New Marching Orders

These days my heart is living with a new awareness of being alone. I’m not talking about a lack of community or relationships. I’m temporarily living in a home with fourteen other people who I love and who love me. I’m surrounded by a community that has my back. I have more relationships than time to fit them all in. But there are moments (coming now in frequency) where I feel alone. A different kind of alone. My heart craves partnership, for the consistency and solidarity of one person who is always aware of what is going on, who has my back, who takes joy in jumping into the trenches of life and faith and ministry right along side me. Someone who will be in my corner for life, who will say ‘I do’ and mean it. Someone to care for me, help put food on the table, notice when I’m pushing it too hard and pull me aside to slow down.

My heart is awake to these desires like never before. Singleness smarts this time around in a way that is new. My life is so full it hardly seems I have margin for something else. I have plenty of things—good things, fabulous things—to keep me busy, productive, about the kingdom business. Yet that doesn’t erase the throb in my heart beating slowly in the background. When I pause to think or take a walk or crawl into bed exhausted at night the awareness comes. The bull-headed, barreling-through side of me has finally realized I don’t want to go this alone. I don’t want to juggle all the bazillion pieces in my two hands like an acrobat. TA-DA. I don’t want to be superwoman. I just want to be a woman.

In The Path of Loneliness Elisabeth Elliot writes, “It is possible both to accept and to endure loneliness without bitterness when there is a vision of glory beyond. This is a very different thing from the sigh of resignation or defeat, the hopeless abandonment to a malevolent fate which merely ‘sits there and takes it.’ In circumstances for which there is no final answer in the world, we have two choices: accept them as God’s wise and loving choice for our blessing (this is called faith), or resent them as proof of His indifference, His carelessness, even His nonexistence (this is unbelief).”

And it’s true: I am so grateful to be single in this season. I’m grateful not to be getting married in two weeks time. Yes to one thing means no to another, and no to Aaron has meant yes to things I couldn’t have dreamed of before. Because I’m not getting married I’m getting to continue living life with four of my roommates and get a house and do life together. I’m getting to step into ministry of a sort faster than I anticipated. I’m getting to re-engage with my family and partner with my mom in a way that has never happened before. The list could go on. And so I truly am grateful. And content. I’m excited and not afraid of singleness.

But more than one thing can be true at the same time. It’s also true that my radar is up, that I’m ready to be surprised by love whenever God sees fit (sooner rather than later?), that my hands are open and waiting expectantly. God, how are you going to provide? How are you going to surprise me? He’ll do it, in some form or another. Because that's what He does. He crafts seasons and experiences that are better fit for me than anything I could conjure on my own. And in the meantime I’m launching into a new season. I’m not waiting around, holding my breath. I’ve no time for that. God has filled my plate with good things that I am privileged to give my attention. Elliot calls this a new set of marching orders:

“A new set of marching orders. That is what always follows loss of some kind—a mother’s loss of her child, a wife’s of her husband, a lover’s of his beloved, a man’s loss of his job, his health, his self-esteem, his home—if only we have ears to hear those orders, eyes to see the gain God intends to bring out of our loss. Even when trouble stops our ears and clouds our vision, He goes on working in secret and perhaps years later reveals what we had not faith to lay hold of.”