Tag: Jesus is Enough

My Omnipotent, Omni-Good God

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This isn’t a post about singleness; it’s a post about something else I’ve been processing lately. I promise I’ll be back next time with more snarky singleness speculation.

My friend Cindy died 16 or 17 years ago.

My sister Karissa died almost 12 years ago.

A few weeks ago, I found out that I knew someone who had died in the Louisiana flooding.

Last Wednesday, my friend Susannah gave birth to a baby who died before she could even hold him.

Last weekend, my 20-something friend Brighton lost her husband of 5 weeks to a drunk driver.

I’ve cried a fair bit this week because of death. I miss my sister Karissa; I miss my friend Cindy every year around my birthday when I don’t see her perfect handwriting on a card addressed to me; my heart cries for Susannah and her husband and their families as they have to go home to a nursery and baby clothes and dreams that have died with their child/grandchild/nephew; Brighton’s new widowhood Read More

My Two Cents on IKDG

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Two friends this week sent me this article; it’s about how Josh Harris is re-thinking what he wrote in “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.”

I have already written about my relationship with IKDG and other courtship books in general, and I’ve already written about courtship culture, so I don’t want to re-hash those things. I just have a teensy bit to add in response to the article that came out this week.

We HAVE to lay off Josh Harris for his book. Love or hate it, it was part of the courtship culture – and he wrote it when he was 21. No one has love figured out at 21. No one has life figured out at 21. He did a bold thing by publishing this book, and it happened to come out in a time when it would be widely received.

While I respect Mr. Harris’s humility in publicly re-thinking Read More

My Advice If You Want It

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Photo Credit: Stephanie Garvey

I recently had a friend point out that I’ve written about what NOT TO say to a single person, but I’ve never written about what TO say.

So I thought it might be helpful to re-visit the list of things not to say and offer helpful suggestions instead. (I’ve even added a few things to this new and improved list.) Please do keep in mind that when you’re trying to be helpful, you should try to read the situation and person, and be sensitive to them individually. Read More

Just For Fun: A Guest Post about NerdHQ

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Pictured from L-R: Jake Greene as Thor, Kat Carr as Wonder Woman, and Charity Edwards (the Blithe Bachelorette) as Wolverine

My friend and former roommate Kat and I got our geek on at San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend. She did some Gospel-centered processing about her experience and offered to write a guest post for me.

Her thoughts aren’t specifically about singleness, but they sure can apply. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.

Last weekend I attended an off-site event at San Diego Comic-Con. (Yes, I am one of those people.) The event is NerdHQ, put on by Zachary Levi. It was the 6th year for the event and my 5th year to attend. It’s this wonderful thing that happens alongside San Diego Comic-Con where Zac provides a free place for people with common interests to hang out and small “conversations” with celebrities for a small fee of $20. All the proceeds go to help out the charity Operation Smile. Over the years, I’ve gotten to sit on these “conversations” with some pretty big celebrities and have made some great friends through this event.

But the point of me writing (which I rarely ever do!) Read More

My Choice to be Single

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I often, even on this blog, bemoan the fact that I’m single. I mean, there are good things about it, and I get to know Jesus in suffering and whatever. But it just occurred to me in the past couple of weeks (mostly because of a comment my dad made on a previous post – thanks, Dad) that I actually have chosen singleness. Do choose it. Am choosing it.

I kinda don’t like that. It’s easier to think of singleness as something that’s happening to me, something that has been chosen for me. I like to think that, if it were up to me, I would choose marriage and a family of my own. Yet, 33 years into this life, I have yet to make that choice.

For instance, when my best-ish guy friend asked me to be his girlfriend, I turned him down. More than once. When a guy I reconnected with after 10 years indicated that he might be interested in me as a future wife, I turned him down. Again. I’ve gone on dates only to firmly cut things off before the second date, and I’ve refused to give out my number to interested parties.

It’s not like this happens often. Read More

My Coffee Date Thoughts

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A few weeks ago, I was meeting up with a friend for coffee after work. She got married last year, and I knew her before she was ever dating her husband. She and I were in the same accountability group at church, so I got to see the trepidation when a man (her now-husband) from church asked her out to breakfast the first time; the awkwardness of the first months of dating; the agony of waiting through trials before engagement.

I was there at the surprise engagement party, I bought her her first wedding magazine, I slaved over the wedding DIY, I agonized with her over the family drama that seemed unfair, and I dragged my roommates into the planning, whether they liked it or not. The planning of that wedding dictated my days, and I experienced “bride brain” for the first time. I blogged about the wedding itself last year.

In all that time, I had done well in not being envious as she and her groom in their early 20’s found each other and planned a wedding and experienced the first year of marriage – all things that I’ve wanted/craved for decades. In fact, I’d done so well that I took my joy for them for granted. Read More

My Take on Everything

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I follow other singleness blogs online (because that’s apparently what you’re supposed to do when you blog about singleness), and I read a post earlier this month that got me thinking.

An anonymous blogger wrote a post called, “Is Jesus Enough?” She explores this question and then concludes that He is not enough because He is not everything. She writes:

Christians get married because they want to feel loved and share in companionship. Christians have children because they want to pass on their love, have a human to own and care for, to pass on their legacy and expand their family. Christians maintain close contact with family and friends to build support. Christians touch, hug and make physical contact with others to feel human interactions. Christian couples show intimacy just because it feels good. Christians work for and buy nice things to have a sense of accomplishment and enjoy various comforts from their labour. In other words, we have wants and needs that the love or belief in Jesus is not always able to fill and there is nothing wrong with accepting that fact.

I understand where she’s coming from, and I’ve gone through phases (sometimes for years) in which I’ve doubted that Jesus could be enough for me.

But over the past few years, I’ve changed the way I use that word “enough.” I posit that the blogger mentioned above is actually saying Read More

My Style Secrets

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I was shopping with my roommate last week, and the handbag lady at DSW walked up to me and said, “Your style is so classy yet sexy. Tell me your style secrets.” We got to talking about how “kids these days” dress, and she said, “If you could say any one thing to women in their late teens and early twenties, what would you say?”

I think I answered with something about not dressing to impress other people because you can’t possibly make everyone happy with your style choices. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew they were only part of the truth.

Here are more parts of the truth, that I didn’t say: I’m confident because I was homeschooled and didn’t grow up always comparing myself to everyone else; because my parents never told me I was fat and always told me I was beautiful; because I’m in my 30’s now and know what clothes look good on my body type.

I mean, sure – I was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). I could talk all day about how that makes me beautiful. But the thing running through the back of my head when I was talking to the handbag sales lady was not that. It was this:

I am confident in my style and body because the only One I have to please is God. And He sees me just as He sees Jesus. So I don’t even have to do any work to be pleasing to Him (Titus 3:4-7).

Way a long time ago, humans made the decision to sin, which separated us from God forever. However, God was not willing for that to happen, so He sent His son Jesus to take the punishment – the death – we deserved (2 Cor 5:21). Now, the Bible says that Jesus stands in my place before God. And since Jesus is perfect and beautiful, God sees me as perfect and beautiful.

Practically, I know how to dress for my body type; I ask my roommates if what I’m wearing is appropriate; I wear work clothes to work and beach clothes to the beach. I know I live in a physical world with physical requirements of beauty and appropriateness. I go to the gym and try to eat vegetables occasionally. Collectively, my roommates and I have hundreds of nail polishes, dozens of lipsticks, and scarves up the wazoo.

But I don’t let that be Read More

My Dramatic Tendencies

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I’m a pretty dramatic person (in case it hasn’t been blaringly obvious from previous posts). My default setting is definitely not a healthy sense of perspective. Noooooo, my thoughts always default to THE most dramatic outcome EVER to face ANYone in ALL of history.

Someone cancels plans on me: This ALWAYS happens to me. The ONLY person I can rely on is [insert person who hasn’t stood me up lately].

Someone at work does their job wrong: That’s what I get for delegating. I’m the ONLY one I can trust to get things done.

One of my roommates annoys me: I NEVER get my way around here. I have ONLY my harsh words and impatient tone to rely on.

An event I’m planning runs into a hiccup: Things will ONLY go right if I am bossy and push people around.

I start thinking about the future: I’ve been single FOREVER, and I’m NEVER going to get married.  The ONLY person I have is my roommate (the one who’s not engaged right now).

Sometimes, it goes the opposite way. Read More

My Birthday Prayer

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Today is my birthday. I turned 32 at 6:57 am (PST). I’m still single.

My prayer this week has been, “God, remind me of the value of waiting. Remind me in this limbo that You are still good.”

I’ve blogged a lot about how I get to know Jesus more in the waiting and in singleness, but this week I’ve been normalizing singleness. (Translation: I could have way worse problems.)

I would never, ever poo-poo the hardships of the single life. Valentine’s Day is coming up again, with its mixed feelings. Loneliness is real and sometimes inevitable. Dating is weird.

Sometimes, yes, singleness is actual suffering. But in blogging about it (in other words, processing it ALL THE TIME), I think I sometimes lose track of the bigger picture.

My church has been reading the book of Acts together, and those first-century Christians had some serious problems. Sometimes, the political leaders would say, “okay, you’re right,” and then beat them up anyway! (Acts 5:37-40) No matter how hard they did the right thing and spoke only good things about God, they were imprisoned, kicked out, beaten up, and even killed.

And it wasn’t just the first-century Christians who had that problem. Throughout history, Christians have been tortured and ostracized and separated from their families. In some periods of history, different church factions would burn EACH OTHER at the stake. Good grief.

I hear contemporary stories all the time about men arrested for holding church in their homes, or women killed by their families for professing Jesus over Allah.

Even if I didn’t want to talk about the persecuted church, there are plenty of other problems I could talk about: abortion, Syrian refugees, human trafficking… Read More