LONELINESS

The issue of singleness has been shared with me in the past week by a few different people. It reminds me that humans were not created to be alone, and the struggle with loneliness is deep and painful. Too bad we can't just pray to God to cause us to fall into a deep sleep and have Him remove a rib, which He can then use to form a mate! Here's a response that I gave to an email I received (the value of archiving here is to remind me in the future of how I deal with the issues of loneliness right now):

"Thanks so much for your prayers and for your sharing. It is very encouraging to me, especially knowing that you are understanding some of my struggles. Sometimes I think that God allows us to struggle because we often seek help and comfort from those in our community. Imagine life was perfect for everyone? We would probably be very superficial/anti-social!

Thank you for sharing your struggles with singleness with me. I can imagine how sharp it is for you when dealing with the pains of loneliness. Part of the DNA that God created us with is the desire to be loved and the reciprocating capacity to show love. It certainly doesn't help when we're surrounded by a culture that highly encourages (almost to the point of demanding) people to get married and then to have children. It's probably some instinctual trait that helps keep the earth populated. It's been very hard for me, in the past 3 years, to attend wedding services. Particularly when listening to the exhortation given by the minister to the marrying couple. After a while, it all sounds the same: the definition of commitment, the probable struggles ahead, and how critical it is have the marriage centred around God. Most times, I respond with deep cynicism, because even though I went into my own marriage ensuring that all these pillars were well grounded, my marriage failed. Certainly, I'm very happy for the couple and wish them the very best. It just seems that I've learned a lesson about how harsh reality can be, and that no amount of rose-coloured ideology can shelter someone (even someone who considers himself a faithful Christ follower) from it. I find myself easily falling into a spiral of self-pity and bitter indignation. Even worse, I feel so hopeless because I can't see any possibility of getting into a relationship with anyone, given the fact that I'm still "technically" married yet feeling very lonely (plus having to deal with my own perceived stigma of one day being a divorcee). I actually envy those who ARE single and have a much better chance of getting into a relationship than I do!

I think that the turning point came about 4 months ago. It was near the end of one of the most wedding-filled summers of my life (including being on the wedding parties for 2 of them), so I had no lack of opportunity to feel the things I just mentioned. To top it off, things between Katherine and I hadn't changed, so hopelessness became a best friend. Then, it started becoming clear to me (because, in my life, God never reveals things to me by way of notes attached to bricks falling from the sky! It's always a slow, step by step revelation). The more I focused on my own pain, the less I saw of the world's pain. If I truly claimed to be a follower of Christ, I had to know the heart of the Father. And I know that, although it grieves Him because of my situation with Katherine, it grieved Him a whole lot more because of all the (needless) suffering in this world. I discovered that, when serving Him out of compassion to those that are marginalized or neglected, I felt a sense of relief to my own situation, even though it seems that the two are unrelated. Yet they are. Because every time I found myself focusing on my marital woes, an opportunity to serve would come up that I would miss, and I would end up kicking myself afterwards for being so selfish. It's becoming pretty clear to me that my life is to be spent serving Him in the area of compassion, particularly for those in lesser developed parts of the world. I have already started knocking on doors, but nothing has opened yet. I think that God is a pretty detailed oriented deity, and the message that I'm getting is that I need to tie up loose ends here (such as with my marriage and any outstanding debts that I have) before the door for long term service will be opened. That has given me a short term purpose/goal, which in turn gives me a refreshing hope, something that I haven't felt in a long time. And I realized that those same God-planted attributes of loving others and wanting to be loved that are causing me sorrow, are also the same attributes that will allow me to serve in compassion for those who are hurt in this world. They can't be separated for selective applications. It's instinctual for us to try to fulfill these longings, it just depends on how you do it, be it through full time service to a family or full time service to a group of people. Either way, you can still be blessed through it. Perhaps much of what we expect of ourselves and how our lives are supposed to turn out has been shaped by how we were raised and the environment that we grew up in. It may not always match up to God's perspectives, and I think that this is one of the benefits (without devaluing the strife of martial breakdowns or singleness) of having to struggle.

I also realize that complex human-relationship issues take time to work out. I wish that I could be sharing these things with you in retrospect, but I know that I'm still in the thick of things, and that it may still be a while before things are finally resolved. But I made a promise to God that, if He gave me enough grace to get through this (even if it's just a day's ration at a time), I would honour Him by persevering through it without causing more grief in this world (even though it's not of popular opinion to do so)..."