WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO SINGLES

WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO SINGLE WOMEN
I've been longing to be pursued and married for a long time now. I'm 35 and single. But the thing is - my desire is going to be fulfilled. For sure. I am the bride of Jesus. And all my longings for intimacy will be met on the day that my Bridgroom comes for me. Look at all the sweet promises in the Word! Look at Isaiah 62 alone and it will sastisfy your soul, women. So I try to focus on the fact that I am already enaged to be married. So the Truth is that I don't have to worry whether or not I am going to get to experience one of my deepest longings. Then I can fully live in my hope and desire. I don't think the Lord tries to kill desires, and therefore, I don't think we should. Women, we don't have to go around either trying to kill our desire for marriage, or go around being consumed by the worry that it might not happen for us. It will. So let us try to walk in the freedom that the Gospel offers to us in this way.

WHAT I WANT TO SAY TO SINGLE MEN
I think often you men seem to be scared to talk to us single women too much, if you are not confident that you want to pursue, because you are afraid that it will lead us on. That is very thoughtful and we appreciate that. Sincerely. However, I think it may help if we help you see how we view it. We want fellowship. Plain and simple. And if it seems like we want more than you want, then still we know that we cannot make you want it too, so we know that we are still just friends. We cannot make you date us, and we know that. And I think its almost arrogant for you to assume that we want to date you anyway. But it would be nice for you to be willing to be friends with us, or else straightforwardly address the fact that it seems like we want more than you do, and then state that you do not want that, and get the message across that way instead of just ignoring us. I think that kind of straightfowardness and honesty is what Jesus shows us in his life. And I know that this may sound like a hassle to have to do, but I firmly believe that as the Body of Christ, we need to all be in interaction with one another, so we can work together properly. And so simply ignoring one another is not the best option to choose until there is no other choice left.

RACE RELATIONS

In this blog I want to quote some excepts from the book "Black and Free" by Tom Skinner. I think this sheds some light on the race relations topic. This is a topic that many of us white people don't want to talk about because we think it should be "fixed" by now. But it's not and we do still need to talk about it. This book is very thought provoking, and it shows the vunerability of the African American culture, and how we as the church need to be sensitive to the painful vulnerabilty here, as there are many wounds among the African American culture that need tending to in the area of race relations.

"Why do they fight? Most of them really know the answer. It's the ghetto. And to understand better the frustration and bitterness that fosters gang war and riots, we have to look beyond the slums themselves. In face, we need to go back some three hundred years - to when the first slaves were brought to the US....These unsuspecting and unprotected Africans were captured and snatched away from their country and culture...They were packed - often as many as a hundred - in a small hold of the slave ship....To the planter, a black person was just another animal to be used on his farm or plantation. They were bred at the whims of their master. Whenever their master felt there was a need for additional slaves, he merely selected a healthy male and a healthy female and he had them cohabit until a child was conceived. When the woman was pregnant the man was moved on to other quarters to impregnate other women. On and on went the pattern, so that within ten years a slave male could have sired more than a hundred sons and daughters, but never really having the privelege of fathering them. It was in this climate that the slave was looked upon as subhuman....There was no family life, there was no culture, no discipline set up as far as a home was concened during all the three hundred years that black people were enslaved in North America....After the Civil War, President Lincoln issued the famous Emancipation Proclamation and the slaves were set free. After three hundred years of captivity the black man was suddenly a free individual. He was told, 'Now that you have your freedom, now that you have been emancipated, you must assume responsibility as a human being. You must now become a responsible citizen.' They turned to the man who was bred like cattle, who perhaps did not even know his children, and asked himm to raise his family! Three hundred years separated the black man from life in a family culture. He had never been shown or taught what it was to have family responsibility, to be the head of his own homne. Overnight, thje black man was told now that he was a free man he must live according to the culture he served and by their standards. Suddenly, he was taught that he must live with one wife and raise and teach his children. Children who never knew what it was to have a father were suddenly told they must honor, obey, and respect their parents."
He goes on to discuss how the black man began to overcome these odds to make strides toward purchasing their own homes, owning their own land, taking cae of their families, becoming lawyers, politicians, senators, educators, and so on. But then the black man became a threat to the whites. particularly the poor whites who until then had not been the bottom of society, becaue they could always look down on the blacks. This is when oppression and persecution began. Lynchings occurred and Jim Crow laws were created. Skinner says,
"And yet with all this persecution, people kept wondering why the black man didn't change. Why didn't he become any better? Why didn't he move to a nicer ploace? Why didn't he keep up his home? Why didn't he get a better job? Why wasn't he better educated, more cultured, more refined?"



Although I realize that this is 1 man's interpretation of history, I also see where this helps me to further understand some of the social policies and ways tnat have disadvantaged black brothers and sisters to begin with. I believe that it is immportant that we dialogue about these things, because as one Body we need to all seek to work togher, and poor race relations prevents us from doing so.

MENTAL ILLNESS

By the way, I purposefully make my titles boring, becuase i don't like it when I am trying to find information, and the titles in a table of contents are so creative that I can't even tell what they are about.

But today I want to talk about a great article that I read on mental illness. It's called "Healing Presence" by John Swinton and was published by the center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University. It was given to me at the Christian Community Development Association National Conference. The CCDA is an organization fo Christians that recognizes that there are divisions along racial and social lines that are not what the Kingdom of God is supposed to have. It's a great organization - I hightly recommend checking it out. In this post I want to offer some of the most wise and educating passages in this article:

"How do people with profound mental health problems suffer? In our highly medicalized culture, we define and respond to disease from a biomedical model. We want to fix the 'bad spot.' If we can excise or cure that bad spot then we think we have succeeded in our healing task. But suffering is a richer conecpt, and true healing requires friendship and community."

The article tells the story of talking to a man who suffered from profound schizophrenia, where it was already known that he had been able to live on his own very little in the past 5 years. The interviewer supposed that what this man would recount as the worst part of his life with schizophrenia, was having to live his life in the hospital. However when actually asking the man what was the worst part of his life with schizophrenia, he told this story: It was "a time when he seemed to be doing fairly well and was not in the hospital. He said that he had been living with his mother and then finally had been kicked out of her house and was living in an apartment. About two weeks after leaving her house he called home. She answered the telephone. He started talking, but when she heard his voice, she said "You have the wrong number" and hung up. He said that was the worst year of his life. My heart sank as he told his story. It was not difficult to understand what he meant, but the worst year according to him and the worst year according to our rating scales were very differernt. What was right?"

"Are vital demensions of human suffering being overlooked by the ways that we conceptualize particular mental health problems?"

And then the article goes on to discuss the vital role of relationship in healing. That is the healing presence that is the title of the article. And it asks how we are going to choose to order our relationships with the mentally ill. If we choose as Jesus did, we may impact their lives (and ours) much more than ever anticipated. I also like his statements about suffering being more rich of an experience than realized by most of the world.

"The friendships of Jesus, however, were based on a very different principle: the principle of love and grace. Jesus fellowshipped with people who were radically unlike him - tax collectors, sinners. people considered religiously unclean, and women - and through their friendship, he resurrected their personhood. His friendships were unbound by cultural assumptions and available to those whom society marginalized, stigmatized, and refused access to God."

"Forming friendships with people who are marginalized and different is not an easy task. Yet, if we can create forms of community with "safe space" for people to develop such friendships, even if these friendships are transient, then we will have moved some way towards faithfulness and Christ-likeness."

STRIVING FOR DEEPER RELATIONSHIPS

I finally got up my courage after probably an entire year of thinking about it. I need some deeper friendships. I mean I really long for people to know me and for me to know others. But once a few years ago then I invited women to meet with me on a regular basis. And I think I pushed too hard for us to go deep too fast, and the group was a flop. But I really liked the concept of a group of women meeting together on a regular basis. So I got up my courage and invited. I asked 12 other women, thinking that less than half would even respond. And I braced myself for the feeling of rejection as these people would say no, even though a no doesn't necessarily mean they don't like me. I was amazed when all but 1 of these women said that they think this is a great idea and they are really excited about doing it! I've gotten so many comments about how this is something that they are really longing for, that they are so glad that someone is taking the initiative to start it, that they have been lonely even though everyone else seems to act like they shouldn't be, that they are longing for deeper relationships, etc. All I did was to invite 12 women to think about committing to getting together once a month, mostly for casual talking, but sometimes for deeper discussion or for prayer. Why don't you think about doing that too?

INCREDIBLE ARTICLE ON SINGLENESS

I hope this works! I'd like you to follow this link and get to read this article because its great!

http://www.sovereigngracesingles.com/sgs_blog/entry.php?u=brendab&e_id=218

TAKING MEDICINE FOR DEPRESSION PART 2

Here's a perfect example of what I was talking about in the last post. I am sick today and so I didn't get up very well this morning. Actually shortly after I got up, I just went and lay down on the couch and fell asleep again. So I didn't take my medicine. And then when I woke up again at 1pm just a minute ago, then I was thinking really crazy thoughts. Very negative and cynical. I stopped and thought to myself "what's wrong with me?" and I prayed and asked that I could think clearly. I was not too far gone into negative thoughts at all - at that point if I still had not taken my medicine I would have probably been able to last even the next few days or weeks fighting off those negative thoughts instead of acting on them. But then when I went into the kitchen II realized that I had not taken my meds and that that was why I was struggling so with my thoughts being so irrationally hopeless. This same thing happened a few weeks ago when I simply forgot to take my medicine, which I rarely do. Then I felt the same kinds of feelings, which include feeling very anxious, sure that everything was horrible in the world and was going to go even more horribly, sure that there's no hope. This is the result of not being properly medicated, and we know that for a fact, because there was a time just a couple of months ago that I had no medicine in me for weeks. And the results are something that not even I am willing to be that vulnerable about with this many people on the world wide web! But let me assure you, it was very out of control. Scary stuff, the person I could be if I did not have medicine. No wonder those who struggled with depression long ago often died in their twenties. It really wears you down.

TAKING MEDICINE FOR DEPRESSION

Why do we have such a hard time agreeing that we may need medicine for depression? Now I am not saying that we need to give medicine out lightly. I know that there is big discussion about doctors prescribing anti-depressants when they haven't fully explored the need for them. I don't really want to go into that now. What I do want to address is the idea that is very prevalent among Christians that if we take anti-depressants then it will only numb us and keep us from learning to have faith and to work through our sin. Its as if they are happy pills that will mask our sinful choices and make us think that everything is fine. Well my personal experience is exactly the opposite. Its only by taking medicine have I had a clear enough head to be able to deal with anything else. Once I took medicine then I could think rationally and then be able to deal with my sin, to deal with having faith in the Lord, to deal with the emotional woundedness that was the root of the depression. I've talked to many a friend who I've strongly urged to look into whether or not they need medicine, and many where the doctor has told them that yes they do need medicine, and they still won't take it because of the label attached. It grieves my heart. There is so much more joy to be found and to be known when we aren't depressed. Its like the cloud that sits in front of your eyes is removed. And yet I've seen so many people keep sitting under that cloud because they listen to the remarks like this: "well everyone has to deal with sadness. Its a normal part of life. You need to just be able to do it without any fake help."

CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SEXUAL ADDICTIONS AND STRUGGLES

Today I was at a lunch where we discussed the struggles with sexual sin that exist in the church, and how we as women can help this problem in the church. Statistics abound of the ministry leaders lost to following their own desires down a path that leads them away from the Lord. We talked about how huge the problem of pornography, homosexuality, adultery, and premarital sex is within the church, and yet it is hardly discussed. What can we do to help the church and be sensitive to these issues as we minister to women?, we discussed. We need to talk about the beauty and goodness of sex in the right contexts first of all. We need to talk about struggle in general and be willing to be who we are and not try and put on a fake face. We need to be willing to get messy, entering into the pain of life and the struggles of others, believing that there is hope in our great God who can make all things new and restore perfect beauty and rightness to his creation. What would you say?

DISCUSSION ABOUT EATING DISORDERS

I was surprised today by something someone said, and that rarely happens that someone surprises me. I usually have heard most everything. I was working out at Curves (which, if you have never been there, is a workout place for women only, is a small setting where you can see everything that goes on, and is a place where they help monitor your measurements and body fat), and I saw a woman that I see frequently. She always pushes herself very hard to work out, she gets on the scales at every workout, and she is pencil thin. After she left, I asked the women who run the place if they ever ask anyone like that if they are struggling with an eating disorder and then offer them help. (They said no they don't.) What shocked me was the response of the other women in the room. I heard comments of "O, she's a great woman - she wouldn't have an eating disorder," "O, she has a family and has had children - she wouldn't have an eating disorder," O, she goes to church - she wouldn't have an eating disorder." I responded to each individually, saying that someone can be great, have a family, and be in church, and still struggle with eating. But this accurately represents the worlds' perception of things, and maybe I need to have conversations with the world about eating disorders and about what those who are churched really struggle with, more often. Why do we so often relate struggle with someone who is doing wrong things and making bad choices? That's so bizarre, because we obviously all struggle with many different things. Yet we try our hardest to make others think we don't. Let's become a church that walks together in our weaknesses and shows the world what beautiful relationships that makes.