Interesting, Ain't It?

One of the reasons why I write this blog is to help us all look at our singleness from a spiritual perspective. Often what happens is we resort to cliches instead of delving deeper into God's expectations of us as singles. If not cliches, then we darn near drown ourselves in the sea of false religious piety. Interesting, ain't it?


In a few of my postings, I have suggested specific things we could do differently that might help us start and maintain longer and more fulfilling romantic and platonic relationships. But instead of us being willing to try some new things, most of us have responded with empty excuses and weak cliches. Underlying all of this jive talking is a fear of change and an unwillingness to put our trust in God into action. Interesting, ain't it?

In my posting on March 17th entitled, "Have You Lost That Loving Feeling?", I warned against the dangers of always responding with "yes, but".
(See http://mooskm.blogspot.com/2007/03/have-you-lost-that-loving-feeling.html)
When we should be looking at ways to reach more people and to establish more relationships that are healthy and life-affirming, most of us would rather weakly respond, "I can't or I won't do that". Interesting, ain't it?

And then we get to Shenequa getting married. Instead of looking to her to help us, we blow it off by saying that Shenequa is settling. Really? It looks like Shenequa has put into action her faith in God and we are the one who are settling. We are the ones who won't make that call or send that email or respond with a smile. We are the ones who will be watching tv on Friday night while Shenequa will be enjoying time with her fiance or husband. We are the ones who keep trying to convince ourselves that God must have His hands in our state of being without a romantic partner. We are the ones who are blindly hoping that God must have a reason why don't have a wedding date. Shenequa is settling? No, the truth of the matter is WE are the ones who are settling and we are doing it by hiding behind excuses, cliches and false proclamations of religious piety. Interesting, ain't it?

As I approach 2008, I know I need to change or I will get the same results. I know I must be willing to put my spiritual muscles to work if I am going to enhance my life with healthy life-affirming relationships. I understand that God has not called me to whine and settle for less than what He has ordained for me. I realize that instead of criticizing Shenequa, I should be thanking her for setting the example. Interesting, ain't it?

To Dream The Possible Dream

When it comes to dreams, the first thing we need to acknowledge is that they originate with God. In our younger days, our dreams were a way of giving shape to our destiny, our future. At that innocent age, the particulars of the dreams was not as important as the budding passion that were going to drive us toward our potential.

So our lives will turn out differently from what we dream, that is true. But the direction should not. We may not be the lawyer or doctor or professional dancer or football player that we aspired to in our youth. But we should be doing something that leaves a legacy and moves our family and friends forward. Sometimes we foolishly say, “If I can help one person along the way, then my life would not have been in vain.” But the spiritual truth is that God is expecting us to touch many lives in so many positive ways. Why are you willing to help only one when God says you can help so many more?

To dream the possible dream is to allow God to point you in the right direction. When we truly allow that to happen, we may end up becoming something we had no intention of becoming. Maybe a “numbers person” becomes an artist. Maybe a “clumsy teenager” becomes an aerobics instructor. Maybe a high school graduate eventually becomes a college professor. But whatever it is that God is calling you to; make sure you do it well. The key thing is to do well what God calls you to, not what you settle for.

For most of us, God calls us to multiple roles. A trusted friend, a husband or wife, a supervisor or employee, a business owner, a church member and the list goes on. Only you CAN know the roles God is calling you to, but often we ACT like we really don’t know. Just because we deny them, doesn’t mean the calling is not there.

To dream the possible dream is to accept that divine fact that God knows you are capable of. Marriage? Even though your marriage ended; that doesn’t mean that God is not still calling you to be happily married. Success? Even though it seems everything you have taken on has fallen apart; it doesn’t mean that you are not destined for great things. Legacy? Even though it seems you have no particular talents, it doesn’t mean that you are not being called to make this world a better place. How often have we held ourselves hostage to our past disappointments and shortcomings and denied ourselves the chance to realize God’s ordained future?

When you read this post, don’t look at the specific examples and say “Aha, that doesn’t apply to me.” Rather, examine your life and try to identify the specific roles that God is still calling you to. Be open to becoming something you may have not thought was in the cards. Don’t accept less than what God is expecting for you and say, “This is good enough for me.” Don’t make excuses for life not turning out the way YOU thought it would and do dare to dream the POSSIBLE dream.

Bamboozled, Tricked and Punked

How many times have we declared our dreams and hopes and then when no one is looking, we wondered why the words we spoke are so different from what is really in our hearts? I can hear you responding, “No, Kevin. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Oh really? So you always wanted to be:

• A single mom with the father of your children being a no-show in their lives.
• An underpaid, overworked employee at a company that is liable to lay you off at any moment.
• A divorced person who has seen more birthdays, Christmas holidays and New Year’s celebrations as a single-again person than you did as part of a marriage partnership.
• A person who is working in a field totally unrelated to your academic training.
• Someone with no romantic partner and few friends which leaves you to spend holidays and other special days alone.
  

These and other points highlight the differences between what we have dreamed and what we have actually become. Very few of us dreamed of becoming a single parent or an underpaid worker or a divorcee or a long-term single-again person. Most of us still harbor the sometimes desperate hope that tomorrow will be better than today even though today is just like so many of our yesterdays. When will the madness end?

We have bamboozled, tricked and punked and we are the chief trickster!

What a crying shame it is for single Christians to lay claim to dreams by default instead of daring to dream what may appear to be the impossible dream.

• I am okay with not ever getting married.
• It’s alright if I never find true love.
• All I need is some mind-blowing sex every now and then and I’ll be fine.
• I don’t need to go through the trouble of starting new relationships; I like things the way they are now.
• Why buy the cow when I can get the milk for free? It can’t get any better than that, can it?
  
  

Psst. Come closer, I have a secret to share with you. A little closer. You are almost there. Here it is…… You have bamboozled, tricked and punked and you are the chief trickster!

You have allowed yourself to settle for less than what God is trying to give you and you have the audacity to say you are fine with that? Instead of giving in to your feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, step up and boldly lay claim to the dreams that God whispered in your ear years ago when you were younger and less tainted by the harshness of the world. Stop being a victim of an unspiritual drive-by and stop being the butt-end of satan’s jokes. The dreams you proclaim are the gateway to your legacy and destiny. So when you lean lean lean more to the devil’s side than to God’s side, you are selling yourself way short.

Tomorrow’s Post: To Dream The Possible Dream

Dreams Out The Back Door

It is an unfortunate fact of life that we often do not literally mean what we say. This is particularly true when we speak of our dreams. To people listening to our words, it may appear that we are definitive in the declaration of what we want or hope for. But most of us are looking over our shoulders because we are afraid that others may uncover the true intentions behind our words.

It is indeed a sad life when we allow our dreams to slip out the back door.

It is one thing for us pursue our dreams and fall short of them. At least we can assert that we tried and that perhaps it was not meant to be. However, when we forget to lock the back door and we never have a chance to pursue “the what might have been scenarios” in our lives, we miss out on the thrill of the chase which invigorates us and adds excitement to our respective journeys.

But noooo, we spent so much time putting double locks on the front doors to salvage our pride and feed our fears, that we left the entrances to our sense of purpose undefended. In the panic of appearing to be stronger than we really are and to perpetrate the lie that we got it going on, our dreams escaped to anyplace but here in our hearts and minds. That’s what happens when we pay more attention to our fears and pride than to our divine sense of destiny; prison bars that try to hold our dreams hostage only end up giving them an incentive to break free.

It is indeed a sad life when we allow our dreams to slip out the back door.

You do not have to possess a particular skill in dream interpretation to accept that our dreams are divine whispers into our consciousness to move us toward our destiny. But so many Christian singles have had those divine whispers shouted down by those voices in our heads that suggest we are not good enough or capable or ready to achieve what our minds have conceived. Like Peter who stood in the middle of the boisterous sea and who paid more attention to the rocky seas than to the miracle God was demonstrating, we were ready to press the panic button. In a sense, our almost drowning experience in a sea of doubts and feelings of inadequacy became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Each time we darn near killed ourselves by succumbing to those negative emotions, we opened the back door a little wider for our dreams to slip, slide away.
Tomorrow: Bamboozled, Tricked and Punked

Shenequa is Getting Married!

Over the past 6months, I have had three friends get married and two have become engaged. That’s 10 people that have made it to where I want to someday go. Knowing what a struggle dating and sustaining a healthy romantic relationship can be, I praise God that He is still favoring singles with the blessing of marriage.

Have you ever wondered why her and not you? What’s Shenequa got that you don’t have? Well, I suspect this is what separates Shenequa from all of you who want to get married, but so far haven’t find the “right one”:

• Shenequa didn’t talk herself out of getting involved in a new relationship by thinking and acting on the notion that all men are after one thing. Shenequa’s fiancé or husband may indeed have been after “one thing”, but somehow that was transformed into an engagement or marriage.
• Shenequa didn’t settle for the same ole, same ole. While it may have been safer to sit at home on Friday night and not risk getting her heart broken, she chose to go to the movies or out to dinner with the guy.
• Shenequa didn’t lose her trust in God that He will protect her heart and that He will send a future husband to her. Many of us talk about trusting God, but then we turn that into a lie when we are not willing to step out on faith in our interactions with new people in our lives.
• Shenequa was willing to do something different. Maybe she made the first call or maybe she sent an email that she normally would not send. Maybe she apologized even though it might make her appear to be weak. Maybe she cooked him dinner even though she really doesn’t like to cook or she doesn’t want to be expected to cook all of the time.
• Shenequa was willing to take a risk. Yes, he could have been a playa just waiting for an opportunity to break her heart. Yes, he could have been an ax murderer looking for his next victim. But, Shenequa put her trust in God to the test and was willing to rely on her spiritual gift of discretion to take a risk on the man who ended up becoming her fiancé or husband.
• Shenequa did not follow bad advice that people, even those with good intentions, often give. So what if he didn’t call when he was supposed to? So what if he has baby mama drama to deal with? So what if he doesn’t make more money than she does. So what if she has to pay for their outings every now and then? If she had a problem with her man, she went to HIM and then to him.
• In summary, Shenequa did what she had to do without losing her self-respect and without jeopardizing her spiritual health.
  
  

There are probably many more things that Shenequa did that so far, you are not willing to do. Thank God that Shenequa made it through the sometimes treacherous jungle of singleness. Praise HIM and the next time you see Shenequa, ask her what she has that you do not.

A quick note: Most, if not all of my readers are female. So this post was written to women. Before you say it, let me remind you that Shenequa could not control what her future fiancé or husband did, so you should not try to use that as an excuse either.

Okay, let me have it!

The List

In the movie, Why Did I Get Married, Patricia (played by Janet Jackson) advised her friends to write a list of the good and the bad things that their husbands have done. Her suggestion was that if the bad list outnumbered the good, then “let him go”. But if the good outnumbered the bad, then hold on to him.

Yes, I know it is only a movie and “it is not real”, but I think a comment is warranted.

First of all, making a list is okay, but we need to be mindful of several things:

• That list is subject to change
• What is “good” and what is “bad” is subject to interpretation and mistakes can be made.
• At a given point in time, we may not remember all of the good or bad a person has done.
• So it may not be appropriate to base the continuation or ending of a relationship on a list written at a particular time.

I think the list gives the wrong impression. It assumes equal weight between good and bad acts. In truth, I believe “good” acts should carry more weight than “bad” acts. Also, the list reduces the relationship to a mathematical equation and doesn’t take into account one’s spiritual and emotional maturity.

But if you notice in the movie, the woman who played the wife of Tyler Perry’s character was in the car working on a list that seemed to be only on one side. Was that the good side or the bad side. I think that really doesn’t matter. The real value of doing a list is not in adding up the number of good and bad deeds. Rather, the value is found in the act of thinking about the relationship.

Often when we think of past relationships (or current ones), we may remember the bad things, but the good things seem to stick in our minds more. Yes, he doesn’t always call when he says he will. Yes, she may not be the most romantic person in the world. But we still can’t shake that loving feeling.

So, make those lists if you must, but don’t get caught up in a numbers game. Emotions are not the same as cold calculating rationale. There may be a million reasons why you should not be in a relationship, but love (especially Godly love) can outweigh them all. God had those million reasons to kick us to the curb, but He chose love over justice. Maybe it’s time we do the same with those special people in our lives.

What I Miss

Maybe I'm watching too much tv or reading too many books, but they all seem to remind me of my truly single status. What does "truly single" mean? It means that not only am I unmarried, I am also not seeing or dating someone.

You want to know one of the things I really miss when I am truly single? The closeness. I miss having my face mere inches from her face, our noses almost touching. I feel her breath in my face and I can almost see the words as they float out of her mouth. Being that close may mean we will kiss or it may not. Just being able to be that close with someone I am attracted to and also she doesn't mind me being all up in her face. Remember what it's like to be close enough to someone that you feel their heart beat or you can sense their slightest movement? Our eyelashes compete for limited space as we look into each other's eyes and the world seems to no longer exist. Wow, it really doesn't get any better than that!

Usually at this point in a post, I try to link what I've said to a spiritual lesson or point. Well not tonight! Sometimes we just need to acknowledge what we are feeling whether it is "spiritual" or not. Often when we are honest with ourselves and we stop hiding behind our false sense of piety, we will find that owning up to our true feelings can indeed have a spiritual benefit. Well looka there, I found a way to slip in something spiritual anyhow!