My friend Jess is a beautiful, single blonde girl who has been a missionary in Italy for 10 years and is 37. One day, an Italian woman, let’s call her Mamma Carmen, came up to her with a little charm necklace that had a picture of a saint on it.
“What’s this?” asked Jess.
(Cue in accent of Italian mama who doesn’t speak much English)
“A necklace for you. A picture of Saint Anthony. ”
“Who is Saint Anthony?”
“Is-a- the patron saint of lost-a things.”
“And what have I lost, Mama Carmen?”
“Oh, you know sweetie. ”
“No I don’t know. What is that I have lost?”
“You lost-a your husband.”
“Mama Carmen, isn’t that usually the saint you pray to for a lost sock or car keys-things like that?”
“Yes, but not for you. For you, pray to him for husband. More important than sock.”
Mama Carmen’s Formula: “Lost Husband + Praying to Patron Saint of Lost Things + Ten Hail Marys = 1 wedding, 5 socks, 2 spoons and 1 bracelet you thought you gave to your friend Jill.”
I had my own formula concocting conversation with a ministry leader of mine a few years back. Let’s call her Emily. The conversation looked like this:
“Kate, do you remember our babysitter Joann? Well, she went through a season of really struggling with being single like you are going through. She cried and battled and finally brought her burden to the Lord. She let go. Two weeks later, she met her husband. And he looks just like Ryan Gosling. ” I said,”Emily, I am really happy for Joann. But she is twenty freaking years old.” “So? What does that have to do with anything?”
I respected and loved this leader, but I just couldn’t brush the comment off this time.
I said, “I have had a decade longer than her of wrestling with God over this issue. In all my wrestling, I have had several seasons where I have been content as a single person, embracing the thought of God as my husband. But often, those seasons fade, and I’m struggling again. It is a cycle that happens. I don’t think God laughs at my cycles of frustration. I think he understands. I think He wants to meet me there. ”
Emily continued to argue with me, saying that I just needed to let go, insinuating that it was my own fault that I was still single.
I said, “Em, please understand me here. If you had a friend who was not getting pregnant or who was having multiple miscarriages, someone who had been struggling with barrenness for fifteen years, would you say to her ‘If you just trusted the Lord more with your barrenness, he would give you a baby?’ You would never say that! You recognise how much she is mourning that loss, and so you careful with her words. You don’t want to hurt her even more by making her feel like it might be her own fault.
Well at times, I feel barren. Not only barren in my childbearing, but barren as a lover as well. I don’t have children or a husband, and so I really have no immediate blood family. Please, please, be sensitive to this barrenness in me. Please don’t tell me that I have done something wrong in not letting go, and the result of that shortcoming is my barrenness.”
I know that sounds pretty heavy, but it is how many of us feel at times. In the very thick book of popular theology that is not actually in the Bible, a book I like to call “First Assumptions” , we have this formula: “Not letting go = being single. Letting go = being married. ”
Most singles I have talked to have had this formula given to them in one way or another. Many of them dozens of times. Almost every time I mention writing my book on singleness, single people give me some kind of version of this story. Most of us, when we first heard this formula as a young person, grabbed our journal and bible and went to a quiet place. We turned our sweet young faces to heaven with tears in our eyes and said “Lord, I let go. I give my husband to you.”
Do you know why we were saying this? Because we wanted a husband. And according to the formula, if you wanted a husband, you had to let go of him first. So we were letting go of him in order to get him. Quite ironic, isn’t it?
But as years passed, when that formula didn’t work, we started cringing when someone told us we just needed to let go. We couldn’t put our finger on why it irked something deep inside of us, but it did.
I have a theory about why it frustrates us so much. At the root of this formula is the idea that all single people have done something wrong and all married people have done something right. Married people, I know you probably never meant to make us feel that way, but it is the nature of that formula.
It kind of reminds me of the story of Job. Here is the formula we can get out of his story.
“Tragically losing everything+wife that is pissed+hideous boils all over your body+annoying friends telling you that you must have done something wrong to deserve this+being totally frustrated and not getting why you’re going through this+God’s booming voice telling us humans that we don’t know nothing and He doesn’t fit in our formulas and boxes+ praising God even through horrible circumstances and singing “Blessed Be Your Name” = even more stuff than you had before.”
Sound familiar? That story is one of the oldest in the bible. One of it’s lessons? Don’t make formulas. Meet Him, wrestle with Him, praise Him even when you don’t understand, but never, ever, put Him in a box. As Donald Miller said, “As much as we want to believe we can fix out lives in about as many steps as it takes to make a peanut-butter sandwich, I don’t believe we can.”
My married friend Becca, who is incredibly dear to me, explained to me that married people don’t often have bad motives in their formula making. She said that when human beings don’t understand something, they make formulas. They want to feel like they are giving their friend some control over the situation. They even make their own life journeys into formulas. Sometimes we singles cling to the formulas given to us because we want some control over the situation as well. I really appreciate that we had this conversation because it reminded me that married people are not the enemy. They love us.
But out of love, I want our married friends to understand why these formulas are so hard for us to hear. These formulas makes us feel like our being single has nothing to do with God’s will or our choices or the enemy or any other theory you have on why hard things happen. It has to do with our lack. We already struggle with feeling like we lack when we wonder why we haven’t been chosen. Please don’t cut that wound deeper.
This formula also makes us feel like our not being married has to do with our relationship with the Lord, which evidently is wanting.
For most of us, our relationship with the Lord is the most sacred one that we have. Please, please, don’t criticise that relationship as well. Don’t tear down the one relationship where we feel loved and accepted. Even if you mean well, just don’t do it.
I think a good rule of thumb for both parties is to do less formula making and pat- answering and do more listening. Listening to what the Lord has to say, and listening to each others journeys with compassion. Restrain yourselves from formulas. But don’t restrain yourselves from giving each other a hug. We probably both need one.
Be encouraged that we all have our own journey, and that all of our journeys our valid.
By Kate Hurley
Kate is a singer-songwriter, worship leader, writer, life coach and teacher based in North Carolina, US. She travelled the world for 14 years, sharing her music and stories. She has played and taught everywhere from castles in Germany, to villages in India. She has written two books, Getting Naked Later: Making Sense of the Unexpected Single Life and Prodigal Mind: Change Your Story One Thought at a Time. She is also starting a sponsorship program to teach minority low income youth free music lessons. More about her at www.katehurley.com
