Thoughts on Singleness Pt 2

As I proceeded on this journey of restoration, healing and discovery, I was completely content in my single status. I had no need, nor any desire to be in a romantic relationship. I had friendships with people of both sexes that fulfilled my need for community and connection. I was learning so much about myself and about God and a romantic relationship was the furthest thing from my mind.

I moved around A LOT in that time period, spending no longer than 9 months to a year in one place. Even if I had felt a desire to be in a romantic relationship, my lifestyle all but excluded the possibility of that happening.

And, I will be quite honest, after my last relationship I was downright terrified of becoming that emotionally intimate with another person again. I avoided emotionally intimacy at all costs. Even with girls whom I considered to be close friends. Emotionally intimacy was not a safe place for me, so I thought. It opened me up to more hurt and pain and I did not want to take that risk.

Thoughts on Singleness. Part 1

When I was 19 I became aware of what I feel is a huge problem in our Western Christian Church culture. I saw it, I talked about it, but it didn't really affect me personally. Every now and then it would come up but I was able to dismiss it quickly and tell myself that I was above being affected by it. I told myself that I was too secure in my identity to be influenced by it. I continually brushed it off and moved on, not taking time to sincerely look inside my own heart and see if the seeds were planted, and therefor have the ability to dig them out.

In the past few weeks I have begun to realize that the seeds were planted and I am now seeing the fruits of those seeds. I have been greatly affected by this and have begun to accept it as truth even though I have known from the beginning that is a lie.

Further to Go

In my last post I wrote about how I had been feeling after my surgeries and hospital stay last month. I wish I could say that things are better, that I have turned a corner and now things are looking much better. This, however, is not the case.

I am still in very much the same place emotionally but now I feel I have a better understanding as to why I am experiencing the emotions that I am.

Surgeries and Setbacks

Since being in the hospital I have been experience a wide range of emotions. I dont know how to get this down in one cohesive story with a redemptive ending. Maybe that is because I have not yet seen the ending of this. Or maybe it's because I am still much too wrapped up in the emotions themselves.

I have been trying my best not to think about what has happened, the emotions involved and the future implications of all of this. It is overwhelming and terrifying. I don't know how to process any of this and I am so unsure of how to reconcile everything that's happened with the things God has spoken to me over the past year. 

An Army Unashamed pt. 3

Last week I wrote about how shame from our past destroys and holds us back from being effective. When I think of shame, that tends to be the type of think of but this past week God revealed to me another form of shame I struggle with.

It really started last Saturday. I was hanging out with a friend telling him about how I struggle with telling people about things I am currently going through. I can tell you about absolutely everything that has happened in my past but when it comes to stuff I am currently dealing with and processing, forget it. As I was telling him this he said, "Yeah, I kinda got that. Like how you won't talk about the medical stuff you're dealing with right now."

An Army Unashamed Pt. 2

Last night I had the opportunity to speak at my church's youth group. I had been given about three weeks to prepare which is more notice than I usually have. I began to pray and ask God what He wanted me to share with these kids.

Right away I got one word. Shame. So I began to work on fleshing that out into a message. I looked up scripture verse after scripture verse on shame. I did word studies and read articles and portions of books I have sitting in my book case. I knew this message was going to come together and it was going to be great.

An Army Unashamed Pt. 1

As much as I love writing, I don't write just to write here. I save that for my journals where I can express every single thought and emotion as it comes to me without concern to validity and accuracy. When I sit down at my computer and open a new post document, it is because I feel I have something to communicate that is worth being heard.

The last few years I have been learning so much about humility and giftedness and personal identity and I have come to realize that true humility makes no apologies for the gifts/talents/abilities one has. I don't have to play them down to be humble. In fact, if I were to minimize these things, that would not be true humility at all but rather false humility that is actually an insidious form of pride.