L is for the way you look at me

This past weekend I had the pleasure to attend something that was so reminiscent of foregone college days that it made my heart insanely happy.  I have gotten involved in my short time of being in Boston with a great church (Park Street...check it, it's REALLY old) and also a great on-campus group called Graduate Christian Fellowship which is the Boston University leg of Intervarsity ministries for Graduate Students.  They had their annual retreat up in New Hampshire on this beautiful "lake" (I say lake loosely coming from the Northwest where we have real lakes) and it was just a really great time.  It included all the requisite aspects of a retreat experience...time that I desperately needed to be with God, worship, a healthy amount of competition (kickball, cake decorating, board games), and time spent with people that love Jesus (this aspect is actually a little rare in Boston...the educated crowd in Boston to a large degree is also not interested in faith.)  Also requisite....the relationship panel. Now, in my Campus Crusade days, I sat through a number of relationship panels.  I went on Summer Project...which was basically a relationship panel in and of itself.  I went to a secular relationship seminar with my high school kids in Moses.  Everyone loves to talk about relationships...and I'm one of them.  But this time around, I didn't go.  I couldn't stand to sit through one more relationship panel and leave with that same old feeling of inadequacy and false hope in imaginary scenarios that I have made in my mind.

My college years were spent mentally chasing after every guy that I could.  I had serious crush after serious crush.  I had stupid crushes that I had no business having.  I watched most of my friends get married....sometimes to people I had liked. Yeah, that puts things in perspective. I can't even speak to how many minor and major heart breaks I have walked through in my college years and since college.  I have been burned...I have been strung along...I have walked down many paths in my mind and then been greeted with nothing.

But this isn't a "woah is me" blog....because I've had plenty of those.  This is meant to be an honest blog, because sometimes all the other voices drown out the single kids and we don't really have an opportunity to be honest.  And this is me being honest.

I would certainly be lying if I said that I don't have moments sitting at home alone at night studying or watching TV that I wish there were someone next to me other than my cat......who, granted, is very faithful...but not very interactive.  I would be lying also if I said I haven't cried some while considering this whole relationship thing after this weekend, because it is personal.  Being single is a personal thing.  Every person experiences it differently and to a different degree.  It hurts some people more than others.  I would say in college it really hurt me....it was a devastating characteristic of who Dani Haller was.  I struggled with figuring out what I was doing wrong and why it was so hard for me and why just about everyone else had succeeded in finding that perfect guy or girl.  I equated being single to failure....

Last Fall, I failed one more time.  I failed to snag that one last guy.  The one that I put an inordinate amount of hope in.  The one that I look back on and was so poorly suited to my personality that we never could have made it anyways.  And with that failure I gave up.  I quit trying, and blessedly....it has been a year that has allowed me a great sense of freedom.  God puts people in our lives for a reason, and that guy was not put in my life to be a viable dating option.  But did I learn from it?  Oh yes, I did.

I think that last guy really broke me up inside because it was a reiteration of the fact that you can't force someone to feel for you in a way that they don't on their own.  You can think someone is the most fantastic person in the whole world, but if they don't return those exact emotions back at you, it isn't going to happen.  And why would you want it to?  Why would you want to date someone who doesn't think you are the coolest person ever...without persuasion on your part?  That's what you are going for.  If they think you are just alright...that kind of stinks.  You know?  And it kind of stinks to assume that you should be able or should have to persuade them to think otherwise anyways.  I wonder what's wrong with acknowledging that they are still an incredibly person while also acknowledging that they are an incredible person that you shouldn't date.

The more I think about singleness, especially in the church, I realize that its counter-cultural to be semi-ok with being single.  Not just getting by while you are single, but actually thriving in that category of life.  I guess something I have considered this year is whether I am living well as a single person, because if I'm not living well as a single person, what do I expect that being a dating person will be like?  Mix another person's "junk" (I mean that in a figurative sense, not a literal one) in with my "junk", and think that we will come out the other end less junky than when we started?  Those problems don't get better because you add another person in the mix.  What am I doing in my life to work on the things that I actually believe God is calling me to work on before I get into a relationship.  I feel like we all have an inkling of what those things are. Now, I know God blesses us with relationships when we are still a MAJOR work in progress...but what about when you know that he is challenging you to work on something and you are waiting it out because you feel like you'll be able to work on it better when you are in a relationship.  Like having another person there for support will motivate you?  Nah...give me a break.  If you feel like God is asking you to move, you move...you don't wait for someone to move with you.  Maybe you are supposed to be totally done with the moving before that person gets there....even if its hard work and you hated doing it alone.

I think that single women in their mid 20s start to feel a sense of desperation.  I have felt that...I can relate.  That feeling that by the time you actually feel ready to date seriously, there won't be anyone left to date.  That feeling that if you are ready, none of the guys you are ready to date are ready to date you.  Or will ever be ready to date you?  The book "He's Just Not That Into You" really hurt my feelings when I first read it, because it was written about me....he was never that into me.  Ever. None of them.  Does that hurt my feelings now?  Somewhat, but its also OK  because where would my life be if "he" (any of the "hes") actually had been into me?

I can tell you one thing...I wouldn't be pursuing my Masters degree to go into a field that I feel I can make a difference in.  I would be in Spokane, WA....or the middle of nowhere WA....doing something mediocre.  Instead I'm pursuing what I feel God has led me to, and undoubtedly what God was leading me to in place of that all powerful relationship idol that I was always grasping for.  I wouldn't be in Boston.  I wouldn't be comfortable with myself and what I stand for.  So much of who I am as a person has been formed in the last 5 years.  And so much of that person was defined by being single...because being single gave me the time and space and freedom to do the defining.

I guess that I hope that this is an encouragement to someone.  I'm not in any way saying that I have this single thing down...did I mention tears earlier?  There is still a real pain in being single at 26 years old while most of my friends are married.  But there is so much joy in every other capacity of life that it outweighs that pain.  And it doesn't mean that I don't know a handful of Mr. Amazing s,  even right now in my life....but a step back and a heaping of perspective says that Mr. Totally Amazing will figure it out on his own and outshine any of these guys that I may perceive to be the "only people on the radar".  And it doesn't make you a loser to wish one of those guys would turn out to be that Mr. Totally Amazing.  I still have fatty crushes, but I also try to maintain some perspective on what the impact of those crushes not liking me back would be.  If the impact falls somewhere along the line between "total devastation" and "nuclear holocaust", I am investing too much emotion.  Harmless fun is allowed and encouraged in my book, total meltdown status is not.

P.S.  I love you married people.  And I look forward to providing you all a chance to embarrass me as much as I embarrassed you at my Bachelorette party someday!  :)  I just may be 40 before that happens, so start thinking of age appropriate Bachelorette activities....