The Crescat
… Having no one to impress really does have it’s advantages. Today I am looking at the bright side of things. Tomorrow may be another story, but today I’m enjoying the freedom to have the TV remote to myself and to eat my dinner from a can of nuts.
For the most part I’m content with where God has me right now. In between periods of contentment I have hissy fits. I hear this is normal though. Whatever mood I may be in – good, bad, or completely indifferent – I will always react poorly to one particular piece of well meaning advice.
“The minute you stop looking you will meet him. Just let go… blah.blah.blah. And some other stuff I don’t hear because I stopped listening 2 minutes ago.”
What does this even mean, “stop looking”? Do you mean stop trying all together because single women who long for marriage never stop trying or looking. To do so would mean we give up hope that one day our prayers will be answered. I’d rather be repeatedly disappointed than hopeless! Or do you mean to simply stop actively seeking and trust that a perfectly wonderful Catholic man is going to fall from the sky and land in my lap through no effort of my own? Am I wrong to always want to look my best every time I walk out the door, even if it’s a trip to pick up the dry cleaning, because you never know who you’ll bump into. It’s called optimism and hope. Two things I’m not ready to entirely surrender.
One of the things I love about Seraphic Singles is that “Auntie Seraphic” has never, to my knowledge, given women this irksome piece of advice. She’s very encouraging that women should remain positive and do everything they realistically and practically can to help things along. Really, she’s an invaluable resource.
Here’s another post I ran across a few days ago that I thought was worthy of sharing. Kate Hurley, The Sexy Celibate, talks about how she perceives the advice to “let go” and explains how it’s really hurtful . She writes,
“Not letting go=being single.
Letting go= being married. “I would say 90 percent of Christian singles have had this formula given to them in one way or another. Most 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?
And yet over the years, when that formula didn’t work, we started cringing when someone told us we just needed to let go. Maybe 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.
The best thing married people can do for their single friends is to pray for us and encourage us to never give up.
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