03 - Roadblock

You’d think that the re-evaluation of my game plan would have been easy with God on my side, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. To me, it seemed that whenever God called a play, it was one that my playbook predicted to end in my defeat. He was saying ridiculous things like, “Jill, just relax and quit trying to find a relationship everywhere you go.” And, “Your goal should be to give love; not to receive it.” And, “I want you to let me take care of this instead of doing it yourself.” But in my mind, these instructions would lead to a life of permanent singleness! I couldn’t figure out why God wanted me to give up my game plan when his seemed to be leading to even worse results! I wasn’t sure if we were on the same page.

Then I remembered a conversation that opened my eyes to what was going on.

Several years ago, I decided to visit a church called Crossroads that was across town from me. Several days later, I mentioned to my parents that I had gone there. My dad was curious, and he asked me what it was like. I told him that there were tons of people, that I thought it was great how “real” everyone was, that I liked the contemporary feel of the big screens all over the room, that the music was some of the best I’d ever heard. In fact, I planned to go back every week. Hearing my rave review, my dad was excited and mentioned that he would like to check it out, too.

Up until this point, my mom had made appropriate comments, and she had seemed to be tracking with our conversation. But now she seemed confused. The first indication of a problem was her bewilderment about our enthusiasm. Then she asked me something that seemed strange. “Was the food good? What did you get?”

I have to admit, her question left me somewhat taken aback, as I’ve never heard of a church that’s known for their food. Confused, I told her that they didn’t have any food there. At that point, my mom was really befuddled. “Then why,” she said, “did you even go there in the first place?” It was clear to me at this point that somewhere in this conversation, there had been a communication breakdown.

Well, to make a long story short, it turned out that my mom had assumed that I was talking about Crossroads Wings and Rings – a sports bar down the street from their house – and it had never even crossed her mind that Crossroads might be a church!

After a good laugh, I started to think: Isn’t it crazy how two people can think they’re talking about the same thing – how all the words can line up – but then at some point, you find out you’re coming from two completely different perspectives?

Because of her culture, her background, and her experiences, my mom automatically assumed that Crossroads was a place for wings and beer, and because of that perspective, she took everything she heard and tried to fit it into her pre-existing belief. And for a while that worked! My comments about people, big screens, and music all fit into her schema of what Crossroads should be. It wasn’t until we really hit a roadblock in our conversation that either one of us started to think that we might not be talking about the same thing.

And that roadblock – although it was confusing and uncomfortable at first – was actually a good thing, because it was the impetus for getting us on the same page. It forced my mom to make a choice. She could have chosen to stubbornly hold on to her idea of what Crossroads is supposed to be. (After all, that’s the perspective of everyone else in our neighborhood.) Or she could have chosen to adjust her perspective to one that was more accurate in the conversation we were having. (Even though that meant turning her back on what she and her culture had always assumed about establishments called Crossroads.)

Now, if my mom had refused to believe that Crossroads was a church, that would have just been weird. But I started to realize that I was doing that very thing in my conversation with God. I couldn’t understand what he was telling me about relationships because I was running it all through the filter of what my culture, my friends, my church, and my (sometimes well-meaning) relatives said about it. I had never actually stopped to figure out if I understood it all the way God did.

That’s when I started to ask myself: What if my assumptions about singleness and marriage have been shaped by my culture, my background, and my experiences? What if, up until now, my assumptions have seemed to jive with reality because I’ve been able to stuff everything into my pre-existing schema and make it fit? But what if this roadblock in the conversation was the very thing I needed to help me see my misinterpretations and correct them?

For example, I believed that getting married by age 25 and settling down with 2.5 kids was the only normal way to live and the only possible way to lead a complete and happy life. I thought that if I didn’t do that, I’d never fit in with society, and I’d miss out on something that everyone else had. For a while, that perspective worked for me because I still had hope that my life would turn out that way. But when I found that I couldn’t make it happen for myself, and when God didn’t give me the things I thought I had to have, that left me with two choices. I could assume either that he didn’t care about me, or that he wasn’t strong enough to do it. But neither one of those choices made sense based on what I knew about God!

I also believed that I needed a man to prove that I was worthy of love. I thought that as a single person, I was only half of a whole; that I was incomplete. For a while, that perspective worked for me because I could sustain myself with temporary fixes when guys showed interest in me. But when I couldn’t find someone to give me the permanent stamp of approval and completeness, I was left with two choices. I could assume either that God thought I was worthless, or that he was just ignoring me. But neither of those choices made sense based on what I knew about God!

And then it occurred to me. What if I’m failing to understand this conversation because God and I are coming from two different perspectives? What if I assumed that marriage was the ultimate goal of life only because that’s what society told me? But what if God had never said that at all? And what if I assumed that a relationship was the only way I’d find validation and completion only because that’s what society told me? But what if God had never said that at all? What if God actually had been taking care of me all along, and I just couldn’t see it because I was approaching the conversation thinking Crossroads was a wings place?

As I began to consider these things, God reminded me that he’s been warning us about these roadblocks in the conversation all along.

He said it in Isaiah 55:8-9: “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”

He said it in 1 Corinthians 1:18-19: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’”

He said it in Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

He said it repeatedly in Matthew 5: “You have heard that it was said…but I tell you…”

Clearly, the way God thinks is pretty different from the way I usually think (and since he’s the one who actually created the world, it’s much more likely that his way of thinking is correct). And because of that, the only way I can have a productive conversation with him is when I take the time to learn what his perspective actually is, and then get myself on the same page with him.

Now, let me clarify. God did NOT tell me that dating and marriage are bad things. He did NOT say that I should never want to fall in love or get married. But what he DID say to me was that my having (or not having) a relationship was not my real issue – that being single was not the cause of my unhappiness. He showed me that I just assumed that was my problem because that’s the American perspective, and I’m naturally trying to fit everything that happens to me into my culture’s traditions and mores. He told me that he wanted to teach me his perspective on the whole thing.

But as much as I recognized my need for a perspective shift, I wasn’t immediately aware of all the assumptions that needed changing, and I certainly wasn’t aware of how hard that would be to accomplish. Luckily, though, God hadn’t given up on me. In fact, I discovered over the next couple of years that he wanted so much to engage me in conversation that he was willing to do whatever it took to remove those roadblocks.

Would you like to join the conversation, too?

02 - Me

Maybe it would be helpful if I explained why I decided to re-evaluate my game plan.

Looking back, the last time a guy was truly interested in me was third grade. In fact, it wasn’t just one guy; there were two – Chris and Ryan – and they actually fought over me! Eventually I ended the drama with my bright idea to hold a race. The winner of the race would win my heart, and if the winner was me, then I would be free of both of them. (To this day, I wish I could knock some sense into young, naïve 8 year old Jill!) Now I don’t know if my superior running abilities that day were the thing that solidified me as a single person for life, or if it’s just a coincidence, but I can tell you that since that time, I have been invisible to the male eye.

At first it didn’t bother me because (as you can see from this glimpse into my third grade psyche), I was a late bloomer who wasn’t really interested in that kind of thing. By the time I got to high school, though, I was starting to worry. I can remember thinking as a freshman, “As long as I start dating by the time I’m a junior, it’ll be okay.” But in those two years, nothing changed. Both my junior and senior years came and went, and still I was a nobody.

Now, I’ve always struggled with self-esteem issues. I’ve never been the life of the party, and I’ve always had trouble fitting in. So going through 4 years of high school without ever being asked out just added to my sense of worthlessness. Still, I had hope that better things were on the horizon. After all, I was heading off to college, and maybe things would be different there.

But they weren’t. I experienced the same thing in college that I did in high school: guys didn’t even know that I existed. Unfortunately, as much as they were unaware of my existence, I was totally aware of theirs. My pattern went something like this: I would pick a guy to crush on, and I would obsess about him day and night, always trying to work up some kind of plan to get him to notice me. Then eventually, I would realize it wasn’t going to work, and, depressed, I’d move on to someone new.

You know that rhetorical question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, I spent most of my life asking myself this question: “If Jill exists but no one cares enough to notice, then does she really matter?” I felt like it was essential to my future happiness and self-worth that I find the one who would notice me and affirm that I really did have significance.

Beyond feeling like a nobody, though, my inability to snag a boyfriend also made me feel like a failure. In my mind, the appropriate and normal way to live your life was to grow up, to get married, and to have kids. As I approached the end of college and I hadn’t found the husband who would make that scenario a reality, I really started to get worried about my ability to lead a successful life.

So my roommate and I made the following plan: In order to have a baby by the ancient age of 25, I needed to get married by 23. That meant I needed to get engaged at 22, which meant I needed to meet my future husband by the time I was 21. My roommate and I even went so far as to document this schedule on a poster along with all the qualities we wanted in our future husbands. We called the poster “Perfect Match,” and we hung it on the wall of our college apartment. (And I wondered why I had trouble finding a date…)

Once I had a plan, I assumed that God was on board with it, too. After all, that’s how good church people live their lives – get married, have kids – and I was a good church person. I loved God and I tried to serve him, so I thought that surely he would reward me by making my life work out the way it was supposed to.

I was wrong. Time continued to march on, and I still hadn’t found my Perfect Match. At first, I wasn’t too stressed because my roommate and I got together and adjusted our plan to “The Fast Track,” which shortened the timeline to nine-month increments instead of full years. We thought this new schedule would buy us time to find our future husbands before it was too late. The Fast Track, though, didn’t account for the fact that I had just graduated from college and begun working in an elementary school – not exactly a hotbed of single men. So I still had no Perfect Match, and really no possible way of finding him. This got me extremely depressed and anxious. I truly didn’t know how I was ever going to thrive – or even survive – in life if I didn’t get married.

As strange as it sounds, though, I also took a little bit of comfort in the lack of males in my life. After all, if there were no guys around, then I could blame my singleness on lack of opportunity rather than attributing it to some inadequacy in me. It got to the point where I would have much rather stayed home by myself than to go out around men my age, because I knew that if I was around them, it just opened me up for rejection, and I didn’t know if I could take any more of that.

It was around that time that my church did a series called “ID,” which focused on discovering your identity in God. This series totally changed my life. I began to understand that God’s opinion of me trumps what other people think (which is quite freeing for someone who is pretty much a failure at being noticed). And with this new understanding that God thinks I’m pretty special, I began to open up and interact more confidently with everyone around me.

With my newfound confidence, I was totally convinced that it was now my time to find a husband. After all, I was no longer the shy wallflower that I had always been, and I now found myself surrounded by all kinds of guy friends. Surely God had my Perfect Match waiting just around the bend! I even tried to help him along by joining every internet dating service that exists, and by attending any and every activity that promised to attract single men. I was on a mission.

But as always, no one noticed me as girlfriend potential. And that REALLY threw me for a loop. These were the thoughts that were constantly going through my head: “It’s probably because I’m not pretty enough…but there are uglier girls than me that have boyfriends! So it must be that I don’t have a good enough personality…but there are some real weirdos that have boyfriends! So it must be that I’m just a messed up person…but there are people way more messed up than I am who are in relationships. What am I doing wrong?”

In trying to work through these questions, I would ask my friends what they thought. Invariably, people would tell me that if I was single, it must be because there was something wrong with me. And I agreed! I was quite certain that there were many things wrong with me! But I also knew that there were multiple things wrong with my non-single friends, too, so it just didn’t add up.

Others offered advice on what I needed to do to improve my chances. According to these “experts”, I needed to smile more, flirt more, watch more sports, wear more revealing clothing, meet 5 new people each week, and be less serious. But I didn’t know how it would really validate me as a person if someone liked a fake version of me. Plus, what if I did these things and it STILL didn’t work? I was scared to death of what that failure would say about me.

Then there were the people who said something along the lines of, “Someday you’ll get married.” I wanted to scream at them, “Oh, really? How do YOU know? How is it that YOU somehow have insider information regarding God’s plans for MY life?”

Honestly, as scared as I was about the possibility of being single forever, I was even more scared that I might actually start a relationship – and then find out that it hadn’t solved my problems after all. What if I accomplished my goal and then fell prey to that post-partum depression that says, “Okay, I did that. Now what?” What if someone fell in love with me but I was still unconvinced of my self-worth? I mean, if that person’s validation of me was the only thing separating me from being a nobody, then I knew that I would be enslaved to that person for life. I’d have to hold onto that person at all costs or else I’d be right back to square one. But despite these worries, it seemed that being in a relationship was the only solution to my despair.

And then something happened. I started taking up salsa dancing, and my first time out at a club, I met someone I’ll call Tom. Though I knew from our first conversation that Tom wasn’t what I was looking for, I was attracted to him, and when he asked me out, I said yes. After our first date, I knew for sure that he was not husband material, but I just couldn’t bring myself to write him off. For one thing, his persistence in pursuing me made me feel good about myself – as if someone actually did think I was a worthwhile and captivating person. For another thing, my mom kept encouraging me to give him a chance, and I thought, “Well, if even my mom thinks he’s the best I can do, then I guess I should just accept the fact that this is all I can get.” I thought it would be exciting to be with a guy. I thought it would make me feel good about myself. I thought it would make me normal.

That was the worst decision of my life. It quickly became clear to me that Tom was not actually interested in me as a person at all, and that he only thought I was worthwhile as long as I was giving him what he wanted. But even though I was very much aware of this, and I had no doubt that this was going to end in disaster for me, I had to do whatever it took to keep him around because he was my only chance at being somebody. So I acted like it didn’t bother me when he refused to acknowledge me in public, or when he acted completely disinterested in anything I had to say, or when he refused to commit to me, or when he routinely hit on other girls in front of me. But inside it was killing me. From time to time, my friends would get through to me and I’d cut things off, but inevitably, I would go back. I felt like I had no choice.

I realize now that I was treating him the same way he was treating me. I hated how he was using me to fulfill his needs, but in reality, I was using him to fulfill my needs for belonging, approval, and love. I did genuinely care about him, but that wasn’t the reason I stuck around. I stuck around because before Tom, I would have rated my level of fulfillment around negative 5 on a scale of 1-10. But when I was with Tom, my level of fulfillment rose to about 0. So he seemed better than nothing.

But all the while, I hated myself for settling. I hated myself for ignoring God over and over again as he told me that he wanted something better for me. I hated myself for failing to live up to my own standards of morality. I hated myself because my worst fears were being confirmed – that I wasn’t worthy of anyone’s love.

It was during this time that I began to seek God desperately. I’d been a Christian for a long time, and I’d always enjoyed spending time with Jesus, but this was different. This was me calling out frantically for him as the waves threatened to pull me under. This was me crying, “God, if you don’t reach out and help me, I’m not going to survive!” This was me finally realizing that I couldn’t last one second without him.

I reflected on all of this one morning as I drove to work. At the end of my rope, I said hopelessly to God, “I don’t understand why all of this is happening. I’ve always tried to love and obey you, but it turns out I’m just a big disappointment. I’m not worthy of a man’s love, and I’m certainly not worthy of your love either. I won’t blame you if you decide to write me off. I want to love you, but I’m just not strong enough.”

When God responded, he said something shocking and yet hopeful. He said, “Jill, you’ve got it all wrong. You’ve been running around trying to prove yourself in your own mind and to me, and you’ve been beating yourself up because you don’t love me enough, but here’s the thing: It’s not about how much you love me. It’s about how much I love you. And you will never be able to get yourself out of this. But I can.”

When God told me on Tallahassee Drive that he loved me and wanted to rescue me, it was a pivotal moment in my life. That desperate prayer in my car began a series of conversations with God – usually emotional, weeping, and often frustrating conversations – that totally changed my outlook on who I was, who God was, and what role singleness plays in my life. It was through those conversations that God began to change my game plan, and because of that, to rescue me and give me hope. And I’d like to share those conversations with you, in the hopes that they can be of some value to someone else who wants to join the huddle.

01 - Huddle

According to the trusted authorities at Wikipedia, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. That’s 416.67 full days and nights of practice. So according to that standard, there are very few activities at which I would be considered an expert, except maybe breathing, wasting time, and possibly dreaming of food. But I can think of one area where I far exceed the “expert requirement” with almost 275,000 hours of practice.

If 10,000 hours is all it takes, then I am most assuredly an expert at being single – 27 times over!

Okay, so I don’t hold a doctorate in Single Studies (although if some progressive school decides to issue an honorary degree, I think I’d be the logical choice). But I do think that over the years, I’ve made quite a few interesting and helpful observations about our common perceptions of singleness, dating, and marriage.

Most of these observations have come as a result of my own failures, heartaches, and disappointments. And it’s only been through a dramatic overhaul of the way I view myself, my place in the world, and other people that I’ve actually begun to find the peace and contentment that I think eludes a lot of us as single people.

You don’t know what I mean about peace and contentment eluding us? Think about the following situations that I encountered in approximately a week’s time:

First, I heard some news about my best friend from childhood. Recently, she got a divorce from her husband of several years because she realized that she never really loved him, and that she married him mostly because he was…there. Now she is living with her boyfriend who threatens and abuses her, and who even keeps a loaded gun in the house. Because of this, her family is worried about her safety and their own, but no matter what anyone says, she won’t leave him because she doesn’t want to be alone.

The stories aren’t all that extreme. Shortly after I heard about my childhood friend, I talked to two of my female friends who had found a certain guy that they thought was “The One,” only to find out that he was playing them. Now they are both devastated, wondering if they will ever find someone to rescue them from a lifetime of loneliness. What I didn’t tell my girlfriends was that both of them were complaining to me about the same guy on the same day. Go figure.

Around the same time, I was talking to a guy friend who had always been known for his overt and relentless quest for a girlfriend. He has now been dating a girl for almost a year, so I asked him how it was going. He told me that he and his girlfriend have a lot of issues to work through; that he’s had to give up many of his passions to keep her satisfied; that they never really do anything fun together; that he feels out of place with her family. That description didn’t sound very promising to me, so I asked him if he thought their relationship would work out. To my surprise, he said, “Yeah, I’ll probably marry her. I’m getting too old to start over.”

I have another friend whose relatives are constantly telling her that she will never be happy unless she gets married. So while she thought she enjoyed her life as it is, her confidence is now shaken, and she’s starting to wonder if maybe her relatives (and the rest of society) are right – that living life alone means you’re missing out, and that it makes you somehow incomplete.

Another friend was attending a group for singles ages 30 and up, but when I asked him how it was going, he said that he is probably going to quit. Explaining further, he said that every time he goes, he is confronted with his worst nightmare – being alone for life – and the fear and stress caused by attending the group causes him more harm than good.

And around the same time, I attended a meeting of young professionals at my church where we were doing a series on singleness. In the 3 years that I have been a part of this group, I have never seen anyone get emotional before. But in just one night during a conversation about being single, I saw 3 separate people (including big, tough men) start to cry as they talked about their struggles with being alone.

You can’t tell me that peace and contentment don’t elude us as single people! And when I hear these stories (and many similar ones), my heart breaks for my friends because I understand what they’re going through. You see, I’ve been there, too.

I’ve been the girl who thinks she’s a worthless nobody because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. I’ve been the girl who thinks her life will never be complete unless she gets married. I’ve been the girl who lets herself get walked on because it seems better than being alone.

And all of the pain that I’ve seen and experienced has made me wonder if that’s the way it has to be. Do I have to live my life crushed by the weight of unfulfilled expectations? Do I have to spend all of my time looking for something or someone to complete me? Do I have to base my identity on whether I have a significant other? Do I have to feel as though I’m missing out on something great if I’m single?

After all, relationships and marriage are meant to be things that benefit us, right? They are meant to give us support and community and a witness to our lives.

So why is it that instead of enhancing our lives, relationships (or the lack of them) seem to cause us so much pain and despair? Why is it that something that was meant to bring us pleasure actually creates more stress and heartache than almost anything else in our lives? Why is it that this topic consumes our thoughts and our conversations and even drives our decisions? Why is it that our relationship status can be the main determiner of our happiness and acceptance or lack thereof?

These questions have nagged at me for a long time. It just doesn’t seem right to me that something that is supposed to add to our lives so often handicaps us and holds us back. It doesn’t seem right that my own satisfaction has to be dependent on someone else’s whims. It doesn’t seem right that I can’t be wholly confident and complete and fulfilled – with or without a significant other.

Have you ever felt that way, too? Have you ever felt as though you've been singled out among society just because you're cooking for one? If so, then I’m going to suggest something that might seem a little bit foreign and counter-intuitive.

What if being single is not the problem?

What if the lack of a significant other is not the cause of our discontent after all? What if our failure to get married is not actually the cause of our restlessness? What if our relationship status is not the cause of our lack of purpose and identity? I’m wondering…is it possible that none of these things is the real issue?

Is it possible that the real problem is not our singleness itself, but instead, the problem is the way we view our singleness and the significance that we assign to it? Is it possible that our problems actually stem from a skewed perspective on the whole subject?

You may think I’m just naïve, but go with me here for a minute. If it’s true that we’re wrong about the problem, then doesn’t it stand to reason that we could also be wrong about the solution? What if our ceaseless search for a relationship is not really the way out? What if there actually is a way for me to be wholly confident and complete and fulfilled – whether I’m single, dating, or married?

I submit to you that there is.

Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not out to devalue marriage or our desire for it. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t date or get married. I’m not saying that relationships are a bad thing. In fact, I think marriage is a wonderful thing, and I would enjoy experiencing it someday!

All I’m saying is this: I’ve found that when all of my passes end in interceptions, then continuing to run the same play is probably not going to win me the game. Instead, maybe it’s time to step back and re-evaluate the way I’m viewing the game. In other words, when my game plan of constantly seeking out relationships is always causing me misery, maybe it’s time to regroup and adopt a new strategy.

Will you join me in the huddle?