Lent is almost over and it’s time to reflect on my fast for 2011.  My exercise this year has been to give up sugar.  Not entirely, of course, because I need some sugar, but I’ve cut all added sugars from my diet.  I restrict myself to getting sugar from fruit or from whole foods that have naturally occurring sugars.  It’s been tough.  Not because I have a huge sweet-tooth, which I don’t, but because sugar is added to most foods during manufacturing or preparation.  I’ve had to become a food detective, reading every label in the grocery store and pestering every restaurant server about what they put in each menu item.  It’s shocking how much added sugar is in almost every food.  Even organic foods are often stuffed with superfluous brown sugar or honey.  I’ve discovered that a sugar-conscious diet is difficult to sustain and a zero-added-sugar diet almost impossible if you’re shopping in American grocery stores.  Impossible, you ask?  If you don’t believe me, I suggest you head straight to the store and read the labels of 10 different brands of sandwich bread.  You’ll be shocked how many times sugar is listed as one of the first three ingredients in “heart healthy,” “whole wheat” or “whole grain” favorites. 

What will shock you more, perhaps even appall you, is a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which reported that the average American consumes 21.4 teaspoons of added sugar a day!  That accounts for 320 extra calories from sugar alone.  To put this in context, physicians recommend that women consume less than 6.5 teaspoons of added sugar a day, with a slightly higher 9.5 teaspoons for men. 

The point of my fast was absolutely not to lose weight, though some weight loss has been a minor natural by-product.  My hope instead, was to create a life where food is intentionally bland.  For me, the season of Lent is about empathy, walking with Jesus in the desert, sacrificing personal desires to prepare for a feast of soul food.  If Jesus could fast completely for forty days, be taunted by satan and step away from deprivation and temptation ready to launch his ministry, then I think it’s possible, and right, for this self-indulgent, foodie, pilgrim/pastor to take a step in the same direction. 

As the sugar leeched out of my system, the fast first threatened and then heightened my focus.  I’ve been chewing on some new thoughts.  First, when you avoid added and processed sugars, natural sugars taste sweeter and are more satisfying.  The other day I had a grape set off an atomic bomb of sweetness in my mouth.  My eyes watered and I wheezed and hacked like someone who just ate a handful of sour-patch-kids.  I had to limit my grape intake to 5.  Second, I now understand that God kept the people of Israel in the desert for forty long years, surviving only on miraculously provided manna and water, because he needed to teach his people that trust and dependence on God, not food, are the fundamental nutrients for life.  (Much easier to learn that lesson before  you enter a land flowing with milk and honey.)  Third, Lent can bring you to tears of both weakness and joy.

I openly confess that I’ve had to fight some major cravings.  Like I said, I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, but there is this bowl of Tootsie Rolls on our kitchen counter, right next to the toaster.  The Tootsies sing to me each morning as I get out a bowl and spoon for my fiber rich, flavorless cereal.  Three days ago I had a whopper of a dream.  My favorite coffee shop was in danger of closing and the manager pleaded with me to help her save the store.  Spying ten inch slices of german chocolate cake nestled between other mouth-watering confections (including baklava, glaze donuts, lemon poppy-seed cupcakes and caramel brownies), I suggested she give out free samples to everyone in the shop – myself included – to boost sales.  What’s this?  I rarely remember my dreams and now I’m dreaming about fork-defying, three-pound slices of chocolate cake?  I don’t even like chocolate!  The pantry, a friend I used to visit several times a day, is now my arch-nemesis.  Other than to forage for nuts and popcorn, she’s off-limits.  I’m trying to play nice with the twin crisper drawers in the fridge that host fruits and vegetables.  I just want one Tootsie.

This is the game I’ve played every day for the last 38 days, passing the Tootsie bowl to pull out a carrot stick, dreaming about chocolate hours after I read about Jesus refusing to turn stones to bread.  Actually it feels less like a game and more like climbing Mt. Ranier.  Shoeless.  But I’ve survived, am surviving.  I’d say I’m in a good and vulnerable place for the darkness that descends tomorrow, Good Friday.

I was 24 years old and in the third year of a Master of Divinity program when I observed Lent for the first time.  It was not a decision that I made lightly — I had been circling the idea of participating since my first year at Regent College.   Many of my fellow students came from traditions that respected and followed the church calendar; I did not.  For two years I curiously watched my friends give up something for the forty days that paralleled Jesus’ time in the wilderness.  In the American evangelical denomination in which I was raised, any practice that had the faintest scent of Catholicism was suspect (though eschewed might be a more accurate verb).  At Regent, an international graduate school of Christian studies, I met and befriended men and women from over 20 countries and various Christian traditions — Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopal and Pentecostal, to name a few.  In this diverse environment, I daily stumbled across new theological ideas and fresh perspectives.  The observance of Lent was just one of the many foreign Christian practices that intrigued me. 

Every year during Vancouver’s dreary February, I watched friends and professors prepare for Lent.  Most thought carefully about what they would sacrifice and their choices were as diverse as our student body.  Some gave up certain types of food or drink, others sacrificed comforts like sleeping with a pillow, and a few gave up pleasures like TV or music.  All of their choices were to join in the simplicity, the sacrifice and the temptation of Jesus in the desert.  They prepared themselves like seasoned travelers, gathering only what they needed, solemnly waiting to cross a foreboding landscape.  Ash Wednesday arrived and with dust smudged on their foreheads they began their journey.  I watched, interested, from the sidelines.  What would this do for them, to them?  Why was it significant?  

There seemed to be some chaffing around days 8 and 14 but overall my friends settled in without too many complaints.  As they progressed further into Lent, they grew quieter and I more intrigued.  Each Tuesday the students and faculty at Regent worship as a community.  At the risk of sounding too mystical, I noticed that during Lent our worship experience was richer.  Though the mood in chapel was subdued, there seemed to me a clear and growing sense of anticipation.  The anticipation was so palpable that I wouldn’t have been surprised if people fell forward out of their seats.  Even though I did not participate that year, I discovered the harvest of Lent.  The self-denial, the confrontation of temptation and the simplicity of those forty days helped the “observers” do more than observe.  In their various ways they participated in the life of Christ and the harvest of their participation was a renewed and observable gratitude for what Christ had endured for our sake.  Tired, hungry, thirsty, inconvenienced, uncomfortable, hounded and stripped down, the pilgrims finally reached Holy Week only to experience the darkness and mourning of Good Friday.  Maybe deprived is too strong a word for what I saw in their eyes on Friday, but then joy is the only word that matches what I saw on Sunday.  In their vulnerable state, the pilgrims were more able to empathize with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, thus transforming Easter into the heart-pumping, ear-ringing, foot-stomping, voice-raising, full-bodied celebration that it should be.

I’d observed enough.  It was time for me to participate in what was clearly a meaningful practice.  One January, after a stirring and convicting lecture on the Sermon on the Mount (particularly Mt. 5:33-37) given by former Regent professor Darrell Johnson, I decided to give up exaggeration and sarcasm for Lent.  It was a unique choice, one that made friends laugh when I told them.  I’ve always been rather verbose, an enthusiastic storyteller who specializes in exaggeration and sarcasm, so I knew sacrificing these things would be challenging.  I am not exaggerating when I say that my first practice of Lent was one of the most challenging experiences of my life.  Just a day into Lent I found myself constantly starting and stopping conversations like a new driver jerking and stalling in search of first gear.  I’d start a story, get two or three sentences in, and a friend would say, “Wait.  Did you really think you were going to die?” 

Lent trimmed my speech a lot, making me realize just how many unnecessary words I use and how my words might mislead or hurt someone.  I discovered that my propensity to exaggerate hid an insecurity that people would not care to listen to me.  Simple, straightforward speech was a lot harder to produce than I thought it would be.  As Lent continued I grew increasingly drained from the effort of keeping my words and stories true and simple.  I was unnaturally quiet which made me feel boring.  But whittling down my speech increased the silence in my life, which opened wide spaces for me to listen more, to friends and to God.   Devotional and prayer time during those forty days were about listening and waiting rather than talking and talking.  For the first time, I entered the pew on Good Friday and felt a true sense of loss in Jesus’ death, rather than just cognitively registering that it was the day we remember Jesus’ death.  Two days later, Easter was an exhilarating day of celebration, my tongue revived to sing my gratitude and share laughter and stories of God’s goodness. 

Now, I’m an evangelical who practices Lent.  My choices sometimes get me strange or confused looks from other evangelicals, but those don’t deter me.  I’ve found meaningful and enriching practices in many Christian traditions and I’ve incorporated some of them into my spiritual life.  I’m very thankful to have found a way to better appreciate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  I’m thankful too for a diversity of friends and a unique graduate school that widened my love for God and challenged my faith. 

If you’d like to find out more about Regent College, its unique mission and courses of study, visit http://regent-college.edu  If full-time graduate school isn’t for you, then Regent summer school offers short but meaningful courses that appeal to all kinds of Christians in various professions.  Check out http://summer.regent-college.edu for more details. 

Sirens wooing sailors to destruction on the rocks.

To all my single readers and friends.  

It’s no secret that our way of life is a difficult one.   We work hard to provide for ourselves, but many of us are forced to live meagerly because of single incomes.  We navigate our finances, education, careers and deal with illness and disappointments.   Managing the minutiae of our lives makes us look like harried tennis players, sweat-soaked and puffing as we dash around the expansive courts of our days keeping all these balls in the air.  We rally as best we can, but let’s face it, things would be a whole lot easier if there was someone sharing the court with us.  Instead, we come home to empty apartments, distracted roommates or aquariums filled with silent beta-fish.  Oh, we can manage.  In fact, being single has made many of us fiercely independent, but we still dream about how nice it would be share our burdens and joys with someone not just available to us, but someone for whom we are a life-long, exclusive priority.  No matter how capable, adventurous and independent we are, we single people are human and with humanness comes the desire to be loved. 

One of our greatest challenges is to resist making the desire to be loved our idol.  A love-idol can lead single people to bad things, like a young woman I knew who gave her body to her boyfriend whenever he wanted it and in return was given a few moments of affection and months of verbal abuse before he dumped her for her best-friend.  A love-idol has made far too many of us stay in mediocre relationships because we’d rather be unhappy in a relationship than risk being alone.  A love-idol can fill our heads with misty daydreams of romance and marriage until our brains are so fogged with sentiment that we can no longer see the relationships we do have for the valuable things they are.  A love-idol can reduce us to unthinking toddlers, our mouths hanging open ready to chew and swallow garbage like the idea that we are incomplete.  Worst of all, a love-idol puts us in a position to be wooed away from God. 

There is a Siren in our midst singing a very seductive song.  This diva belts out a multi-platinum tune that says sex is life’s ultimate experience and it should be indulged as casually and frequently as we desire.  None of her lyrics mention the body or soul consequences to these choices.  With fireworks, lollipops and cans of whip cream the Siren leads a festive parade of superficiality, devaluing the sacred gifts we have all been given – our bodies, our relationships and true intimacy.  Yes, that was an allusion to Katy Perry’s California Girls, but the great seducer I’m talking about is pop-culture with its hot-air message of instant, self-absorbed gratification.   Enticements are everywhere — magazines, sitcoms, music, film, billboards, on our computers and iPods — subtle and overt messages wooing us to abandon the good and wholesome life that God has called us to and instead to indulge our desires.   

In reality, pop-culture values are not very different from hedonism, a cultural philosophy that threatened to compromise the early Christians.  First century hedonists spent their time gorging themselves on whatever they desired from food and wine to dubious sexual activities — without conscience — because they believed that pleasure was life’s only aim.  Hedonism mirrors much of the party culture of contemporary young adults.  Many of my former college students glorified drunkenness, experimented with drugs and went around “hooking up” with people they hardly knew, all the while ignoring any thought of the consequences.  DANGEROUS is a lifestyle that makes a trophy case for pleasure and self-indulgence.   The great irony of these lifestyles is that we feel like we are filling ourselves up with good things when we are really hollowing out our souls.  The more we gorge ourselves on trifles, the less room we have for God. 

There is a great vulnerability inherent to singleness, especially for Christians.  We are called to things like purity and chastity, which are very difficult and unpopular expectations to live out in our society.  We think we are smart enough to not mistake sex for love or confuse intimacy and commitment with lust and infatuation, but these things are the Siren’s most impressive illusions and we are often tricked.  Many singles struggle to make good choices in regards to alcohol, drugs, relationships and especially sex, because the world, and occasionally our friends, make harmful things seem okay.  Loneliness increases the temptation to do anything that will make us feel connected to or valued by another person.  With few people committed to our accountability, we have only ourselves to lean on in the face of temptation.  Under all that weight we’ll probably crumble in on ourselves over and over again.   And then there are those of us who are so consumed with a longing to be married that our singleness is a constant, painful chaffing.  We reject the ideas of “contentment” and “singleness as a gift” like children do when they are given smelly, sour medicine that has the power to heal.  We purse our lips and deny that we need help though we are nearly blind with envy. 

Despite our best intentions to live well, we all make mistakes.  And so we need a place of refuge from the skewed values and heady temptations of our culture.  We need to connect with people who will listen to, understand and care about our struggles.  We need to find forgiveness when we cannot forgive ourselves.  We need a safe harbor where we can anchor and reorient our beliefs of what life is about to what is always and ultimately true.  In the harbor we can fix what is broken, replenish our supplies and prepare for our next sail out into the choppy waves and wind of our daily lives.  Friends, the church is our safe harbor.  The church is a place of refuge for anyone trying to live healthy and holy lives in a sex-soaked, anti-truth, self-indulgent and love-idolizing society.  The church is a place for sinners who realize they are sinners, who don’t want to be sinners and are trying to be more than sinners.  Among the sinners dwells a Savior who forgives, heals, redeems and delights in us.  Fellowship and worship and the wisdom that comes from the Word refresh and equip us to resist the temptations of life beyond the church doors.  With all of this available to us in the church, we should be rushing the doors each Sunday, but we know from statistics and experience that singles are scarce in the church.  It’s a perplexing problem.  On one side of the church door American culture entices us, on the other side Christian culture undervalues or isolates us.  People who are unfulfilled or ill-equipped by Christian community are like scuba divers sent to explore a deep abyss on empty tanks. 

My greatest concern is that we single people will look around and believe that the world is more welcoming than the church or that the world loves us better than God.  I grieve when I see people (not just singles) hobble away from the church disillusioned and licking their wounds.  But friends, if we give up on the church because it is imperfect, where will we find the strength and courage and energy needed to live a God-honoring life?  I say this with a gentle push — we cannot let ourselves get stuck in this limbo of belonging.  We do belong in the church.  It is a place of refuge for all people because Jesus loves all people.  At the same time, the church is not, nor will it ever be, perfect.  This is a very real and challenging tension in the life of any Christian.   But should we abandon the church because it is imperfect and does not perfectly meet our every need?  If we want to be Christ-like, then the answer is no. 

As a single adult who has felt isolated in the church and at times undervalued by fellow Christians, I’ve learned that it is important and far more helpful to let compassion rather than woundedness guide our thoughts and steer our actions.  We need to realize that our married friends don’t deliberately exclude or undervalue us.  Like us, they’re busy, preoccupied and stressed dealing with daily joys and struggles.   Through no fault of their own they may be completely ignorant of the challenges of being single at 20 or 30 or 40 and beyond.  Our married friends need our love, support and grace just as much as we need theirs.  To borrow and tweak an encouragement from Gandhi – be the change you want to see in the church.  It is our responsibility (dare I say even our privilege?) to help the church become a more welcoming and helpful place for single people.   A good step toward a more inclusive community is enlightenment offered in love.  Find a way to use your story to help others see how they could be more sensitive to your needs and more helpful in your struggles.  The trick is figuring out how to share your experiences truthfully without allowing your angst or pain to become clubs you bash against peoples’ heads.  If you make someone defensive, they will become your opponent, unlikely to listen to your concerns. 

Above all, this is my main encouragement — you are not alone.  I think one of our dangers is that isolation and loneliness can become self-perpetuating.  Too much time spent alone can make us lonely; too much loneliness can make us feel invisible.  Feeling invisible can reduce confident, capable adults into to wallflowers and wallowers.  Loneliness then becomes the tool we use to effectively cut ourselves off from nourishing relationships.  Along my own journey I’ve come to realize that loneliness is not the inevitable result of singleness.  Instead, I’ve discovered that the single life can be very rich and satisfying.  I’ve found friendship so satisfying that I’ve often remarked I wish there were a way it could be my profession.  I’m friends with all kinds of people: singles, married, divorcees and widows, men and women, young, middle-aged and elderly, doctors, stay-at-home moms and artists.  My friendships are the well of my life, a deep and refreshing source of love, encouragement and accountability.  When paired with my relationship with God, I have no unmet needs.  

Since I last wrote, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the apostle Paul’s regard for singleness — “one has this gift, another has that.”  I don’t think too many Christians see or experience singleness as a gift, let alone a gift that rivals marriage.  Instead, I think most of us are reconciled to what we hope is temporary way of life.   But a gift implies much more than begrudging acceptance.  A gift implies receiving something that will surprise, benefit and possibly even delight us.  Every gift comes from a giver; in the case of singleness, the giver is God.  Take a moment to think of your life from God’s perspective.  He looks at you and really sees you.  He delights in your uniqueness.  Since God created you and knows you completely, he also knows what you need and what you don’t need, what will enhance your life and your grow faith.  For some that gift is singleness, for others, marriage.  Whether it be a temporary or life-long gift does not diminish the value of the gift.  Right now, singleness is the gift God has given you to enjoy, to learn from and to use as a tool to bless others. 

I know many of you are not there yet.  It takes time to unwrap a gift, really take stock of its attributes and learn how it adds value to your life.  Some of you may never unwrap the gift of singleness, because for you it is a symbol of pain or confusion; you may never see its goodness.  For me it took intentionally processing my own singleness, giving myself enough time and space to realize that my life was whole rather than pending, before I could see the richness of my life.   A few years ago I realized that I like being single.  It has freed me to travel and to experience the adventure of living in 4 states and Canada.  I have the time to invest in friendships, to volunteer, to write and to further my education.  I’m unmarried but I’m not alone or lonely.  I am blessed to drink from an abudant well of friendship.  

Most importantly, being single increases my need for God.  Most days I don’t know how I, one lone female, can accomplish all that is required of me.  My life takes more energy and logic, patience and strategy, care and surrender than I could ever generate myself.  In the daily voyage that is my life, God is my mainstay.  As I grow increasingly dependent on God, I become increasingly free.  Singleness has become a good life, a way of joy.

It was time for the extended family picture at my cousin Nathan’s wedding.  The photographer placed the bride and groom in the center of the church steps and then started grouping everyone around them.  He gathered my grandparents, then my aunts and uncles, my parents, my brothers and their wives and children and my cousins with their spouses and children, until I was the only one left.  The photographer, unsure where to place me, asked, “Who do you belong to?” 

That family picture was a beacon moment for me, a real-life illustration of the complexity of being a single adult.  Yes, I’m a valued member of my family, but as a single adult I float free among them, unanchored to any of the defined subgroups.  I know that my family loves me and welcomes my presence, but there is no easy way to explain to whom or how I belong. 

Belonging is a fundamental need for every human, a need that we meet through relationships.  For married people, their marital status, the fact that they call someone their spouse, helps shape a sense of belonging.  The same is not true for a single person, that is, saying that I am single does not help define my sense of belonging to others.  Instead, saying that I’m single differentiates me from others. 

America, especially church-going-Christian America, is a marriage majority culture.  As a thirty-something adult Christian female, the vast majority of my friends are married and most of them have children.  For these friends, their spouses and children are their primary relationships, meaning they give priority time and attention to their families.  I understand those priorities and I do not resent them – I love my friends and I want them to have healthy, life-giving marriages and family lives.  The challenge for me, (really, for any single adult), is that I do not have those same primary relationships.  Friendships are my primary relationships.  I look to my friends for the support, accountability, love, sharing, affirmation and motivation that they so often get from their spouse and/or children.  Like all human beings, single adults need healthy, reciprocal relationships in order to thrive.  We need to be connected to others, to belong and to be valued.  Friendships are natural places for us to seek these needs, but not always easy places for us to meet them. 

Beyond friendships, the church should also be a place of belonging, value and fulfillment for Christian singles.  Unfortunately, loneliness seems to be a common experience for single people in the church.  In previous posts we’ve located part of the problem, church populations and programs that segregate believers by marital status.  We’ve also read real testimonies of single people that have heard both subtle and overt messages that say marriage is better or more holy than singleness or that singles are incomplete.  Since we have identified the problems, now we ask the big question.  What do we need to do to reclaim the value of singleness as a way of life and revitalize a sense belonging among single people in the church? 

I’m going to offer you a few suggestions constructed from years of personal experience and careful reflection.  Many of these suggestions incorporate the ideas and convictions of more than 30 single friends, whose opinions I solicited for this series.  Here is what we need to do…

We need to re-orient our beliefs of marriage and singleness to the teaching of scripture.  A close, topical study of scripture reveals that marriage is good and that healthy marriages testify to the kind of peace and love that only knowledge of Christ can bring to relationships.  However, scripture also reveals that singleness is fundamentally good and that the life of a healthy single person can also proclaim the redemptive presence of Christ. 

Unless you mistook Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code for a fifth gospel, you know that Jesus was single and showed no signs of needing to be married to be a content, fulfilled and God-honoring human.  If marriage would have enhanced Jesus’ life or ministry on earth, then I believe he would have gotten married, but he didn’t and that shows us something.

The apostle Paul wrote to believers in Corinth that it is good for people not to marry.  Paul wasn’t married and he wrote that he wished all people were single like him.  He told widows and single adults that it was good to remain unmarried, a message that was surely as counter-cultural then as it is now!  In this passage, Paul talks about marriage as a concession to singleness (not the other way around!), explaining that if you cannot control your sexual desires then it is better to marry than to “burn with passion.”  What I find most revelatory about Paul’s whole discussion of marriage and singleness is that he sums up his instructions by saying, “But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.”  Both marriage and singleness are a gift from God.  How often do we hear or accept teaching that proclaims singleness a gift? 

Marriage is discussed more in scripture than singleness, which is not surprising if you know anything about the historical, cultural context that the bible speaks into, but I can’t find a single word that indicates that marriage is more valuable or spiritual than singleness.  What is clear is that all Christians are called to present themselves as living sacrifices to God.  The labels and classifications that the world uses to understand human experience do not impact the way that God values us.  We are all one in Christ, equally valuable people of diverse experiences united by the unconditional love of God.  The way in which we live is an act of worship as much for the single person as those who are married!  (For more reading see Romans 12 and Galatians 3.)

We need to absorb the biblical understanding of family.  I believe that Christians have absorbed society’s understanding of family rather than embracing a biblical understanding.  When we use the word ‘family’ in the church, we usually refer to a husband, a wife and a few kids, something remarkably similar to the nuclear family of the 1960s.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with valuing this type of family structure, but it’s not the picture created when family is discussed in scripture.  Theologically speaking, family in the Bible is not defined by a marriage relationship, but by the parent-child relationship between God and his followers.  The Greek word for family (patria) comes from the Greek word for father (pater).  The Bible does talk about ‘family’ in terms of people related by marriage and birth but that understanding is trumped by God’s fuller plan for humans: to adopt them as his children, to gather them as his people, to graft together all believers into one, unified body – the church.  Belonging to Christ creates a stronger connection between me and you than any connection made through blood or marriage.  In fact, our connection as sisters and brothers in Christ is the only eternal connection we humans have to each other.

Do you see how the biblical view of family balances the value of every human experience?  Singleness and marriage are both good gifts, but the best life experience is being children of God.  None of us have earned our way into God’s family; we have all been adopted and are equal heirs in God’s family.  How refreshing to hear that as a single person I lack nothing, that I’m fully embraced and delighted in by God!  How good to know that my married friends are not my betters, they are my brothers and sisters. Just as important as understanding these biblical truths, we need to preach and teach them!

We need to preach and teach more about the value of singleness.  I can’t recall the last time I heard someone preach or teach about singleness; can you?  I know that marriage is challenging, so I’m glad that pastors do what they can to help marriages thrive.  What I’m asking is that we balance that teaching with much-needed guidance about living a godly life as single people in a sex/romance/marriage-idolizing culture.  Pastors, give us some pulpit time!  If you are a typical pastor who got married young and have little experience of single adulthood, then ask for input.  I’m sure single people in your congregation would love to talk with you about the challenges that they face on a daily basis.

We need to be more inclusive in our marketing and programming in the church.  It’s important to meet the needs of the majority of the congregation, but we should be careful not to neglect the needs of any valuable minority.  The church is a place for all people and we need to live out that truth.  Do the website, literature and programs of your church reach out only to married people, parents or families, or other majorities like the able-bodied, Caucasians, the financially-stable?  If so, help your church leaders see what you see and help shape a more inclusive, welcoming reality.

We need to talk about singleness as an acceptable and good way to live.  In Rewriting Fairy Tales, I shared my own story of being unpleasantly surprised that I was still single after college.  I experienced some painful and lonely years in my mid-twenties and I know many young people who have experienced the same.  I think much of the pain, confusion or angst that singles experience could be minimized or avoided if we talked more about singleness as a possibility, even a choice, for the future.  Parents, teachers, mentors, anyone who is a person of influence in the life of a child or teen – please help them imagine and prepare for all kinds of good ways to live.

We need to practice true hospitality.  I don’t think that the remedy for isolation and loneliness is to herd people into homogeneous groups.  A singles group may connect me to others like me, but it doesn’t link me to the wider congregation which is my family.  Instead, I believe the remedy to isolation and loneliness is creating a hospitable culture that values and celebrates the lives of all people.  We need to spend time soaking our hearts and minds in Christ until we are so saturated with love that we can’t help but splash every person we meet. 

This is true hospitality – to open myself to the life of my neighbors, their unique needs, joy, pain, vulnerability and love.  I sit with them, eat with them, walk with them, talk with them and, most importantly, listen to them until I can embrace each one as my sister or brother.  

We are called to love all people, not just those who are like us, those who make us feel safe or those we understand.  Opening our lives to more people will expand our love for God because the more people that we know deeply, the more we will see how wide and high and long and deep is the love of God.  If we practice true hospitality, then we will create a culture where each member lives joyfully connected in the core of our family, whole, known, appreciated and enabled to spread the good news that our family is always open to expansion.

One of my life’s great joys has been to meet, work with and befriend other single women.  Each one has a unique story, an exciting calling, and most have a strong sense of purpose.  Unfortunately, so many of these women also experience pain, frustration and a gamut of other emotions related to the treatment they receive as single people.  I’ve observed through years of membership and leadership in the church that Christian singles often feel isolated and excluded from full participation in Christian communities and the church.  With this post, I hope to raise awareness about this issue in the church, but I want to be very clear that I will not exaggerate or to paint a bleak picture just to gain your sympathy.   The stories that I will share are the unvarnished experiences of real people. 

Feelings of exclusion, isolation, a sense of being misunderstood or being a second-class citizen are common complaints of single Christian women.  The pain born out of our experiences is very real and it affects all areas of our lives: our friendships, relationships with family members, our emotional health and our relationship with God.  I think it is vitally important that our voices are heard by our married sisters and brothers so we can be first understood and then recognized and embraced as full citizens among the people of God.

To illustrate to you the challenges of being a single woman in the church, I recently sent out a bunch of emails asking my single friends a series of questions.  Many felt the questions were so important that they forwarded them on to even more singles until my inbox was flooded.  For more than a week I have been sifting through responses that made my jaw drop, made me laugh and some that made me cry.  One of the tear-jerkers came from my friend Angelina.  She told me she was only able to answer the first three questions before she needed to take a “breather.”  She wrote,

“Strangely, as I found myself answering your questions last night, I got really upset.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot today and haven’t worked up the nerve to finish all of the [replies].  It’s amazing thinking through this…It’s almost as if I’ve been angry at God and the church for the fact that I am still single and feel friend-less.”

A year and a half ago, Angelina moved to Maryland to start a new job.  She wrote of her attempts to plug into a great church in her area.  Wanting to make friends and to serve, Angelina looked into several Sunday school classes and programs.  She discovered that though her church had a large population of young adults, all of the classes and fellowship groups were formed according to marital status.  The singles ministry consisted of “lovely older women who had recently lost a spouse or who were divorced.”  The only other group for young adults was the college ministry.  Angelina is mid-twenties, thriving in her career as an art teacher.  Her life is full of good things but it was clear from her email that she feels lonely and disconnected.

Another friend started her email to me like this: “Thanks for tackling this topic, Corrie.  I find that I get too angry to discuss [singleness] in a logical and helpful way.  I always feel like I get put on the defensive.”  This friend wished to remain anonymous because she feared she would come across as a “bitter, defensive old hag.”  In reality this woman, who we will call Jane, is an up-beat, kind, intelligent and attractive woman in her thirties.  She knows several languages, has traveled, earned a Masters degree and lives a self-described “crazy cool life.”  Many people envy the things she has done, but Jane still struggles to reconcile the gift of her life with the frustration she feels as a single adult in the church.  Jane feels bombarded by both overt and subtle messages that say she doesn’t quite belong or that there is something wrong with her. 

Jane attends a large church in North Carolina and she went to a meeting for people looking to join a small group.  Arriving early, she waited outside the room and overheard the small group leaders talking.  One leader said to the group, “We can’t take any more single women.  We’re maxed out.”  The leaders began to debate what to do with all the single women.  Another time Jane was talking with an older married woman at church.  When the woman found out that Jane was single, she exclaimed, “But you’re not ugly!”  At one point, Jane heard a pastor say being married was the highest calling in life.  Offhanded remarks like these cause Jane to grapple with contentment in her singleness and her sense of self-worth. 

“[I struggle with the idea that I have to fix] what makes me unattractive.  I catch myself buying into the crap that says that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m damaged goods.  I’m talking about things from losing weight, to changing my personality and downplaying my intellect.”

Jane is not the only one hearing messages that assume singleness is something to be fixed, or that is it a less valuable life-experience when compared to marriage.  Most of the women who emailed me shared at least one experience that made them feel devalued as a single person.  All but one of my responders said that they feel the church values marriage over singleness.  My friend and former co-worker Amber articulates the problem well. 

“I don’t think the church sat down and decided that single people do not matter as much, it’s just that there is very little that the church does to show single people that they do matter.  Most programs, sermon examples, and events center around marriage, family or children’s programs.  Sometimes there are women’s groups but the topics discussed are mostly about being a wife and/or mother… I just want the church to acknowledge that there are single people who are present.  I just want others to consider their audience and also consider that we’re not all just waiting around to find Mr. or Mrs. Right.”

For Amber, nothing illustrates this point as well as an experience she had at small group.  The discussion topic was ‘experiencing the love of God’ and the leader asked the group members to reflect on what it felt like when they first met their spouses.  She taught that we experience God’s love like spousal love because Jesus is the bridegroom of the church.  A divorced woman in the group spoke up and said that if marriage was the way we experience the love of God, then she would never be able to fully experience Jesus’ love for her.  Amber, a woman of confidence and authentic faith, writes in response to this experience:

“I know that I can experience Jesus in the same way as a married person can, but when you hear so much [about how good marriage is] and nothing that confirms that your place in life is good too, it starts to make you wonder.  I was so frustrated that the leader of my group didn’t think about her audience and that [she used an example that only married people could relate to].  There is no better way to isolate someone.”

Many of the women who wrote to me testified to hearing sermons that elevated marriage to the ultimate human experience.  I’ve heard the same said of married sex.  Whether it is the yearly sermon series on marriage not balanced with discussions on singleness, or sermons in which the pastor often uses his (or her) marriage as a relational example, it seems that single people are perceiving that their life is less – less desirable or less spiritual.  With the programmatic structure of the church offering so much to married members but little to nurture single congregants, other than in segregated groups, there is little to dispel this perception. 

Mature Christian singles understand that God loves us each completely, even in our singleness, but many of us are still hurting because this belief is not well preached, programmed or actualized in our Christian communities.  Like married people, like all humans, single people need to be known, to be valued and to be accepted.  We want to be appreciated as we are and encouraged and equipped for ministry in the church and the world right now, not if or when we get married. 

If you’re like me, you’re feeling a little down at the end of this post.  (Believe me, you’d feel even more so if you read all of the testimonies that I received.)  Maybe you are experiencing surprise, angst, or even denial.  It is hard to hear that the church falls short in any respect, especially if you love the church and you’ve had a positive experience.  I hope that somewhere in the midst of your emotions you feel compassion too and that you want to know what you can do make the church a more welcoming place.   That’s where we’ll head soon.  We still have lots of questions to explore related to singleness and faith.  How can churches be more inclusive and more nurturing of single adults?  What are the joys of being single and is it a calling more should consider?  Theologically speaking, is marriage better than being single?  More explorations are coming soon.

This is the second of a several post series about issues of singleness and faith. In coming posts, I’ll be sharing stories that will illustrate what it is like to be a single Christian in today’s culture. To enhance our discussion about singleness, and to ground our expectations and assumptions in reality, it’s important that we get an accurate picture of singleness in America and the church.

According to the 2008 US Census, 95.9 million Americans were “unmarried.” That number accounted for 43% of all American adults, 18 years or older. Women were the slight majority group among unmarrieds at 53%. The unmarried category is split into three sub-categories: widowed, divorced, and never married. Adults in the never married category made up 63% or 60.5 million of the 95.9 million unmarried Americans. To visually map these numbers for you, if American single adults were a country, they would be the 14th largest country in the world.

Data about the unmarried population in the church is much harder to find. After a moderately exhaustive search conducted last spring, I discovered an article that reported that in the American church in general, unmarried adults make up only 10% of attendees. In mega-churches the number of unmarried adults jumps to 30%. These stats show that singles are a clear minority group in the church today, much more so than in America at large.

According to the 2010 US census data, the median age of Americans at their first marriage continues to creep higher. 

Year    Men     Women

1950    22.8     20.3 (yrs. of age)

1980    24.7     22.0

1990    26.1     23.9

2000    26.8     25.1

2010    28.2     26.1

According to The Barna Research Group, which conducted a survey with American teenagers in 2010, 58% of all teens expect that marriage will “definitely” or “probably happen” to them by age 25. Unfortunately, I can’t find any statistics on the median age of Christians at their first marriage or how many of them expect to get married, but it is no secret that American Christians place a high value on marriage and family. (Think eHarmony, Focus on the Family and local churches providing a wealth of programs for married couples, parents, children and youth.) If I were to speculate, I’d say that theological beliefs and traditional family values lead many Christian Americans to marry younger than their peers who are not Christian.

Anecdotally, I can verify that the desire or pressure to marry young is still a verifiable part of Christian young adult culture. As a member of the Association for Christians in Student Development, I had access to seminars and workshops that were offered yearly to discuss the “ring by spring” mentality (to get engaged during the last semester of college) which is a pervasive, and sometimes problematic, topic on Christian college campuses. Having worked with college students for six years, I have interacted with hundreds of young people, most of them women, who show clear signs of concern about finding a spouse before or soon after they graduate. As a guest lecturer for Messiah College’s Marriage and Family Ethics course, I polled a class of 34 students. 100% of them reported they hope to get married. They believed that the average American marries at age 24 and they believed the ideal age to get married was 26.

I want Christians to have informed, realistic and healthy expectations about marriage and singleness. Hopefully, the facts above will enlighten us to the trends in both American and Christian culture and get many of us thinking critically. I think we need to chew on the facts above, especially the fact that a vast minority of church attenders are single. If there are far more singles in the general American population than those that attend church, what does this say about outreach and internal church programs meeting the needs of singles?

Mull this over. Talk about it with your friends. Seek the input of single adults that you know; some of you may have to make new friends to get a fresh perspective. Show the statistics to your pastor and do a little exploration in your own churches. Then come back and follow the conversation. I’ve solicited the stories of 25 of my single Christian friends. Their experiences and thoughts about singleness, marriage and faith are coming soon. Plus we’ll explore topics like loneliness, the single pastor and the question of whether singleness is second-best.

(If you’d like the sources for the statistics cited in this post, please leave a comment with your email address and I will send them to you.)

Once upon a time, I was a stereotypical little girl.  I liked my long hair trimmed with bright ribbons and barrettes.  I loved my easy-bake oven, the color pink, Disney princess movies and dolls that you could dress up in pretty outfits with matching hats.  Whenever my best-friend Maria and I got together, we always played house.  We busied ourselves with the babies and the baking, anticipating the arrival of our husbands soon expected home from the office.  We played out the fairy tales we saw so often on TV, which were remarkably similar to our own lives.  Maria and I came from good homes.  Our parents were happily married and financially stable, each with three healthy children.  We were protected and carefree.  We lived a fairy tale life. 

More than twenty years later, my oldest two nieces, Kennedy and Kingsley, are going through the princess phase.  As a Christmas gift, I wrote some fairy tales in which my nieces star as the princesses of the imaginary kingdom Michigandaloo.  I wanted to stir the girls’ imaginations by sticking close to the fairy tale genre with its galloping adventures and bits of magic.  At the same time, I was cautious because fairy tales can be dangerous.   Let me explain through a few paragraphs of autobiography.

For the most part, I grew up in an environment of happiness.  Whether I read it in books, saw it in movies or witnessed it in real life relationships, there was a clear fairy tale formula for happiness: girl meets boy, boy rescues girl, girl and boy get married and they live happily ever after.  The stories I knew, both fiction and non-fiction, were ripe with sentiment.  They made me feel good.  I laughed, I cried and I craved the same happiness.  From everything I knew as a child, happy people were married people, and when I pictured my own future I wanted to live the fairy tale. 

In Christian circles, there is a lot of emphasis placed on marriage.  After all, one of the great scriptural metaphors for God’s love for his people is a groom’s love for his bride.  When I was preparing for college, a number of women, both at my church and in my family said that I would find my spouse there.  This was true for most people I knew at church, for my parents, my brothers, and the majority of my extended family.  I had no reason to think that it wouldn’t be true for me.  So I went to college expecting to get a degree and a husband.   But it didn’t happen.  Four years and not a single date!  I had a crush on one guy for a few years, but he dated three of my friends instead of me.  That was not how the story was supposed to go. 

I was blessed with wonderful things in college – friendships, discovering my calling, a deep love for learning, growing faith and a valuable education – but I left California bewildered and a little panicked.  Suddenly I reached my future and it was not as I had imagined.  Being single was not part of my formula for happiness.  No fairy tale I had ever known, whether on screen or in real life, ended with the woman alone.  To me, that was the stuff of tragedies, movies you never wanted to see twice because they were too sad.  But there I was, standing in the doorway of my real adult life, looking at a landscape that was completely unimagined.  I was a sleeping beauty who woke up, not to the gentle kiss of a future with her dragon-slaying prince, but to the jarring crash at the bottom of a rabbit hole, arriving unexpectedly in a strange world where I had to face the dragon myself.  Why hadn’t I realized that there was no guarantee that I would meet my spouse in college or get married young?  Why had singleness, short or long-term, never been discussed as a possibility for my future?   As I grappled with these questions, I felt betrayed by all those women (and a few men) who had ever told me I would find my husband in college.  It was foolish of me, but I believed their prediction of my future.  I’d been led on, hoodwinked by a fairy tale.

If I read my life like a novel, it’s not surprising that the single page-turn from chapter twenty-one to twenty-two would be so difficult for this protagonist.  In many ways, my life to that point was very easy; I usually got what I wanted.  When I was suddenly faced with the surprising reality of singleness, I had to learn to chew and swallow certain difficult truths.  You can’t buy or create a husband when and how you want him.  More importantly, you can’t guarantee you will ever have a husband.  People are not things to be acquired.  Marriage is not an achievement, like a trophy that we get if we are good enough, nor is it the answer to what you want to be when you grow up.  Marriage is not the cure for loneliness, the elixir of contentment or the brand of worth.   And, finally, lasting happiness is not inextricably tied to romantic relationships, marriage and children. 

It took me several years to process and accept the reality of being a single adult.  Surprisingly, I needed to grieve the loss of my unmet expectations.  Slowly, like scabbing and rescabbing over deep scratches, I healed from the disappointment.  Part of that healing, a very important part, was beginning to reconstruct a vision for my future that led toward happiness which did not hinge on marital status.  I also found solace in discovering that my experience was very common among young Christian women. 

I once supervised a young woman named Cindy, who has graciously given me permission to share her story with you.  When she was a junior in college, Cindy shared with me that she thought way too much about boys.  Like many women her age, Cindy wanted to be dating, to be pursued, to have a boyfriend.  To combat these consumptive thoughts, one year she gave up thinking about boys for Lent.  Unfortunately, deciding not to think about boys didn’t help her stop thinking about boys.  We talked about what might be causing her mind to be so focused on romantic relationships.  Our conversation led her to try a more tangible experiment, giving up romantic comedies.   Around the same time, friends convinced Cindy to see the movie Enchanted.  Here’s what happened:

“When I decided to go, I only thought of Enchanted as a Disney princess movie, but as I sat in the theater watching it, I realized it was very much a romantic comedy.  I caught myself giggling and sighing, wishing I could be a princess and find true love’s kiss.  That reaction was the very reason why I wanted to give up romantic comedies in the first place.  Those movies gave me unrealistic expectations for romance and relationships and had me wishing for a fantasy.  When the wishing was over, I was disappointed with the reality of my singleness.” 

Three years later, and much wisdom gained, Cindy reflects on her experience. 

“I realize it wasn’t necessarily the act of giving up rom-coms that affected my thinking so much as identifying those movies as potential obstacles for feeling content with [my] current situation or relationship status.  Now, I am able to watch those movies more critically and view the whirlwind romances and serendipitous meetings with a bit of skepticism so I don’t learn to expect that in my own life.  I still hope for a relationship and possibly marriage, but I can’t just assume that will happen.  I don’t know what plans God has for me, whether it includes being married or not.  I’m trying to be content with my current singleness since I don’t know how long it will last.”

I’ve met, befriended and/or mentored many single women like Cindy who grapple with unexpected or unwanted singleness, just like I did.  It’s vital that together we work to make meaning of our experience and encourage each other to value what we have and who we are, just as we are.  If we don’t, discontent or loneliness will be the bitter replacements for our happiness. 

As I continue to write fairy tales for my nieces, I think very carefully about the assumptions that undergird what I write.  I want these stories to help Kennedy and Kingsley peer into the future and see a kaleidoscope of possibilities.  I’m loosening the fairy tale formula so that a myriad of things other than romance – acts of service or kindness, friendship or overcoming challenges – shape a fulfilling, God-honoring life.  My hope is that Kennedy and Kingsley read my stories and learn valuable lessons about how to live happily ever after. 

My previous post, The Window, is a story that I brewed up from the grounds of daily living.  If you are a regular reader, you know that I’m unemployed, busy pursuing both a long-term ministry position and some kind of temporary job to pay the bills.  I’m entering my ninth month of unemployment, with no tangible leads. 

Simultaneous to my exhausting search for work, I’m studying the old testament book of Isaiah.  The prophet waxes (perhaps too eloquently) on the failings of Israel and Judah.  What was once a strong and unified people of God, became two fractured enemy kingdoms too often dancing like stringed puppets to the whim of corrupt foreign powers.  The tribes were facing desperate times.  The threat of annihilation was real and camped just beyond their walls.  Poverty, hunger and disease were daily realities.  The people and their leaders had to constantly ask themselves, what should we do, where is the way out?  

Making major life choices is hard enough in the best of times.  How much more difficult it is to make choices in desperate times!    I know something about this.  Every month that I remain unemployed I have less money to pay for essentials.  Though I’m doing everything I can to find work, I can’t pull a job out of a hat like a magician pulls out a rabbit.  As discouraging and scary as my situation can be, I am bolstered by the clear and redundant message of Isaiah — rely on God alone; he is your only salvation!

I am not holier than you.  Relying on the Lord alone is extremely difficult, perhaps the most challenging thing I’ve ever attempted.   I’m tempted to do everything and anything but trust in God.  Like a phony fortune-teller, our culture tries to seduce me into believing that my own abilities will save me.  She urges me to look for easy ways out, as though the answer to all my problems is painted on the crystal ball below the tip of her very crooked nose.   I’m surrounded by all kinds of mirages that glitz and woo me with false promises of relief, freedom and prosperity.  I know something about this too. 

Last month I got a job offer from a wonderful non-profit in my area.  They do good, just work and I enjoyed each person I met.  But as I progressed through the process, I had a growing awareness that no matter how good, this work was not for me.  Warnings about my personal wellness flashed in my stomach like neon burns the Vegas sky.  Valid concerns outweighed even my sense of financial need.  It took many days and several gasping breaths to coach myself into turning down the job.  I hung up the phone and immediately said, “I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy.” 

I know very well that it doesn’t make sense to turn down a job that does good work when you are running out of money in a terrible economy.  It doesn’t make sense, unless of course, you know that God is calling you to something else, (even when you don’t know what that something is).   I’m sure I seem stupid to those who don’t believe in God.  Even to some Christians my actions probably seem crazy.  Sometimes I even scratch my head as I dare to live my life relying on God as my sole salvation.  I don’t know how this is all going to work out but I’m clinging to the belief that God has something better for me.  I’m not going to do something stupid like jump from a deadly height or break through glass to create my own imperfect escape, like the first two women in The Window.  Instead, I’m waiting and trusting, hoping and praying like God told his people to do through the prophet Isaiah.  Like a wobbly toddler clutching the strong fingers of a parent, I’m holding onto the belief that God’s ways are safer and smarter than the world’s ways and, well, perfect.  This is crazy living, but despite my tenuous situation, I can still sing and laugh and I have joy.  So it must be a good kind of crazy.

To be continued.

Three women are trapped in a burning house.  With no safe exit on the ground floor, the women flee up a tall staircase.  At the top of the stairs there is a long hallway lined with windows. 

The first woman sees smoke streaming out of an open window.  She runs to it and begins to climb through.  Seeing the long drop to the ground, the second woman screams, “No!  Don’t jump.  It’s too far!”  Fearing the orange glow behind her, the first woman jumps out the window.  She survives the fall, but both of her legs are severely broken. She never walks again.

Fire begins to eat its way up the staircase.  The remaining two women begin to cough and choke as smoke fills the hallway.  The second woman runs along the hall until she comes to another window.  Faint light shining through the glass beckons to her.  Through the smoke she sees that the land behind the house has sloped higher.  The fall is not as far.  Seeing her chance, she frantically tries to open the window, but it is stuck.  She begins to scream and beat her fists against the glass.  “Stop!” cries the third woman, “Not that way.  You’ll hurt yourself!”  The second woman doesn’t listen.  She breaks through the glass with her hands and jumps out the window.  She survives the fall, but the flesh of her arms is sliced to strips from the broken glass.  Her arms are painful and scarred for the rest of her life.   

The third woman is alone in the hallway.  The smoke is so dense that she can no longer see a way out.  The building cracks and shudders around her.  The stairwell collapses onto the floor below.  The woman, faint and suffocating, drops to her knees and crawls along the hall until she feels a hot wall in front of her.  A dead-end – the woman cries out with her last breath, “God, help me!”  She curls into a ball and waits to die. 

Suddenly, the wall beyond the woman crumbles to a heap of ash.  Heat and smoke are sucked past her into the void.  Fresh air brushes the woman’s face and she opens her eyes.  She can see a faint light beyond the jagged ends of the floorboards.  She crawls toward the light and the air.  At the edge of the floor she is surprised to see the rock face of the hill just three feet away.  Seeing her salvation, the woman jumps to the rock and climbs to safety.  As the skeletal remains of the house collapse to dust, the third woman walks away unharmed.