Celebrate the Singles

I've written a little bit in the past about singleness, here and there, as part of larger posts like last year's Valentine's Day rant on love and marriage. But today I feel a need to advocate and honour single folks. In some ways I'm a part of that group since I'm not romantically attached. I'm a single celibate woman. So in some ways I am "single", certainly by society's most crucial standard of being part of a couple (married/common-law/dating). However in many other ways I don't have the same experiences as many single people that I meet because I share a household with Alicia, another single woman (see this reflection on our ten-year relationship). In some ways my day to day experiences are far more like that of a couple or family since I come home to another person, I share household chores and bills, and when I go to church or other events I rarely enter the room alone.

So in this post I am, in many ways, speaking as someone from the outside. And what I want to say is, CELEBRATE THE SINGLES!

These are amazing people. Whether they are single by choice or circumstance, whether they are young or old, or whether they have always been single or are newly single, they are amazing. They deserve respect, admiration, and support. 

Singles go home from work and there is no one to share the load of meal preparation. Not only that, no one else bought the groceries. And they have the task of cooking for one, which is not easy!

Singles deal with all their paperwork, even at tax time. 

Singles do all the household chores. All .of . them.

Singles have all of the uncertainty of new situations and places, and often don't get the comfort of a person next to them walking in, or a person to dish with after it's over. 

Singles have the opportunity to celebrate scads of life events with others (marriages, births, anniversaries), but their life events are rarely celebrated. 

In a similar vein, singles give gifts at all those occasions but are rarely gifted themselves. There is no cache of gifts and money from a wedding to start their household. 

Singles sometimes carry large financial burdens, having no extra income or person to share expenses with.

Singles grieve losses and there is no one there to lean on when they wake in the middle of the night. 

Singles are often expected to be available and to do more than others with the assumption that because they're single they don't have other responsibilities. 

Singles are often viewed as people in waiting. As incomplete, or perpetually in transition with the assumption that they will only be whole when they are attached to one other person.  


All of this is not to say that there aren't wonderful things about being single too. But what I'm getting at is that singles have a lot of responsibility and in our society we most often assume that our support comes to us from within very traditional family structures (marriage, children). If people don't have those traditional structures, then...oh well. Tough luck. 

But we are a community. A human community. A body that is woven together by our common humanity, our shared place as God's creation. In the church we talk about being the body of Christ. A body that's meant to be interdependent. Within the body it is everyone's responsibility to help everyone feel as though they belong and are loved - we often assume that this is taken care of in the traditional family or couple relationship and we've shirked our responsibility to reach out beyond our insular family structures. 

Singles have a lot of responsibility and they need the love, support and respect of their communities. So Celebrate a Single Today!  

If you are single and have stories about how others have been an encouragement or support to you, I would love to hear them. Often stories are the best way of moving people to action. :) 

To whom do I pray?

 

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you
with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father. ~ Charles de Foucald



For most of my adult life I've had a distinct dislike for this prayer and others like it. I always felt like I should like them, these prayers of complete surrender, complete trust in an all powerful God. But I didn't. These types of prayers always feel to me inextricably tied to a vast unknowable, omni God. A God who shapes my life as a master puppeteer might, pulling me this way and that. And complete surrender means being okay with that manipulation. Complete surrender of the sort in this prayer means believing that God is all things omni and that I will simply be grateful for whatever evil befalls me. 

I just can't do that. 

But maybe I don't have to.

Today I was reading Prayer by Joyce Rupp and discovered that she also has a history of not being able to pray this prayer. She was even alarmed to find that a group she was a part of wanted to use this prayer as the focal point for a high school retreat.  She said, "We can't ask these young people to pray that prayer. I can't even pray it myself!" And then someone lightly and playfully said to her, "That doesn't say much about who your God is, does it?" (27, 28). 

That doesn't say much about who your God is. Hmmm...

That one line caught me completely off guard. It caught Rupp off guard as well, though for somewhat different reasons. I realized that I had been reading prayers of surrender and then allowing those prayers and various other social/cultural influences to shape an image of God for me. And it was an image I couldn't live with, so I assumed that the prayer was the problem. But maybe the problem isn't the prayer at all. Maybe the problem is my starting point. I suddenly wondered what it might mean to allow God to shape this prayer, instead of allowing this prayer to shape God. What if I actually entered into a prayer of this nature approaching the God that I do know. The God who loves infinitely, who holds me in vast and squishy arms. The God who laughs hilariously with me and who weeps a river of tears when we witness suffering, when I am suffering.

 It seems so simple now. That's not to say that I can magically pray all the words of Foucald's prayer with complete trust and abandon. But I no longer feel the need to reject it outright. And I sense within myself a willingness to explore what it might mean to surrender myself into those squishy arms and to trust that they will not let me go.