Stupid Youth Group Myth #378

The following statement, and all of its variations, make me want to scream:

"You have to be totally content as a single person before God will bring that right person into your life."




Never mind where I heard it not long ago (okay, it was Facebook)... but whenever I hear (or read) this kind of advice dispensed as gospel, I can't stop myself from throwing something out there in response.  In my church-land experience, there was no one to yell: "That's  a bunch of balogna!" so I'm overly apt to shoot it down now that I can.  (Enjoy the Jim Gaffigan link).

I'm no giant of faith or anything, and I don't know much, but I do know this: anytime we get caught up in believing religious equations -- if B, then C, where B=your actions, and C=God's predictable response -- we get ourselves into a lot of trouble.  Take the following gems:

--if you live a holy life, God will reward you with material wealth

--if you pray hard enough and live right, God will heal you/give you that job/keep your kids safe/make your marriage work

God-as-pop-machine is crap theology, but this is what we learned back in the day.  What's more, a lot of us still believe this idea because it played from the pulpit, over and over, until it started to seem like truth.  And it's heartbreaking -- because the flip side of that equation says, "If C didn't happen, well then -- you know who to blame."

When I was sixteen years old, a traveling preacher visited the church I grew up in.  He reputedly possessed "the gift of healing," so at the end of the service, I walked up to the front and asked him to pray for my back, which hurt for months following a rough spill down the stairs.  He prayed.  I came back the next night, and the man asked me if I felt better.  I truthfully said I was still in pain.  He and others stood in a circle, placing their hands on my head and back and beseeching God to heal me.  I tried to believe as hard as I could, tried to imagine that hot ache receding.  When I returned the third night, the healer repeated his question.  I answered honestly.  He didn't like my answer much, because he looked down at me and said, "Well, I've done my part, and God has done His part -- are you sure you've done your part?"  I blinked up at him, with no idea what to say.  I must not have believed hard enough.

Years passed before I bothered God about that kind of thing again.

...These days I hear similar things from dear, talented, creative, funny friends who want to be married, but aren't: "I just have to be completely content where I'm at before God will move me forward.  I must not be there yet."

Let me say first that there are really good, very practical reasons (not just in this particular area, but in all of life) to work hard at contentment and gratitude for the present season, the main reason being that you don't kill all your time wishing your circumstances were different, lounging around waiting for what comes next.  There are things I was able to do as a single person that I can't or don't do now... if I would have spent all my time whining about being single rather than just living my life (and only occasionally whining), I would have missed out on some really fun things (and I'd probably still be on my couch at the Little Blue House rather than married to Justin).

Yes, there are reasons.  But none of them have to do with arm-wrestling the Almighty into giving you what you want by pretending that you don't really want it, or by somehow attaining this level of perfection that would make you intolerably irritating to a very-human potential mate.

I can guess at what the reasons might be, but guess only.  I guess at what my own reasons probably were, and that's only hindsight -- imperfect at best.

-- It took time for me to know myself well enough that when Justin came along, my heart recognized the difference between what I found in him and what I'd vainly searched for in others.  There were a lot of times I thought that maybe what I was looking for simply didn't exist.  I'm happy to have been wrong.

-- Though not completely secure or self-confident at the time (still not), I was at least able to let Justin in on a more real me, messy parts and all.  I needed time to get to the place where I wasn't trying so hard to earn love or project a perfect image of myself.  This was another major difference: the times I felt most freakish, Justin just pulled me closer.  Still happens.

-- Probably more unique to me, my faith needed time to grow into itself, to grow big enough to allow questions and doubt and an entirely different perspective.  If I had my way early on, I'd probably be married to some spiky/messy-haired youth pastor, were he foolish enough to marry me, and I'd be miserable -- facing big, deep, scary questions on my own, or silently, or worse -- not asking them at all.  When Justin came along, it was almost spooky to hear my questions coming out of his mouth.  The conversation continues, and I'm never alone in it.

I needed time, time, and more time.  A lot of us do, though we don't see it until later.  And suggesting that possibility to someone while they're stuck in the not-yet is horribly cliche, I know.  (It's like that "Well, I just knew ," statement I despised so much until I found in my own case that it was quite true).  But at least it's not putting the idea out there that I am happily married because I arrived at some uber-spiritual place of wanting for nothing, and that if a single person can just be AMAZING like me, well, maybe they too can enter the perfect, sublime world of the married too (snicker).

I've just never known God to be good to me based on my got-it-all-togetherness.  You?