Finally, a piece about singleness

Shout out to all the singles.

Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927.

I have a wonderful friend who has sent the same email to the same group of guys for five years now. In it, he asks us to reply with two books, two pieces of music, and one wildcard from the year prior. Little signposts of the year that was, filtered through the lens of art.

It’s wonderful.

Five years ago the books and music revolved around the music of a mid-20s male—Avett Brothers, Tyler Childers, Fleet Foxes. And the years they contained were symmetrical: the search for jobs, the search for wives, the search for God.

Now many of us are in our early thirties, and the books and music reflect different priorities. Books on fatherhood populated the list this year, along with children’s music. “Didn’t do much reading that wasn’t a book with my kids” popped up a few times. Fatherhood and marriage and searching for God in the midst of both.

My selections, you won’t be surprised, did not contain anything that represented fatherhood or marriage.

It’s no one’s fault, but I felt alone, left behind.

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Have I missed the freeway exit to marriage? Have I been too preoccupied with living? Too caught up in life?

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I moved last week, and this morning I attended a church Bible study with a new group of men. The passage was about the four men who carry the paralyzed man on the mat to Jesus. They tear through the roof to lower him right in front of the Lord, desperate for healing.

I said that growing up I always imagined myself being one of the friends. I never pictured myself being paralyzed, never thought of myself as the one who needed help. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized I have been the man on the mat. I have been the one to need friends to carry me to Jesus, to dig through a roof to get me to him.

This feels so lame…but sometimes I feel paralyzed—from really truly living life—because of singleness. Like I can’t (or don’t want to) move until I am connected to her—whoever she is.

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Did she pass me in the communion line on Sunday? Or the coffee shop this morning? Maybe she is afraid to meet me, too timid to show her face.

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Today I met with someone on staff at my new church to talk about getting plugged in.

It was a wonderful conversation, and towards the end she asked me what type of small group I might be interested in.

She said, “Would you want to be in a small group for singles?” Then, almost apologetically, she confessed, “We don’t really have anything like that.”

I quickly responded, “No no don’t worry I’m fine with married people. At my age I kind of expect to be with married people.”

This church doesn’t really have a place to put me. I am difficult to categorize. Because I am not a husband. And I am not a father.

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I am the king of self-deprecation. Especially about singleness. I can easily get the laughs.

Don’t buy it. It’s only masking things like loneliness.

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“Sometimes I wish everyone were single like me—a simpler life in many ways! But celibacy is not for everyone any more than marriage is. God gives the gift of the single life to some, the gift of the married life to others.”

-St. Paul (1 Cor. 7:7 (The Message))

Back to that Bible study this morning. The conversation turned to prayers, both the ones that God answers and the ones that seemingly dissipate before they are heard—and can be answered—by God.

I say, “I’ve been praying for a wife for a long time now, and God hasn’t really answered that one yet.”

The men—each one married—listened to me gently, kindly. They nodded in agreement, and one of them brought up the passage that Paul wrote about the “gift” of singleness. He wondered out loud whether some people are given the gift while others have to endure the gift, have to learn to live with the gift.

That hit me. I know people who have the gift of singleness. They are able to serve God with their time and find great joy in their singleness.

That, dear reader, is not me.

I believe the gift exists, but I don’t know if singleness is a gift given to each single person or if it is given to a select few people who are single—the ones who actually want it.

Like, do I have the gift right now, but I’m just rejecting it? I have a hard time believing that because I have been working—hard—to accept said gift. Wouldn’t God have pulled back the curtain by now and shown me the joy of singleness?

Or do I not have the gift because it has not been given to me? Is the waiting a kind of formation in patience—my own gauntlet of sanctification?

I don’t know.

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For years I’ve been kicking myself for not being “joyful” about my singleness. UUUUUUGH. JOYFUL. Such a gross word when applied to something you really don’t want. Like forcing a smile during a stomach bug.

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I’ve been told that I try to force a bow onto too many things I write. That I need to just let questions linger. Well, I guess I’m going to let this question linger.

What is the gift of singleness, and why don’t I have it?

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