage. She told me that writing down her blessings and gifts and that it's has changed everything for her. 

I think I need to start doing that. 

 

The adventures of late night shopping with my boss

I've been at a conference this week. Last night my boss had to run into town and get some things for the closing of the conference and I tagged along for the ride. 

My boss is a good person to process things with, so we talked a little bit about the conference, how it was going for him since he was in leading it, good simple work conversation. We past a hookah bar, I told him we should go, he laughed and asked me if I have ever smoked hookah (I have- like 3 times) which lead to questions about smoking and drinking. It was honest, light-hearted and good for us to understand each other more. 

We ran to a few stores, he told me he needed to go to a drug store, and asked if I was okay in not knowing in what we were getting. I said "no, I need to know for us to go" 

When we were in target, I asked if he could get his mystery drug store item here. He said,  "yeah I think so." I asked if I could know what it is what he is getting and he says,"it will make you really uncomfortable, are you sure you want to know?" I opted out, I wasn't ready to be really uncomfortable. 

And he headed off to the condom isle. 

So, let me tell you, it's really really uncomfortable going to the store with just you and your boss and he is getting something out of that isle and its 11:00pm at night. Then he says, I forgot my wallet, can I borrow a little more than $10.00 from you-- cash-- he won't let me put it on my card. Strange, I give him cash and go wait by the door for him.

I think while he was checking out, he realized that he made this situation WAY more uncomfortable for me than it actually was. In a very nervous/anxious way he announced he was getting a pregnancy test for someone I work with. --- he wasn't getting condoms---

I became WAY MORE comfortable, but curious of who, I narrowed it down to 4 options- didn't dare to ask who after all of that. 

So we keep going, looking for an random candy item that he needs, running in and out of gas stations looking for it.

After no sucess, we head out back to our conference. He starts off the conversation with this, "Becky, have you applied to other jobs while you have been working at our camp?" 

Big question, very pointed, I'm a little scared. 

"Yes, I have" is my response. 

It's a hard response to say to your boss. I wasn't expecting or anticipating that question, I didn't have thought-out answers. 

He, of course, knew that I have, he said he could just tell, and saw that I was looking at jobs. I'm pretty sure the boy who is always at our house told him in actuality. 

He asked me things about it, he asked me why I felt the need to hide it from him. 

Boom! 

That's a hard question. He asked it in a sincere way, in a way that I knew he was hurt and our relationship had suffered a little because of me keeping this from him. I answered carefully and truthfully. 

I then asked, if he wanted to hear the whole story of that-- he didn't answer (aka, him saying no) I told him anyway. I told him that I interviewed for a job Thursday morning, and that he was in a conference call with the guy who was interviewing me, and how that made the rest of my interview hard. 

That the Lord than spoke to me clearly that night and told me that I need to stay and take this Bible study seriously, and that it will change my life. So I did. 

My boss told me that he really values me, that he puts a lot of weight in my opinions and really looks out for my well-being. 

Which is true, I often see that in action all the time. 

He told me that I have changed A LOT in the past few months. And that he is so excited about it. He has LOVED working with me, that I don't have bad days like I used to. He has told me this multiple times this month-he meant it. 

I agreed and asked how long he has seen that change. He gave me an exact date. 

I responded with, "wow, thats exact, I don't have any memory of that date, what's significant of it?" He wouldn't answer.. 

So I course told him "I just answered your question about if I applied to other jobs, you needs to tell me the significance of that date!"

He did-- It was the day after jack and Katie moved. There was a lot of good in our relationship, my boss told me the bad in our relationship that he saw though.  How now, having this space and distance changed who I was on the day-to day basis. 

We got to conference center too quickly, so much more of this conversation should have been spoken. As we walked up to our cabins, he was telling me how long he wanted to talk to me about this, and if I knew that he knew. I told him I kinda thought he did, but he didn't say anything, so I didn't think he knew when we hit mid-October. 

We got to that spot where our paths split. I told him both then and now, I would have a good conversation with him before I ever go anywhere, and that he would be involved in that process. 

What an adventure! 

It's an off day...

It's one of those days where I don't feel quite right; I'm not mad or sad, or happy, I am just am. I don't want to be by myself or with people. I don't really get this emotion. I think I need some good conversation to sort out these feelings I don't get.

I also feel like me and the boy who always come over are in this funny relationship, and I want it to stop. I feel like I've become this unique girlfriend to him. It's not bad, bad, I'm not uncomfortable-- it doesn't feel like a pretend relationship. But I don't want him to think that weare in a relationship or headed that way. I don't want to feel coupled up with him. I don't want to feel so alone that he is the only person I can be around.

Manhood

I have known for a long time that I don't want to marry someone that my dad 100% approves of, because I don't agree  with what he thinks makes a man a man. 

I have talk about it some with friends who don't know my dad or family dynamics first hand. But earlier this month, the conversation came up and I said that out loud to 2 of my aunts and my cousin. 

It's probably something I shouldn't of said. It's really harsh and mean. In fact, I shouldn't even blog about it, because this fact, will really hurt my dad to hear. 

But in saying it outloud- saying it to someone who knows and saw how I was raised, gave me this wave of freedom, it peeled a layer back of helping me understand who I am. 

From this conversation, I have played in my head of all of these reasons why I don't want my dad to approve, and what do I think about manhood, what did my upbringing teach, and what do I see it as true.

 I have been wanting to stop and write it down for over a week now, and took sometime tonight to do it. This is what I wrote: 

This morning as I was thinking about what I would write on this list, and what would be a key difference, everything about the Lord came into play. 

Everything about me looks and feels like I came from a Christian home. But the more and more I grow up, and the more and more I grow in my relationship with Christ, the more I see my upbringing as a really good veneer- so good, that I didn't even know it was artificial. 

I can't say that for sure, I truly don't know my dad's heart and know where he is with the Lord. 

This is what I do know:

•We pray before each meal and his prayer is: "Lord, bless this food to our bodies for health and strength, in Jesus name, Amen" 

•He is a trustee

• He is on the church building committee

•He has taught confirmation

•He goes yearly on a construction mission trip to a foreign country

•He volunteers labor at Bible camp 

•He always won at Bible trivia when me and my sisters played him when were growing. 

These things all sound good, they are good. But it lacks confirmation of a relationship with God. I have never heard my dad talk to me or anyone else about his relationship with God. And that may be just how he is. He keeps it to himself, and strives to show God's love by what he does. Or it could be, that he doesn't know the Lord, and just does things for Him as a hobby. 

In writing this post, it becomes painfully clear that I need to pray for my dad and pray;

•That I will be shown where my dad is with the Lord. If his relationship with the Lord is merely merits, he will get to know him and he will be His Lord and Savior. 

•That my dad will share with me his faith journey. 

I am thankful for my dad. But I want different type men in my life. I am seeing that the type of guy I was taught as a pansy or "just an naïve boy" is now what I see as a true man. 

If things stay as they are, I know that my dad is going to disapprove of Skip for me, because he will say, "he's a pansy" and "he doesn't understand what it means to be a man" which will be hard to hear from someone I love. But it will confirm so clearly to me that Skip is not actually a jackass. 

The social standing of Bible Readers

I keep thinking about this very short memory that I have growing up, and now seeing how significant it is. 

I was from back when I was in high school during summer break. My family was in a housing transition that was taking forever long and we were living in this house that made us live on top of each other. My older sister was home for the summer, she just completed her sophomore year (I think) of college.

My sister had a tiny bedroom right off the living room with a loft bed. This distant memory of mine is having her laying on her bed reading her Bible with the door half open. I remember leaving my spot on the couch and going into her room and letting her she doesn't need to read the bible to impress us. We love and accept her for who she is. My sister didn't really react well, which makes sense. It was a really funny thing to say to someone. I didn't say it to her to be funny or to have an odd moment. I said it because it really bothered me that my sister felt the need to read the bible in front of me. 

You see I developed this belief in my upbringing that you only read the Bible to "one-up" a person spiritially. Like you only did it to impress others than to get into the word of God. So I felt like my sister felt threatened by me and needed to read God's word in front to remind me that I'm a fellow believer and to make things right or at least fair. 

I went and said what I said because I just wanted my sister to be real, and not fake with me. And I thought that reading your Bible in front of others was a really fake thing to do and I didn't want her to be that. Never thinking or occurred to me that she would read it to have her life changed. 

Sadly, I still have that a little in me. I don't like to read the bible in front of others typically, I feel like a "Christian show-off" and I think lots of christians feel that way when people do read read there Bible in front of them. 

In just this past year, I was working the late shift in the camp office and I was by myself reading the bible. A group of guys then  trickled into the office, and after ten minutes of their arrival, a church staff member of theirs asked me "we're you actually reading the Bible, or do you just keep that open on your desk so people think you do as a prop?" And said it in a way where it was judgy and having an open bible on my desk seemed like a cliché. 

I sometimes felt the need to move my Bible around the room so that people thought I read it more than I did-- in secret of course. 

Sometimes I become self-conscious about all my notes in my Bible, and they either think: 

A: that girl doesn't read it enough she barely has written anything on any pages

B: okay seriously, you don't need to underline every verse in james, I get it, you like it, stop rubbing it in our faces

Or 

C: that girl is dumb, she has the most obvious things written down in her margins, did she really need to note that? 

And I don't want people to see my Bible and conclude one of the above points about me. 

Summer camp and youth trips were different though, they scheduled you "time alone with God" and you were together as a group the whole time, so naturally you had to show people all this time you "normally" spent with God when they weren't around. Though, I think this "normal" time for people only happened on these trips, at least it seemed that way. 

Anyway, I say ALL of this to admit I have some messed-up views and background on the Bible and need to get over and let Gods word change my life and not get hunger up on all these random things. 

Amazed

Skip is a pretty big deal- fun, humble, adventureous, and incredibly faithful and real in his relationship with Christ and how he serves Him. 

He sees and experiences more things in a year, heck in a month, than most people see and experience in their lifetime. 

I am amazed by him, and would be intimidated, except that Skip is so incredible you can't really be intimidated. I am scared about being with Skip though, I don't think I could keep up with him. I am not as humble or faithful as He. I am not as bold as him. I don't know how life will work with us if he is off doing all these great things in the world and I'm just here in the states. I don't know if I am ready and able to be overseas like he is.

It's weird, I want to be talking and in this amazingly relationship with him right now. But I see that I'm not ready for that. I think it's crazy that God gave me this promise which means that someday, I would be ready and yoked enough with him to be his wife. That right now seems so out-of reach and impossible, but God is amazing and change can my life that much. 

That is incredible.

Really really incredible.

It scares me to think about, incredible. 

Love watching that TV!

I love watching tv! It's one of my favorite hobbies. You get in snuggly clothes, with that perfect blanket over you and watch for hours. 

Gilmore Girls, Big Bang Theory, White Collar, Psych, Scandal, Castle, How to get away with Murder, The Dick Van Dick Show, A Different World, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Fixer-upper, and even Mary Tyler Moore show makes the list, and really, we know there are so many more. 

I feel like it is really trendy now not to watch TV, but instead, spending your time reading, tinkering with broken things, drinking chai at coffee shops, being a workaholic. And though that's fun, and I may become that, I gotta have my tv time. 

This post is kinda pointless, unless you are struggling with this "no tv" trend and want to watch, if that's the case, I'm right here with you!