Singleness Redeemed

6/14/2020

Reading time: 7 minutes

Never Uttered Before

A well-known verse (that's actually about church discipline) brought me to a new realization about singleness this morning.

Matthew 18:20 says, "for where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them."

I mentioned this verse is actually about church discipline - and it is within the context of Scripture that it is found. Jesus is speaking with believers to tell them how to treat a fellow believer who sins and that as they are dealing with the issue of sin in another believer's life, He is there with them. It's another example of how Jesus provides strength and peace in a situation that may not be peaceful at all when we invite Him into it. He is affirming believers holding other believers accountable.

I've heard this verse quoted many times, particularly when talking about believers being together in community as the church, or when believers are collectively praying together about one thing. But it stuck in my head this morning, because the enemy tried to twist it - to try and get me to hear something else entirely. The scheme he used on Jesus, quoting Scripture to try and tempt Him, he tried on me this morning.

He wanted me to hear that if I wasn't with another, me being one and not two (with a spouse) or three (in a building with other believers), then I wasn't being seen or heard by God.

So I read the verse in it's context and then sent the enemy on his way with a simple statement that I don't think I've ever uttered before: Jesus has redeemed my singleness.

Mountains and Valleys

My singleness was never going to be redeemed by marriage. I was never going to be redeemed by marriage.

As a believer and follower of Christ, there is no way I would want to believe that marriage was the thing to save me. For what if it doesn't happen? I'm lost forever...literally. Yet, for certain seasons of my life, I've been buying into that lie.

Here's the thing with me and my singleness (and perhaps for other single folks if you ask them): it's been a series of mountains and valleys. For years, maybe more than half my life, marriage was something I never thought of, even through college. I was always surrounded by great friends who I had fun with and kept me laughing. Even when watching friends date, it was never something I felt like I needed. Wanted? Sure, but not needed. I loved my spot at the tables we pushed together in the dining halls, where we would sit and laugh for hours. Sometimes relationships circled around the tables, other times not, but it was never the core of who we truly were. Of who I was. Those times around the tables filled with friends, that was a mountaintop in my single life.

The valley of loneliness didn't catch up with me until after college. Graduation happened, I moved across the country, and for close to a year, I was still doing well. Looking back, I was slowly sliding down the side of the mountain (in one way literally, as I attempted to learn how to ski during this time and it did not go well) into a valley I hadn't quite found myself in before, as I was going to this time. My time in California came to an end and I remember as I was flying back to Alabama, thinking about driving to my apartment. Only, that wasn't where I was going because my apartment in Tuscaloosa, the city that had been my home for five years, wasn't mine anymore. If I had pulled up into that parking space in front of the patio on the left, I wouldn't have seen my things, but someone else's.

After California, I moved back home, rested a little and then started searching for a full-time job (which is a full-time job in and of itself but with no benefits and almost only rejection - another metaphor for singleness, but that would be a whole other post). I eventually found myself in my current home, Mobile, and started settling into a new life here. In a city that I knew I could enjoy, but only had a few people that I knew. My people, my college family, now at this time was spread throughout the state and around the country. Long dinners at long tables were no longer. And loneliness started etching its way into those now empty spots of my life.

Seeking the Summit

As time kept moving for me, a single, it did for my friends as well. Some single, some actively dating. My texts were full of conversations where friends and I talked about trying to find contentment in Christ alone and navigating adult life as a twenty-something. Then slowly, our conversations began to change. Friends were dating, they had a guy and it was serious, what are you doing on this date? The fridge become a collage of announcements and invitations. Weddings allowed reunions that got us all back around big tables again. After one wedding, I remember walking the streets of Tuscaloosa with friends and we talked about how we missed this life. Us together, laughter, let's all move back and be in one place together again. We jokingly, not so jokingly, agreed. Saying we were down for it, but knowing that even if we did, it wouldn't be the same as it had been before. Those small reunions were tiny mountains for me, or at least me walking up the incline from valley, trying to leave it below.

I never quite reached the top, and I never was going to, unless I changed what was at the summit waiting for me.

As birthdays passed and I found myself late into my twenties, I tried to find more ways to get out of the valley. Still thinking the only way out was a relationship and eventual marriage, like a good Christian millennial, I looked to church...and dating apps. Remember the looking for a full-time job analogy? No benefits and only rejection? Here again it applies all too well. Between friends "who only love you and want to see you happy" and apps where conversation lags and drags, the story became the same over and over. Interest, maybe-perhaps, no? Okay, never mind.

I still hadn't changed what was at the top of the mountain, so why did I think this cycle would be any different? There was only one way to finally get out of the valley and beyond the halfway point of the incline that I felt completely stuck on. To change what was waiting for me at the summit.

Single, Saved, Redeemed

So I did. I told friends who loved me (and I do know they love me) that I just wasn't feeling it, that I wasn't in a place ready to or wanting to date. And I deleted the apps.

I looked up the incline still ahead of me, but now eager to take it on and dig my heels in. Because at the top of the mountain now waiting for me? Jesus.

Have I reached it? No, but perhaps today I did reach the next basecamp closer to the summit. Because when I felt the enemy try to twist Jesus' words and use them against me, to make me feel alone, I rejected it and heard Jesus speak instead, "I have redeemed her singleness."

Jesus saved my life many years ago and ever since then He's been redeeming bits and pieces of my story. The empty spots of my life are being filled and not with loneliness or grief or fear or anger. But filled with the life-giving blood of Christ. Slowly, each empty, desolate place is being turned into an oasis of life. One that cannot be ignored or unseen.

My singleness was never going to be redeemed by marriage. I was never going to be redeemed by marriage.

But, praise God, I have been redeemed. May my single self say so.

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
   his love endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story -
   those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,
those he gathered from the lands,
   from east and west, from north and south.
Some wandered in desert wastelands,
   finding no way to a city where they could settle.
They were hungry and thirsty,
   and their lives ebbed away.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
   and he delivered them from their distress.
He led them by a straight way
   to a city where they could settle.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for mankind,
for he satisfies the thirsty
   and fills the hungry with good things."

Psalm 107:1-9

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