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Years and years ago, when that magnificent medium of poetic and cerebral expression known as hip hop took a turn for the worse, those of us who loved what is now known as “conscious hip/hop rap” became very concerned about the gangsta/thug culture that WE were promoting and saying it was a legitimate representation of Black life. At that time, if anyone Black disagreed with those who were promoting thug life and Black women as bitches and hos and gettin money and poppin bottles as the measure of success for Blacks, they were called an Uncle Tom (even though Uncle Tom was actually the hero in the book, but that’s always been the evidence that proves “my people” don’t freaking read). Folks who supported that garbage did so under the guise of, “This is LIFE for Black people! We KEEPINITREEEEEAAALLLL!!!” The new Black Feminists even chimed in, championing these misguided women in these videos as pioneers in taking back their repressed and mischaracterized sexuality. No matter how much some of us called BS on all of that, the images persisted and proliferated around the globe. BET helped spread the misinformation, eliminating all original and news programming and replacing it with every violence-, crime- and misogyny-promoting rap video that existed, and with shows like BET After Dark, with it’s practically soft-core porn videos of young Black men portraying themselves as “gangstas” pouring champagne over willing young Black women’s gyrating booties and breasts, swiping credit cards between their upturned butt cheeks, throwing dolla dolla bills at and on the sensuously-pouted and scantily clad female “dancers” who lined up to be featured in those videos. Some of us protested and cried that all this was a heinous, vulgar and egregious foul these artists were perpetrating against their own people, and it was something that would haunt us for decades to come, but those of us who were offended by what Black entertainment was becoming were shut down by the money and the “glamour” (if you can call it that) and the fame that the thug life image reaped for the perpetrators. Blame the record companies all you want, but they couldn’t have done it without our help. Simply put, we let N.W.A. and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre and Tupac n’ ‘nem define what it means to be Black in America. For some of us for a time, that may have been all too terribly true. The problem is a) we didn’t really do anything to address and correct the problems they were rapping about; and b) when you broadcast that image to a world where there aren’t that many real Black people in close proximity who live a very different life from what is shown on MTV and BET, the thug life is all we are to them because that is all we have shown them of us.

While rappers were stacking dollas, the Black family slowly crumbled. Relations between Black men and women deteriorated like the half-life of an unstable radioactive particle at critical mass, and our neighborhoods and the sense of community we used to have in them pretty much died. There were other factors that contributed to that phenomenon – federal policies, crack cocaine, mass incarceration of Black men, and wider social changes – but we simply did not help to stem the tide of destruction in our own communities. What some of us did instead was to hand over our standards, values, and as a result, our families for a stack of bills. Dolla dolla bill, y’all.

So fast forward a couple decades. We’re mad when some people only sees us as thugs, bitches and hos, but we are also completely ambivalent to the fact that too many of our young Black men and women actually believe that acting that way is not only normal and acceptable, but it is admirable. A lot of us who saw and tried so hard to stop the misrepresentation of Black folks that WE perpetrated through entertainment are sitting over here shaking our heads sadly and saying to ourselves, “We told you this was going to happen…” And here we are, defending Beyonce as she twerks like a stripper in front of an audience on global television while her husband and father of their little girl participates in and celebrates it. Here we are posting and sharing and LOL-ing at videos of Black women fighting like MMA tryouts in the streets, in restaurants, in schools, while Black men hold the video cameras/phones and laugh and cheer them on. Here we are supporting “reality shows” that highlight the absolute worst stereotypically ignorant behavior possible to the point that they are so much in demand that they keep making more. Here we are championing the characters of televisions shows with Black female leads who clearly have no morals whatsoever. We don’t just watch the shows, we cheer FOR these amoral chicks, and get an attitude when someone questions what message that character’s behavior is really sending and why we’re celebrating that behavior. Here we are ignoring the fact that a brilliant and talented young athlete acted very ungraciously and just plain shouldn’t have done it, but his lousy sportsmanship is deemed justifiable because some folks called him mean names.

ASIDE: For the record – you like Scandal? Great, I like it too. But let’s stop pretending that the character Olivia Pope has ANY redeeming qualities (actually, no one on the show does – everybody’s kind of smarmy, but that’s Washington politics I suppose, in a very small nutshell, and THAT is the point of the show – everybody gets dirty in Washington because everybody has to be dirty to survive in Washington). Her brilliance as a “fixer” doesn’t excuse her utter depravity as a woman. I might watch the show because I think it’s probably one of the best soap operas around, but I never have been, and never will be, a “Gladiator” (unless we’re talking about Russell Crowe’s Gladiator, in which case I would like very much to be THAT kind of gladiator, at least for a day). I see Kerry Washington’s character as I came to see Denzel Washington’s role as Det. Harris in Training Day. I hated his character so deeply that I understood why he won the Oscar for it, even though I wished he’d won for anything else he’d done – because Washington played Det. Harris so convincingly that he actually made me hate his character and want him dead 15 minutes into the movie. That’s acting, and I appreciate the skill it takes to play a convincing bad guy. So I’m all for a broad spectrum of Black roles on television and in the movies; I don’t believe everybody Black on television and in the movies needs to be a saint to “protect the Race.” I just wish we’d be careful of who we hold up as standards to celebrate and aspire to. Nobody celebrated Denzel Washington’s philandering, thieving, corrupt Det. Harris. I will never, for the life of me, understand why women are celebrating Kerry Washington’s immature, irresponsible, and adulterous Olivia Pope, I don’t care how smashing her wardrobe is.

No matter how foolish, crazy or inappropriately some of us behave (and don’t we all get a little childishly stupid sometimes – sure we do), some of us have somehow mastered the art of deflective justification; some of us never take responsibility for what we do wrong as long as we can point to how badly we have been treated in the past, or to the fact that other people do the same things and can seem to get away with it. It’s not appealing to me when other people behave like they were raised by rabid wolves. Why in the world would I WANT to be as abased as they are just becasue they seem to be able to get away with it?

What we really won’t say for fear of being called an Uncle Tom or a sellout or an Oreo or, God forbid, a Republican is that too many of us simply do not, have not, and seemingly just will not hold ourselves to the standards that got us successfully past slavery and Jim Crow and through the civil rights movement with out standards, our morals, and our families pretty much intact. Not all of us, and certainly not even most of us, but way far too doggoned many of us. Sadly, I see this as partially generational. So many in the generation today look at the standards I and those older than me grew up with as old-fashioned and/or traditional, as if “traditional” is a vile curse word now, so they have no use for the way we did things and they don’t want to hear what we have to say. I’ve heard it said that previous generations messed up so much stuff for this current generation, so our opinions aren’t valid. OK…I’ll admit, we sure didn’t get everything right – honestly, no generation ever does or ever will because perfection is not part of the human condition. But seriously, if we got everything wrong and can’t tell some of y’all nothing, how are YOU guys doing with advancing/improving/building on the legacy so far? Let’s see…we had Claudine and Good Times and I Spy and Julia and Fat Albert and Flip Wilson. Aretha Franklin, the O’Jays, Earth, Wind & Fire, the Ohio Players. You guys have Bad Girls Club, Real Housewives of Atlanta, Being Mary Jane and World Star Hip Hop. Lil Wayne and Slim Thug. Niki Minaj and…Beyonce.

Neither one of those lists is exhaustive. There were some cruddy artists and TV shows back then, and there are some amazing musicians out today who are impressive, but don’t dare tell me you don’t see a serious problem in the arc of where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we’re going.

The Problem with The “Thug is Racist” Controversy

It disturbs me that this Richard Sherman issue has been spun and twisted around to make racism the problem, but the reason this incident was an issue in the first place – his unsportsmanlike behavior – is and has been completely ignored.  The vast majority of fans who responded negatively to the interview with Erin Andrews after the game didn’t take issue with him calling himself the best cornerback in the NFL, as some people who were quick to come to his defense have incorrectly stated.  To say people are upset that he’s arrogant about his talent is a gross oversimplification of the entire issue.  Rather, it was his calling out and insulting another player he just beat to help his team win the game, and that he put the spotlight squarely on himself in a highly fraternal team sport are the issues that fans responded negatively to.  Then there’s the chocking gesture he made immediately after the play that he said was directed to 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick that was also a part of most fans’ negative reaction to him.  Furthermore, most football fans who follow the game closely know that Richard Sherman, in his short time in the NFL, has earned a reputation for displaying unsportsmanlike behavior.  As amazing a player as he has proven himself to be, he has also earned his reputation for being a jerk on the field quite honestly.  But, as soon as it was declared that some people who called him a thug meant it as a racist slur; more specifically, as soon as Richard Sherman declared “thug” to be the new “ni**er,” then there was no more focus on what he actually did that football fans had a problem with.  And that is a problem.

Many people who came to his defense noted that he is an athlete who plays in an adrenaline-charged sport and couldn’t reasonably be expected to conduct an emotionless interview just seconds after helping his team win the second biggest game of the season.  On it’s face, that argument might seem to have some merit, were it not for two factors:  all of the football players – Black and White – before him who have been interviewed in the exact same manner under the exact same circumstances who didn’t feel a need to denigrate another athlete’s abilities in that moment, and who were not only extremely emotional, but were also extremely gracious in an extremely emotional moment; and, the emergence of a video that showed Sherman being interviewed by another reporter and his behavior moments before the Erin Andrews interview.  Sherman repeated his rant against Crabtree in both interviews, so his feelings on that issue are quite genuine, I’m convinced (and to be fair, Crabtree behaved in just as much an ungracious and unsportsmanlike manner when he put his hand in Sherman’s face after the deflection, and there is some off-the-field history between them, so yeah…they hate each other, got that).  But what struck me about the video is that Sherman was perfectly calm between the two interviews, so much so that he hugged Erin Andrews before she began her interview.  When she began the interview, that is when he turned on The Act.  That’s exactly what it seemed like it was to me, an act by a very good athlete who is also a very intelligent Stanford Honors graduate who was a Communications major, who is already used to doing this kind of thing (remember, he has a reputation for unrelenting, incessant, arrogant trash-talking), only this time he had a national audience.  Two words might fit here…free marketing. 

That some people called Sherman truly racist names, apparently following him on Twitter and posting them there, posting them on Facebook and in comments to articles about him, is disgusting.  But as a successful Black man in America, he can’t have believed that, at some point, that wasn’t going to happen.  I would guess that you could ask every prominent and successful Black athlete – no, every successful Black PERSON – since the advent and explosion of the Internet and online social networks and communities, and they would probably all tell you that they’ve received plenty of anonymous, online racist comments.  But there have always been racists in America, and there always will be.  This idea that we will ever get to a point where racism doesn’t exist and people won’t be so hateful, especially toward obviously successful Black people, is naive at best.  Parading our achievements in front of a bunch of people who hate us merely because our skin is darker than theirs, which makes them believe that our humanity is less than theirs, in an effort to get them to see that they are wrong and we are worthy of their respect is a futile endeavor.  They simply don’t care.  To far too many people in this country, an educated Black man (or woman) is still just a ni**er, only one with a degree and some money.  Think that’s cynical?  Ok.  Our President has academic qualifications that everyone is well aware of.  In fact, he achieved his success exactly the way those who implore people to just “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” in order to be successful in this country.  But regardless of Barack Obama being a graduate of Columbia, a graduate of Harvard Law School, a state Senator, and the twice-elected President of the United States, far too many people in this country still see him as a ni**er who was really born in Kenya who is trying to destroy America.  As a people, Blacks have endured much worse than being called names in this country to earn our success, and we did it all in spite of the absolute best efforts of the racists to destroy us.  So are we really still giving power to ignorant people who hide behind anonymous Tweets and Facebook statuses and article comments??  If people think Richard Sherman is a thug because he is Black, what does that do to change what he has accomplished?  If people think young Black men are thugs because they are Black, if they are committed to pursuing their goals, what does the perception people have of them do to stop them from pursuing their goals?  Unless you’re in a position to block access or impede progress, your perception is all yours in your head affecting and bothering YOU.  We need not make it our business unless it actually gets in our way, and there are PLENTY of examples of this happening and actually costing young Black men (and women) their lives.  THEN it is a problem.  But you’re just on the Internet calling me names?  So what!  We need to stop being shocked that there are still people out there who hate Black people simply because we’re Black, and we need to stop believing that proving that we’re “upstanding, productive citizens” is going to change the perception of people who are inclined to see us otherwise. 

As sickening as the actual racist comments made to Sherman are, to say that people calling him a thug were really calling him a ni**er is, to me, a stretch, at least in most instances.  Perhaps some people did mean “thug” as a racially derogatory term.  But it is just as likely that some football fans used that term because they were really referencing the guy’s reputation and saw this last incident as just another example of that behavior they dislike in their football players so much.  Honestly, we might like our football players to be brutal wrecking machines ON the field (well, yeah we DO like them that way), but most football fans really don’t like unsportsmanlike behavior on or off the field.  When other football players have been called thugs in sports media – like Ritchie Incognito, Ben Roethlisburger, and Bill Romanowski (going way back to old school football thugs) to name just a few, they were called thugs because of their line-crossing behavior either on or off the field.  And because they’re all White, their being labeled “thugs” wasn’t racist.  And if we care to do a little extra curricular work and look outside of the sports world, John Boehner recently called Vladmir Putin a thug on The Tonight Show, and it wasn’t the first time Putin has been called a thug.  A member of the Tea Party also said Mitch McConnell is engaging in thuggery!  But in his recent press conference, Richard Sherman didn’t mention any of this.  He talked about hockey players who fight during matches but aren’t called thugs, but that’s actually not true.  This is a link to a Bleacher Report article from 2011 in which they list the50 Biggest Thugs in Hockey.  Maybe Sherman didn’t know about that.  I didn’t know about that article, but I’ve known that hockey players have been called thugs for years because… well…they fight all the doggoned time.  And maybe he didn’t know about the recent White politicians calling other White politicians thugs; not everyone is a political junkie like I am.  But as a student of the game, he had to have known that there have been White football players who have been called thugs before this incident involving him.  And yes, there have been Black football players called thugs, too.  What really blew my mind is that as members of the media, sports and otherwise, every reporter worth his credentials had to have known, or at least should have made a half-hearted effort to research, what took me about 10 minutes to look up and insert as hyperlinks into this extremely verbose blog entry.  But because Richard Sherman and the media have simplistically determined that the people who called him a thug are just as guilty of racism as the people who actually called him a ni**er and a baboon and an ape, we can’t talk about how his behavior is legitimately the reason for a majority of the negative reaction to him.  And that is a problem.  

Something else about this bothers me deeply.  The idea that the word “thug” is the new “ni**er” is a difficult concept for me to get my head around, since it was we Black people who determined that being a thug was not only a successful marketing tactic for music and entertainment, but it was a representation of Black life that we willfully allowed to be broadcast to the world.  Sure, record companies made it almost impossible to produce commercially successful music if it didn’t fit the “thug” formula, but we had BET, which didn’t have to go along with that program.  BET and its founder Robert Johnson could have been our standard and vanguard, could have been our agent for change, but instead went right along with the coonery and distributed these images of thug life, along with the portrayal of women as bitches and hos, to the masses around the world, to whomever could pick up the images via satellite, basically to make money.  A lot of money, actually, that was said in this Washington Post article to have been used to fund original, quality programming on the network, but never was because the quality programming was supposedly never profitable enough to continue producing.  So BET continued to “…make money off the booty-shakers” (Perl, 1997), and cut all the quality programming to nothing.  And we supported them.  I’ve heard this issue discussed only briefly in the context of this controversy, and only in the most superficial way, noting that because we’ve made being a thug acceptable, White people see this and think they can call us that.  But we have to go to the root of the issue here and finally admit that us declaring thug life acceptable and calling ourselves thugs (and ni**er or nigga or however you want to spell it) was a stupid idea in the first place, we never should have gone down that road, and it only served to allow other people and cultures – including future generations of young Black men and women – to look at all of us as, well, thugs, niggas, bitches and hos.  So now we have to fight not only White racism, but the caricature-stereotype-image of ourselves WE created and consented to be distributed to the world.  We’re angry that some people refuse to see us as individuals and by our accomplishments and just as human beings, but we won’t admit that, to some degree, we’re partially responsible for the image of us that’s our there.  And that is a problem.  But that’s another verbose, ranting blog post, I suppose.

Did some people respond to Richard Sherman with racist tweets and Facebook posts and comments on articles about him and this incident?  Absolutely.  If you hadn’t noticed, that’s pretty much what racists do nowadays, excessive anonymous Internet race-baiting trolling.  Did some of the people who called him a thug mean it as a racist taunt?  Possibly and probably.  But to dismiss every instance (all 625 of them on the Monday after the game, as was recently noted in an article) as racist is a mistake that has allowed an unfortunate dismissal of some very important facts – such as Sherman’s legitimately-earned reputation for taunting and trash-talking (including his own Twitter-taunt of Tom Brady after the Patriots loss to the Seahawks last year); and the $7,800 fine levied against him by the NFL for the choking gesture he directed at Kaepernick after the play in the NFC championship game.  Given everything involved, I just don’t believe this was a “racist incident.”  Some racists responded to him with hateful language, but I firmly believe that most people had no racist intent when they called him a thug.  But because we’ve turned it into solely a racist episode, we’ve completely ignored the character issue, at lease when it comes to football, of the intelligent and talented young man who is at the center of it all.  Even HE admitted in a recent column on SI.com that what he said about Richard Crabtree in those interviews was in very bad form, among some other very insightful things, which, as I’ve said, for most football fans was the point.  But all this is lost on most of us because we’re still caught up in what I believe is this overblown racist controversy.  That’s a problem.  Because when we do this, I think we weaken our credibility when there are genuine racial problems that arise, and there are plenty that are much more critically life-altering and threatening to us than this. 

Now that I’ve finally gotten everything that was in my head on this issue out of it, I’m ready for the SuperBowl.  I don’t much care who wins, I just want, and expect, to see an amazing game that could honestly go either way.   I like Pete Carroll, I like Peyton Manning, I don’t have a favorite, I just want some good, clean football.  And no, I will not be watching the interviews afterward. 

When I Lean on My Faith, What Do I Do With My Feelings?

I read this on my Facebook page, and it was so timely and perfect for what I’m experiencing right now:

Have you been sinned against? If so, the biblical answer is to lovingly confront the person and seek reconciliation. Concealed anger or injury turns into bitterness, which often ends relationships. #confrontation#reconciliation – Gary Chapman

I’ve been thinking on this idea of what do I do with my feelings in the aftermath of an incredibly hurtful situation the past few days.  What DO I do with my lingering, raw, stepped-on feelings when I know that my husband and I have responded with calm and respectful confrontation of the truth – even logic and reason – only to be given more disrespect, more disregard, and only to be further maligned and falsely accused?  I’m a Christian, take that seriously, and I am working on forgiving, but that’s what I’m supposed to do.  What I’m supposed to feel is a different story, and that’s what I’m working through right now.

I am angry.  Very, very angry.  I am angrier than I’ve been in years.  I’m surprised at how angry I am.  But I know that God instructs me through the Bible to be angry, but don’t sin.  In fact, God even says not to let the sun go down on my anger (Ephesians 4:26).  Basically, I’m not to let it fester, not to hold a grudge, not to keep it inside to use it as ammo later.  That is hard to do when I feel like we’ve been so mercilessly and unjustly wronged.  I can be angry all I want, but cussing people out because I’m angry isn’t an option.  So, I’m angry, and that’s ok as long as I don’t turn that anger against anyone in retaliation.

I am hurt.  I am indescribably hurt.  Oh, I’ve had my feelings stomped on a few times real good in the last couple of years, but not anywhere near this bad.  When it happened, as it unfolded in its ugly and inexplicable reality, I really did feel an aching in my chest, so I do feel brokenhearted.  But I know that God assures me through the Bible that He is close to the brokenhearted, and that He rescues those whose spirits are crushed (Psalm 34:18).  So my heart can be broken right now and it’s ok, because God will attend to and heal my wounds.

I feel abused.  I feel like my kindness was mistaken for weakness.  I feel like because I extended my support and assistance, some thought that gave them license to boss me around, push me around, and finally kick me down.  Me AND my husband.  (Do we not yet get that I don’t play messing with my husband?)  But God tells me through the Bible that this hurtful situation that has broken my heart and my trust will not destroy me; even though I don’t understand at all how and why we were treated this way, even though I feel like we’ve been pushed in the mud, even though I know we are being unjustly vilified by the very people we tried to help, God is still right here with us.  He’s never left us.  He’s seen it all.  And in the end, the ugliness and the pain and the utter wrongness of how we’ve been treated will pale in comparison, be so insignificant to the glory God will get as we strive to obey Him in this, through this, as the power of Jesus shines through it all (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).  So yeah, I can feel abused, as long as I understand we’re far from victims because of it. 

I want to be vindicated.  Knowing what I’ve done and my heart in the matter, my intentions and the truth, to be so viciously maligned and falsely accused is incredibly unjust, and I just want to be vindicated.  I want a chorus of witnesses, no ANGELS, to come loudly to our defense.  To vehemently object to the charges against us; to decry the accusations and set the record straight on our behalf.  And I want it done right now!!!  But God tells me in the Bible that He will rescue us from our attackers, lead us to safety, and reward us for our innocence (Psalm 18:17-20).  He doesn’t tell us when, He just promises He will do it.  So I can want to be vindicated as long as I know I’m not the one who is going to bring that about, neither is another person.  But one day God will do just that.

So, now that I know that all these feelings are ok for me to have – and not just me, because my husband feels the same way, to – the question remains:  what do I (we) do with these feelings?  Well, I read this from TheDailyBibleVerse.org today, and it helped me answer that question:

Romans 12:12 (NIV) – Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Today’s commentary by Dave Whitehead, Senior Pastor, GraceNYC.org

Prayer does not come easily. It takes consistent application in order to discover the great benefits that prayer bring to the life of the believer. Faithfulness in prayer shapes the heart of the believer in ways that no other activity can, and once you have experienced the power of prayer it is hard to live without it.

I hope this situation improves.  Few things right now would cause me to be happier.  (Except for maybe someone to bless us and pay for our car to be fixed.)  I’m not even concerned with how it improves; I just want it to be better.  The prospect of that, that this air of contention will be lifted one day, that we will have peace in our lives beyond this, does bring me a measure of joy.  I am not expecting this situation to be different or better overnight.  I know it might take days, weeks; maybe even months.  I pray not years, but God’s time is a supernatural thing not at all like ours, so that no matter how long something seems to take for Him to do according to our concept of time, it’s never actually too late.  Amazing how that works.  So while I’m struggling with my and my husband’s hurt, I’m patiently waiting for God to do what He will.  He’ll do what He said He would do, it’s coming, I know it is.  And through all that, I pray.  And that’s what I do with those feelings.

I take those feelings to God in prayer.  Every day, every time I have them, every thought attached to them, every emotion they cause.  I talk to God about those feelings, pour out my very broken heart to Him, and let Him clean and dress my wounds.  Prayer becomes the medicine for my broken heart, and it is not a single dose treatment.  It becomes the strength for my weakened spirit, and several workouts are required to build that strength.  I can’t know when God will address the wrong, when He will cause the pain to be completely gone, when He will turn this around, and when He will vindicate us.  I can’t even know HOW He will do any of that.  But He promises that He will do it all, so I lean on my faith in the God who can do anything but fail and lie to fulfill His promises.  And in the meantime, while I lean on my faith in that, I will pour out those difficult feelings in prayer.  I’m a Christian, and that’s what I’m supposed to do. 

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Sixty days ago, I did one of the scariest, surest, happiest things I’ve ever done in my life – I got married. I got married to a really amazing and wonderful man. He is funny, smart, really really sexy, and drives a big ol’ truck for a living. So manly. And it’s good he’s a manly man, because I’m into that kind of thing. I like some macho with my male, thank you. A little extra testosterone with my teddy bear, please. That day was amazing!! I don’t think I’ve ever been so…GIDDY. Actually, I don’t think I’ve EVER been giddy, so that was a first for me. I almost ran down the aisle. I didn’t mean to, I promise I meant to be demure and walk slowly to the tempo of the music and bask in the moment… but when it came down to it I just wanted to get on with it!! LET’S GET MARRIED, YOU!!!! So we did. And we laughed. And we danced. And we laughed with our families and danced with our friends. And we marveled that we actually DID THE DANG THANG! And we did it really, really, classily well thanks to our amazing team of friends and referrals who worked it all out. And we enjoyed ourselves immensely. And our families shed tears of joy and laughed and made friends with each other. And we marveled at how beautiful/handsome we were. And that we were legally married now. And we almost had a ruined photography session. And we wondered if there was ever a wedding in the history of weddings that DIDN’T have some stupid ridiculous chaos like that. And we were grateful that this was the only real problem we had all that day. And we managed to even enjoy the photo session, but God were we glad when that thing was over (it was HOT out there and that dress was heavy and I know he was cookin in that tux). And we happily ate delicious leftovers from the reception for dinner. And we giggled with each other in the plush comfy pillow-topped hotel room bed. And we became One.

Waking up next to him the next day in the hotel, and at home every day after that, I wondered when I would feel “different.” I asked him about it, when we would feel “different,” and he said, “Baby, we’re in our 40s. We were pretty settled when we met. There’s not a lot of ‘different’ that we’re gonna be!” So we started talking about projects to do around the house. And we started going to church together. And we started going grocery shopping together. And we started to set and fall into the familiar and easy and really happy pattern of living together as Husband and Wife. I make his coffee and lunch every weekday; he makes breakfast Sundays before church; Fridays are “Fend for Yourself” for dinner; and Saturdays are “Let’s Eat Out If We Can Afford It.” What night should our date night be? I like fabric softener in my clothes. You stop swiping the covers in the middle of the night! Can we get the cable package with HBO so I can watch Boardwalk Empire? I won’t make you watch football, but I am going to watch football. I am throwing this t-shirt away!!! It is a dust rag now!!! I. Don’t. Like. Pajamas. Oh wait…those are pajamas? Oh…well…I can get with pajamas. I don’t understand DC’s streets! But I like DC! What is “go-go?” Let’s pray for each other at some point every day, ok baby? Even if we just text it. Ok honey. I would like that.

And nothing, none of all that change for him or for me, felt ‘different,’ everything felt completely natural and normal and seamless, as if the transition from being single to being married was a matter of merely waking up. Being married seemed to be so easy that I was nervous, thinking that I must be doing something wrong.

And then life happened.

Less than 30 days after our wedding, my husband’s wonderful mother died suddenly, unexpectantly, shockingly. He was crushed. I was scared. He was scared. I was…I don’t know; speechless. Seriously, THIS??? I watched him respond to the phone call, terrified and clinging to the only two things I knew for certain in that moment: I loved this man like I’d loved no one else, and God loved us both more than we understood. That’s all I had. Would it be enough? That night I wasn’t sure. I can be honest about that now. But it’s what I had and I was going with that, no matter what needed to be done and no matter what was to come. And I had no idea what was to come.

We drove up to New Jersey early the same morning we got that call. A little over two very quiet and very tense hours later, we walked into the hospital lobby and I met his ex-wife for the first time. Awkward doesn’t describe it. As awkward as that was, it wasn’t important. My husband’s beloved, wonderful, hilarious, loving, sweet as a field of sugarcane mother was no longer with us. He and his sisters and his two adult children were devastated. I knew their devastation, and I hated that they had to know it now. As familiar as I was with this particular pain, the pain of the sudden loss of a beloved, I felt helpless, because I knew there was nothing that could or would ease this pain. This was a pain you just had to go through – there’s no medicating or salving it. So I clung to my love for my husband, and my trust in God’s love for us, as I saw my mom’s face in his mom’s, and saw myself standing in the hospital room seeing my mom for the next-to-last last time (the last time would be the funeral), just as he and his sisters were doing at that moment. My heart broke into sharp little pieces all over again, feeling as if something was cutting the inside of my chest. It hurt to breathe, and my head felt like it was going to explode. Now what do I do, God? Didn’t You give him to me? Didn’t You give me to him? Did You do it for THIS?? For THIS?? What am I supposed to do with THIS???? No answers. So I just held my husband’s hand. And when he had to tell his Grandmom that her daughter was gone – just like I had to tell mine – I held my husband as he cried bitterly for his mom. God…what is my purpose now?

We’ve driven up to New Jersey every weekend since his mother’s death, with the exception of two so far. We’ll drive up there at least once a month for the near future. My husband and I and his sisters – who, along with their dad, have just adopted me as part of the clan; God bless them like crazy – are now dealing with those sticky family issues that make you cringe after a death that no one wants to deal with. We’re dealing with unexpected expenses and unexpected days off from work, which of course impact the expenses even more. Budget?? Yeah…ok. We’ll get back to that one of these days. We’re dealing with physical and emotional tiredness and road-weariness we didn’t think we’d have to face outside of a cross-country road trip for a vacation. We’re dealing with friends, family, and others who have been shockingly and painfully callous, uncaring, uncooperative, selfish, and seemingly completely unconcerned about the horrible logistical, emotional and financial difficulties we’re going through. We’re dealing with people who should be doing whatever they can to help make the load lighter for the surviving children, but are instead making selfish demands of the surviving children. We’re dealing with a level of stress that none of us has known before. All while trying to grieve. To experience a sudden death is one thing – to deal with the kind of fallout we have experienced…you’re asking a lot, God. This is JUST…a LOT.

And my husband and I are dealing with all this 60 days into this marriage. Sixty. Days.

NOW I feel different. Because a fiery trial will do that to you – it will transform you. But I also feel different because NOW I know a little better how this whole One thing works. I didn’t really understand until one of us was under fire (him), and the other of us (me) didn’t like it. Oh yeah, NOW I feel VERY different.

Now I feel like I don’t care who you are or what you do, how you know him or how far back y’all go, you will not disrespect or hurt my husband, not if I can help it. Now I feel like he is my responsibility. Not in a hovering Mommy kind of way, but in a THIS IS MY MAN AND I WILL CUT YOU PLEASE DON’T TRY ME kind of way. Now I feel like anyone who has little or no respect for my marriage has little or no respect for me. Now I feel like anyone who has little or no respect for my husband has little or no respect for me. Now I feel like anyone who isn’t praying for us, praying with us, and rooting for us to succeed is just hoping we fail, and I’ve unapologetically got no time for you in our life. Now I feel like anyone who can’t reach out and support us when we experience hard times doesn’t have a place in our celebration when we’ll be experiencing more joyous times. If you can’t show up for us when things suck, don’t bother showing up when we soar. Now I feel like a grownup, a grown woman, a grown a## woman, because being married and facing a storm together will make you realize the very stark difference between your childish pet peeves as somebody’s girlfriend and the very real and extremely adult responsibilities of being a WIFE. Now I understand that there is no time frame for the “for better or worse.” There’s no set period of time you get to enjoy the “better” before you have to endure the “worse.” Now I understand that I had to be a grownup to deal with what came no matter what it was and no matter when it came. Because you get no warning about either.

Yeah, so now I feel different. Because now I feel like the worst day in life with this man next to me (my Honey Bear, my Hero, my Sexy Chocolate Superman) is better than the best day I’ve ever had by myself. And just like God gave us both the strength to endure what was to come, He gave us each other so we wouldn’t have to endure it alone. So yeah, sixty days later, I feel different. I’m a WIFE, and I’m in this for the next sixty YEARS.

-Dedicated to my husband of 60 days and enumerable more to come, Abdus-Shahid Luqman

Psalm 84:11, or The Walk I Haven’t Earned, But I Have Anyway

I know I’m blessed. Not necessarily because I’m getting married, although what a blessing that is!  I mean, God said He wouldn’t withhold any good thing from those whose walk is blameless (Psalm 84:11 – NIV), right?  And I was feeling that verse this morning – FEELING IT!  I AM GETTING MARRIED!!!!!  But I also started feeling this:  I don’t have a “blameless” walk.

I’m not deserving of any of God’s blessings.  I don’t measure up to His grace.  I know exactly when, how, and how often I screw up.  I know I disappoint my Father sometimes.  MANY times, actually.  Knowing all of that, how in the world does Psalm 84:11 even remotely apply to me?  How can I claim that to be true for me considering how rotten I have been, am, and will probably continue to be a little bit?  Why in the world would God give ME grace and glory??  Well, I had to read it in the NLT to get a clearer picture of this:

For the LORD God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.

Now, I don’t look at this from the standpoint of not doing “bad things.”  I don’t think that’s what this verse means.  No, I haven’t killed anyone and I haven’t stolen things (well, I haven’t stolen things since I’ve been saved, anyway), but I have sinned in other ways.  So I haven’t always done “good/right” things.  What I think this verse means involves the one thing I think I may have gotten absolutely right, and that was that I keep running to Jesus.  “Jesus help me; save me; don’t let me suffer because of my foolishness; cover me; help me; don’t let him/her/it get me; Jesus I’m lonely; Jesus I’m so hurt; Jesus I’m really really confused; OHJESUSWHATDIDIJUSTDO; JESUS MY SAVIOUR HELP ME!!!!”  (When I feel really awful about something stupid I’ve done, I think in British spelling – seems more dramatic to me.)  Every time I’ve called on Him, prayed fervently and frantically, He has answered.  Faithfully and without fail.  I may not have gotten the answer I wanted, but He has been stalwart as my Advocate, Protector, and Friend just the same, especially when He’s had to tell me, “No,” or “Not right now,” or “You stop that/don’t you dare do/say that, J!”  But I don’t just call on Him to help me out of chaos and confusion.

I thank Jesus many mornings when I get in the 2001 model car that I bought in 2005 that still runs, especially when it has transported me safely and without problem to Jarratt, VA to see my family, and to Paterson, NJ to see The Man and back.  I praise Jesus on innumerable occasions as I either put my key in the front door of my house that I didn’t do a thing to earn; as I close that door behind me and stand in the foyer looking at what’s in that house; or, as I stand in front of a full refrigerator in my bathrobe, undecided about what I want to eat, remembering the days when the only choices I had were Oodles of Noodles, or bologna, or tuna.  I thank Jesus when I’ve gone through my closets to give away clothes that I can no longer fit or haven’t worn in a year, and looked up after the exercise to realize I STILL have a closet FULL of options.  I’ve thanked Jesus when I’ve asked Him to help me curb my rapacious clothes buying habit, and He did.  I can’t even explain how fervently I thank Jesus when I think of all the previous employers and co-workers who have treated me unfairly, unkindly, who underpaid me or took advantage of me in some way, and who don’t matter one bit now as I work in a job I’m supposed to need a degree to do, but I do pretty doggoned well without one.  Take that Evil Bosses/Co-workers who made me feel like I was stupid and worthless!!  Every time I look at the urn my Mum’s ashes are in, I thank Jesus that when she died we were best friends, our painful past long behind us, and that I didn’t lose my mind with grief at her loss and at my being lost for a while because of it.  And you’d better believe that every time I think of, talk with, or am in any kind of physical proximity to Abdushshahid Luqman (nee Michael Johnson, aka The Man), I think I start praising God in tongues in my heart.  My insides do a little holy dance (it is holy, I promise), and I think Jesus claps and rejoices along with me.  But He would, because this was all His orchestration.  So yeah, I’m down with it! Dance on!!

But just so no one thinks that I see Jesus as some heavenly genie who just gives me stuff and does stuff for me, frequently I just…talk to Him.  I give Him a shout out when things aren’t chaotic at all; when I’m happy for someone else’s blessings and when I’d like Him to attend to someone else’s hurt; when I notice something breathtakingly beautiful in nature, like the deer that hang out in the woods behind the house in the cool of the early morning; when I have the opportunity to do something new, even if it turns out I suck at it (hey, at least I had the chance to try so I know never to do it again); when I have the time to sit on my patio and watch the stars come out in the evening, marveling at their staggering brilliance and multitude, humbled at my insignificance in relation to them, and at my prominence in God’s mind and heart at the same time.  Many times I just lay in bed before I go to sleep and am so overwhelmed not so much at knowing Him, but at the fact that He wants to know me.  So we talk.

I sometimes recall my past hurts and He tells me how He was there and I didn’t even know it, and I thank Him for keeping me through it.  He tells me the things that I’ve done that hurt Him, but always ALWAYS tells me where and how He will help me do better.  He corrects and even chastises sometimes, but never ever without love.  I tell Him my fears, my dreams, my hopes, my bucket list stuff, like the world cruise and seeing a game in every stadium in the NFL one day.  I tell Him that sometimes I feel weird and out of place and just so…different from everybody else I know, like there’s something wrong with me.  He reminds me, again, that there is a difference between different/weird and special, and that He certainly wasn’t going for just different with me.  No matter what I say, no matter what pours out of my heart, He never laughs at me, is never exasperated with me, is never impatient with me.

Ever talked to Jesus in the grocery store?  Oh, I have, “Jesus, help me stay away from the cookie aisle.  Oh Jesus no!  They put the Golden Oreos on the end display!!!  Give me strength, Jesus, givemestrengthgivemestrength…”  Most of the time the cookies stay in the store.  99.8% of the time…

Jesus has been my life raft in this sea of turbulent waters that has been my life.  He’s calmed either the stormy waters or calmed me in the storm time and time again.  There was no way I could get anywhere or receive anything truly worthwhile and really good without Him.  I am clever with the words, but I’m not THAT clever in real life to have worked up this life I have on my own.

Understand this:  none of this means that I can get away with doing evil, hateful, sinful things.  I didn’t magically stop sinning once I became a Christian, either.  What has happened has been the realization that it’s real hard to steal somebody’s wallet when I’m constantly thinking about Jesus.  Hard to get falling down stinking drunk and half naked and bed hop when I’m thinking about Jesus.  And it’s hard for me to stop thinking about Jesus because my life is simply not what it was, I am not who I was, I know none of that is any of my doing, so I’m always marveling at how amazing He’s been to me.  This constant focus on Jesus in my life has kept me from doing a lot of ignorant stuff!  So honestly, this is the ONLY thing I can think of that I’ve EVER really done right that actually matters – I’ve never forgotten Jesus.  How in the world can I?  The multitude of times I’ve stopped and thought with much gratefulness and awe, “How in THE WORLD DID I GET HERE??” The ONLY answer I’ve got is JESUS!  And I think that’s the point of Psalm 84:11.

I’m learning that this Christian life isn’t a tally of do’s and don’ts, a record of rights and wrongs, or a score sheet to keep track of how perfect and holy we can BE.  This Christian life is all about how we develop our relationship with Christ, which teaches us how to develop relationships with other people, which helps us introduce Christ to those people, which helps THEM develop a relationship with Him.  There is great fulfillment and reward for us in that.  Some of that reward is tangible, yes, in the form of stuff and relationships, and that’s good and we should thank God for that always.  After all, doesn’t the Bible say that those who know that God is their fortress and protector will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living?  Yeah, it does, David said so in Psalm 27.  That goodness manifests itself in many, many different ways for different people.  So I don’t begrudge the tangible/temporal blessings.  I just know they’re not the main point of this whole thing, they’re not the real reward.

The reward I’m talking about, at least for me, is this peace/joy/love state of being.  This is not a FEELING.  But it is so hard to really describe.  This crazy, awesome, blanket of…I don’t know what else to call it right now but serenity/certainty/purpose I guess, that comes first from knowing two very important things:  first, that this life is not all there is for me, and as good as it has become, God has promised that what He has waiting afterward is SO MUCH MORE AWESOME THAN THIIIIISSSSS (I can’t even get my mind around that right now)!!!!  And second, that there is nothing in this life that is more powerful than the One who loves and covers me, my Friend, Advocate, Protector and Redeemer Jesus Christ.  HE is for me, therefore NOTHING can succeed that is against me, that is and will always be true, and there is NOTHING better than that.  Keeping that truth at the forefront of my mind, at the forefront of my LIFE, no matter what or who comes or comes against me,  is that thing that Psalms 84:11 says I’ve done right, I think.  And when I look at the verse that follows verse 11, I’m encouraged that I’m on the right track with that thinking:

O Lord of Heavens Armies, what joy for those who trust in you. (Psalms 84:12)

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Crying is not one of my favorite activities, I don’t care how cathartic it is, but I am prone to do it all to easily.  I kind of hate that mushy side of me.

God makes me cry.  Oh, not in a bad way, just when He does things that remind me, “Yes, I’m still here, never left you, got your back, and look how I handled that issue!”  BAM!  Tears.   And praise.  With tears.

The Color Purple makes me cry.  You know which part it is, too.  The very stinking end.  That game of patty cake or whatever it is they’re doing in that field.  So I’ve stopped watching that movie.  And playing patty cake.  Even with babies.

Ugly plus-sized clothes make me cry, but those are tears of frustration and rage, and that’s another category altogether.

But today, I cried tears that I couldn’t really categorize.  As I stood in the bridal salon during the first fitting for my wedding gown, I looked at myself in that beautiful, stunning gown in the full-length mirror and I cried.  I wasn’t sad.  Not even close.  I mean, I look AMAZING in that gown.  More amazing than the most amazing I’ve looked ever in my life amazing.  I am ecstatic with that dress.  Still, I cried.  But why, I wondered?  Well…

I cried for all the years that I’d believed that I wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, witty enough, charming enough, interesting enough, sexy enough, whatever enough for anybody to want me.

I cried for all the times I’d been crushed by someone else’s rejection of me.

I cried for all the times I’d almost given up hope of real love ever finding me.  (There were lots of times.  LOTS)

I cried for all the years that I had to stay strong and smile on the outside while I felt like I was withering away and dying on the inside from loneliness, not able to tell anyone how I felt for fear of being chastised for “not being content with my singleness.”  Of all the Christianese I dislike, that is my most despised phrase of them all.

I cried for all the times some well-meaning person told me I’d never meet a man whose standards and values were the same as mine.  Most of those people were women, by the way.  Thanks for the encouragement, “sisters.”

I cried because the dream that I was told by so many that was improper for me to even dream was finally finally coming true. 

God has shown Himself all in this story of ours.  What a show-off He is!  I asked Him for direction and confirmation and please-don’t-let-this-be-another-dud-Father-or-Ima-cut-somebody-this-time reassurance, and He gave it to me – repeatedly.  Cried.  Big baby tears with mucous.  Every time.

I am so grateful that God helped me to find the truth in Him, that He held my hand and carried me when I was just so tired of it all.  So very, very tired.  I am grateful that even though I almost gave up many times, He wouldn’t let me give all the way up.  And He was never mad at me that I wanted to.  I am so grateful that the man I am marrying prayed the same kind of prayers, had the same kind of road, and has the same kind of heart for God, and for me.  In that order.  I am so very, very grateful, and that’s not even a big enough word.   

Today, as I looked at myself in that mirror in that gown, I realized that I was and will be absolutely beautiful in a dress that was meant for me to wear, on a day that was meant for me to have, with a man who I am meant to build a life with.

So today, I cried.

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I was having a conversation with a beloved friend and I said this:  “I think I’ve learned, and continue to learn, that some things in this life are just borne out in suffering, and there’s no getting around that.  That is the uncomfortable truth that so many Christians don’t want to hear because they want an easy answer that makes them feel good so they don’t have to deal with someone else’s discomfort that they have no answer for.”

I made this statement as she and I were chatting about relationships and how we’ve both experienced so much hurt and disappointment and pain that we’ve begun to be used to, and even expect, hurt, disappointment, and pain more than anything else in future relationships.  It’s so incredibly hard to trust anew when your trust has been repeatedly ripped to shreds in the past.  But there is actually something so much worse than the emotional violence and its deep psychic damage that occurs when decent Christian people (because I’m talking to and about Christians in my posts, always) are abused, played with, taken for granted, and generally shafted in romantic relationships by other Christians.  But to get to what that is, I think I have to establish some background.

I believe that there are some aches and pains and desires and longings that just aren’t going to be easily soothed with prayer and fasting.  For some of us, and I am speaking candidly of those of us experiencing prolonged singleness, there aren’t enough prayers and scriptures and fasts and laying-on-of-holy-healing-hands, and olive oil on the forehead that can take away the ache in our hearts (and arms and elsewhere – let’s be really real here) night after night after year after year as we lie alone in bed; when we wake by ourselves morning after morning after year after year; when we embark on yet another vacation solo (even if we’re with friends, we’re once again not with “someone special” to enjoy and make memories with); when we encounter another life milestone – good or bad – with no beloved by our side to cheer the loudest for us or to comfort us the most.  I really don’t care how much you love Jesus, when you are lonely and desire companionship and love and to love someone back, when it appears year after year to seem less and less likely to happen, it can sometimes feel like a despair like nothing else, because it is something that you really can’t do much to “make” happen, but you want so desperately for it to.  It’s not quite as bad as grief after a death, but at the same time it might actually seem worse, because with grieving a loved one, you KNOW they’re not coming back; there is a finality that just….IS and DONE.  With this despair, it’s like a grieving that never itself is going to die until the desire that prompts it is met.  THAT despair comes and goes and visits again and is banished and finds a way back and is exorcised and peeks in the window, tapping lightly but urgently.  There’s nothing you can do to make it go completely away.  You can manage it.  You can ignore it.  You can tame it a little bit maybe.  But as long as the desire for companionship and love is in your heart sincerely, this despair can sometimes grip you like none other as long as you don’t have what you so deeply, deeply desire.  I know how awful that sounds, how utterly hopeless and depressing it seems, but, hey…welcome to the occasional state of my world.  Pull up a chair.

It’s also frustrating because there is really nothing you can do to hasten the thing you want along.  You can’t make love happen.  You can  make yourself available (and I think you should – this idea of being completely passive when you want to be married is odd to me, and I don’t believe it is Biblical – if I want a job, do I sit at home and pray about it, but not do anything to get one); hang around where available men/women hang around (stop hanging out with your married girlfriends all the doggoned time), let trusted friends know you’re looking, try internet dating safely (it can be done, and you can actually meet very good new friends this way), speed dating, mail order spouses (that is a joke – do NOT buy a spouse. You may buy a dog or cat, but not a spouse).  You can do these things and I think they’re ok (yes, yes, except for the mail order thing), because I believe they can help you learn how to communicate with people and find out more about you, about how to be social.  But you cannot “make” love happen.  At the end of the day, I don’t care where you meet people, whether in church or in the grocery store or after you’ve slammed into the back of their car at a stop light, the other person still has to want to love you.  I don’t think I can say it enough, so I’ll say it again; you simply cannot make love happen.  At least I don’t think so.  And if you could, would you WANT to make someone love you?  Really?  I think that’s called prostitution, it’s illegal in most states, immoral for all of us Christians, and you just plain don’t want to have to pay somebody – with anything – to love you.  No, I think sincere love must sincerely find you, and God has this amazing way of making love find people in the most unusual and the most spectacular and the most mundane ways all the time.  The sad fact is, though, that for some of us – for what seems like far too many of us – it seems to take most of our adult, sane lives for love to finally peek around the stinking corner at us.  For some of us, love finally shows up when we’re angry and bitter and used up, and any semblance of kindness and tenderness has been stomped out of us and dried up by every half-timing, game-playing, lying, two-timing, trying-to-get-as-much-sex-or-money-as-they-can joker/jokette we’ve met in the choir, the homeless feeding ministry, the deacon/deaconess board, the youth ministry, the pulpit (oh stop, like it don’t happen), or in the general church population.  For some of us, by the time real true love finally gets around to us, we’re terrified to trust ANYONE; we think our own shadow is out to get something from us, because every time we have trusted someone before….  And that is just a maddening, frustrating, even brutal truth that too many of us single Christians – especially those of my generation and the one after mine – are enduring.  Now, I believe there are many, many twisted, misinformed, unfortunate, and Scripturally-misinterpreted causes for the jacked up relational environment between men and women in the Body of Christ today.  I don’t have time to go into them all right now.  But what I will say is that it is not just ONE cause, and it is not just something perpetrated by ONE gender.  We’re all pretty guilty on this one.

Suffice it say, though, that for many of us, it is difficult to navigate single waters in the community of Christ these days.  What makes it even harder is that it’s hard to explain the kind of hurt and longing many of us experience to Christians who’ve been married for some time; people who married in their early 20s or even 30s; because they seem to feel like those of us who are still waiting for our love to find us should just be happy we’re still single.  This sometimes makes me wonder if their marriage sucks so badly that they don’t want me to have anything to do with marriage at all.  But what I really wonder when I hear these pronouncements of “Girl, you should just be content in your singleness!” is,  “But what if I’m not, at least not every day?”

Real talk, what if I am grateful for where God has me right now and know without a doubt that I am richly blessed, but I am also sometimes experiencing crushing loneliness; an agonizing desire for companionship, tenderness, and for love – emotional and physical (real talk, no time for sugar-coating stuff) – from another human being; a deep desire to freely love another with no fear or suspicion or recrimination or regret or need for repentance; a desire for the simple joy of being able to put my feet in someone’s lap and have him rub those feet while we’re watching a movie; to make a cup of tea for my beloved on a lazy Saturday morning; or to disagree with and later lay down next to a man who I know, regardless of what happened an hour before, I wouldn’t want to go through the rest of my life without.  These may seem small, silly things to some, but to the one who’s never had them and wants them…the ache for these things over a prolonged period of time can seem like the pain of a slowly penetrating knife into our very soul.  This pain, if it endures for years, can make you question yourself, make you wonder if there’s something fundamentally wrong with YOU.  It should make you lean all the more on Christ, but even greater dependence on Him doesn’t remove the pain.  Bet not a lot of people are willing to be THAT honest with you.  Yes, I have learned to unashamedly cry out to, cry to, cry tears into my Bible until the words were blurry, rage almost incoherently, beg and plead, and just repeat over and over again, “Why?” and “When?” to my Savior about my pain.  I have cried myself to sleep after Disappointment #whatever, and have cried myself to sleep because I was tired of going to sleep alone and wondered if there’d ever ever come a day when I wouldn’t.  And while I have yet to fully understand “the why” and I can never know “the when” until it actually happens (and He does not give you advance notice on that, by they way), I do know that He knows these things, He knows me, and He knows exactly how I feel.  To Jesus, my emotions and hurts and longings, and even fears, and the fact that I have them are not threatening or uncomfortable, so I do not have to hide them from him – they do not bother Him one bit.  I know He is with me.  So I cling to Him.  And still, I ache.  And still, He’s with me.  So I cling to Him.  And still…I ache…

So, what if the days of me feeling like I DON’T enjoy being single so much anymore begin to catch up to the number of days that I’m okay with it?  And what of the fact that I increasingly don’t really “enjoy” being single anymore, but am merely “okay” with it these days?  Does this mean there’s something’s wrong with my faith?  Does my lack of “contentment in my singleness” indicate that I am unappreciative of God’s current provision for me?  Or is it that my desires themselves are illegitimate?  What I so often wonder is whether the well-meaning Christians who scoff at the loneliness and longings of Christian singles are saying that we’re wrong for feeling the way we do, or are they saying we’re wrong for ADMITTING that we feel the way we do?  Because I’ll tell you, either position is a lie and produces one of the most destructive and hurtful things I’ve endured as a single Christian woman traveling along this journey and it is something I believe must.  Stop.  Now.

See, what’s worse for those of us who are enduring a prolonged singleness we don’t even want (some folks are cool with never marrying, know they won’t, and don’t even want to – please know that I ain’t one of those folks), is enduring the lack of compassion or any attempt at understanding of how we feel by some of our married brothers and sisters in Christ.  Not being able to be honest about our hurts and struggles without feeling like we’re being told to shut up and stop whining when we already feel so lonely and overlooked by love is like being the test subjects for the effectiveness of the first lesson in Spiritual Self-Esteem Destruction 101.  Let me tell you what I believe this really is:  this disregard of people’s struggles because it’s not like yours is a tool of our enemy, the Devil, to undermine the unity of the entire body of believers.  It is nothing less than something that insidious, so let’s just call it what it is, A TACTIC OF THE DEVIL.  Because this attitude creates an “us” and “them” environment in which some of the “us” feel unacknowledged and taken advantage of and dismissed by the “them.”  Sermons are directed at the “us” telling us to just be thankful for where we are and to stop complaining and whining about what we don’t have with almost no acknowledgment of or help in the way of dealing with the very real pain we feel and endure; and elders and leaders in our churches give too little time and energy to creating an environment of open and honest dialogue and inclusive community for those of us with no family of our own who just want to be loved, feel included, and be treated like we and our feelings – no matter how uncomfortable and inconvenient – matter to someone.  There are plenty of classes and retreats to help married people communicate and have better marriages, but there are far too few resources in churches to help single people know how to relate to and understand themselves and people of the opposite sex in a healthy way, so we can stop screwing each other over emotionally and otherwise, which only creates yet another generation of hurt, angry, relationally dysfunctional Christians.  So when we messed up single people with no prior training or guidance on why men and women think, are wired, and act differently (and that all of this is not only ok, but designed by God to be so and why) are blessed with the opportunity to marry, we’re somehow expected to work out all our relational problems in six-weeks of pre-marital counseling.  Seriously, how in the world is the divorce rate in the body of Christ a mystery to some folks?

Now, I understand that some folks who’ve been married since graduating high school may not get how I, at 45 and NEVER having been married, feel.  I get that they have no idea what I struggle with, what life is like for me.  But honestly, you can’t help me bear my burdens if you think my burdens aren’t real, aren’t legitimate.  You see, the amazing thing about being able to bear one another’s burdens is that you don’t have to UNDERSTAND my burdens in order to help with me with them!  You don’t need to know what I’m going to through to acknowledge and be compassionate about the fact that I’m going through something.  I have no idea what it’s like to be a heroin addict, but if someone said to me, “I just can’t say no to the needle!  It calls me and I just can’t say no!”  I’m not going to blow off their struggle because I don’t get it.  I’m going to tell them that I hurt because they hurt, even if I don’t get their hurt, and I’m going to pray for them because even though Jacqueline Malone doesn’t get it, I KNOW I pray to the One Who Does!!!  I will pray for your hurt and I KNOW Jesus will meet you where you hurt and He will help you, even if I don’t know how to!!  And the even more amazing and downright stunningly, achingly beautiful thing is, if Jesus wants me to help the addict who I cannot relate to in any way, HE’LL TELL ME HOW TO DO THAT OR DIRECT ME TO SOMEONE WHO DOES!!!  But if I don’t even think your struggle is worth me being concerned about, if I don’t even believe it’s a legitimate concern, then I’m not even going to bother praying for you at all.  And maybe one more time of you reaching out for help, maybe the LAST TIME you decide to reach out for help, you once again don’t get the help you so desperately need.  So you continue to struggle.  Alone.

Look, just because my problems aren’t like yours, it doesn’t mean my problems aren’t actual problems.  So instead of telling us singles to just “be content in our singleness” when we try to talk about our hurts and longings, if you don’t get it, if you don’t understand why we’re hurting and you don’t know what to say, let me help you.  This is actually something a dear friend said to me as I poured out my heart to her after having it broken yet again:  “I’m so sorry you’re hurting.  I don’t know how you feel, and I don’t understand what you’re going through, but I love you and I will pray for God to help you and comfort you and heal your heart.”

And it wouldn’t hurt at all if you threw in, “And I will pray for Him to keep you until love finds you, and I will pray that it finds you soon.”

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I remember school being a place where I was laughed at and ridiculed a lot.  It didn’t seem to matter which school or what grade, and no matter what I did or said, somehow it became fodder for kids to put me down.  Whenever I’d have all the answers to the teachers’ questions in class, other kids would tease me, calling me a smarty-pants, Teacher’s Pet, or worse.  I was laughed at as I wore the dress I was so proud that I’d made all by myself in home economics class to school for extra credit.  The Popular Girls amused themselves by calling my blue and white checkered cotton sheath (the ladies know what that is) “The Picnic Tablecloth,” and laughed even harder when they asked where I got it and I said, “I made it.”  A teacher asked the class what we’d like to be when we grew up and I answered, “the President of the United States.”  I couldn’t shrink in my chair low enough to get below the waves of laugher from the class, and I couldn’t become invisible so as not to hear and see the giggling and pointing as kids derisively said, “Look, there goes The President!” as I walked down the halls.  No matter the grade, school, or activity, the pain and shame of being made to feel not good enough, silly, stupid, and out of place comprises almost the totality of my educational experience.  In elementary school, I tried out for a track meet just to see if I could do it, and was met with uproarious laughter from the spectators and other runners as I came across the line, limping, dead absolutely last; in junior high, when it took me four tries to throw a layup into the basket as I was alone at the end of the court, the rest of the gym class slowing their advance form the other end, watching in amazement at my repeated failures, then offering “cheers” of sarcasm: “Wow, that amazing shot only took 4 tries!” “Way to go…finally!” as they took the ball and left me standing ashamed and near tears under the basket; in junior high when I couldn’t see a softball falling out of the sky right at me, the ball falling on the ground in front of me instead of in my outstretched gloved hand, and hearing the jeers from the kids on the field asking incredulously “Why didn’t you MOVE;” in high school when I wore what I thought was my Mom’s prettiest dress – a white satin floor-length gown with an elaborate embroidered horseshoe pattern – to the ROTC ball, and was mocked mercilessly the next day by the other cadets in my squadron because of the horseshoe pattern that I liked so much (which sort of served me right, because I sat in that room laughing at the other kids they were making fun of, trying to fit in with the Cool Kids, until they targeted me and I remembered that I was not and never would be “one of them”); in high school still, having my heart broken by a boy who I thought really liked me and confiding in who I believed was my best friend at the time, only to have her publicly taunt and belittle me about it in a game of “Hotseat” in Civics class one day, laughing at how naïve and stupid I was to think that “…someone like him would like someone like [me]…”  These aren’t even all of the indignities I remember enduring in school, but they’re enough.  This is the stuff that caused me to not want to make waves, to not want to be seen, to not want to be noticed, to prefer to keep my opinion to myself and to not want to meet new people because I didn’t want to be ridiculed and put down or rejected, and I’ve felt that way well into adulthood.  I struggled with my self-esteem so much, not wanting to “say the wrong thing” or “do anything silly/stupid” because I didn’t want to be criticized for expressing what I know, understand, or believe; terrified that someone might deem my intelligence insufficient compared to theirs, or that my conclusions and reasoning would be considered illogical and childish; or that someone would just not take me seriously or that they would consider me insignificant because I don’t behave in a way that they feel is acceptable – ultimately considering me unacceptable.  Having that in my head and heart as I was navigating my teen and early adult years, and even into my 30s was like a darkness and a weight and a pain that is nearly indescribable beyond those words.  I still remember what it felt like, and it’s scares me to remember it.  And it makes me terribly sad to remember how afraid of failure and people’s opinions of me I was, how much those fears controlled my life, and the things and the people and the behavior and the treatment they caused me to do and hold onto and accept and excuse.  The girl who lived that life didn’t make it.  Not because she took her life (she wanted to, often, but was too afraid to even do that, thank God), but because The Chick she grew into was born because of an encounter with Jesus Christ.  Oh, I know what it means for Jesus to transform you, but that’s another post.  I’ll get all up into that, I promise, because that still sends shivers down my spine when I think that He even had any use for somebody like me…you don’t even understand…but again, that’s for another day.

The years of my damaged self-esteem having me so convinced that I would fail at everything, so I wouldn’t bother to try anything at all are pretty much over.  This Chick will try almost anything once, as long as it’s not illegal, immoral, or completely insane, and that last criterion is relative to one’s definition of “insane.”  And “completely.”  The fear of failure, and especially of failing in public, does not grip and control me like it did for so many years.  It’s funny, but that was actually the whole point of the powerlifting thing.  It didn’t start out as a way to overcome my fears.  I swear I just thought this incredibly hot man who had always been very nice to me was finally coming on to me and I figured I’d respond.  But it turns out he wasn’t coming on to me at all (crap), but he seriously wanted to help me get better at something he saw that I was clearly good at that I didn’t even realize (totally awesome).  What started as me just trying to learn to work out with free weights so I could get the maximum benefit from the strength training I enjoyed so much more than cardio (me no likey cardio very much), turned into me being dead scary serious about something I’d never done before, didn’t even know I could do, and had no idea I could ever be good at, at 42 years of age.  But about halfway through it I knew this thing was much more than some middle-aged chick playing with weights with the big boys.  No, this powerlifting thing was really all about me finding me and owning me and announcing to the me who hated me and to the rest of the world who had anything negative to say to or about me, “Shut the [cussword] up!  I’M THE BAWS!!!!  [i.e., ‘Boss,’ for non-Rick Ross fans]”  I mean, seriously, after deadlifting 285lbs and bench-pressing 160lbs in a t-shirt, a wrestling singlet, and a weight belt in front of an audience of up to 200 people a few times, there’s nothing much left to fear about much of anything, is there.  Except perhaps spiders and others bugs as big as my hand.  And zombies.

Yup, moving more and more weight in the gym and winning those competitions helped boost my ego quite a bit.  Having a few medals, trophies, and plaques as evidence that I CAN do something incredibly hard and quite unusual were, and continue to be, great and constant sources of inspiration.  The thing is, those things don’t’ remind me that I’m strong as much as they remind me that I’m CAPABLE of doing any doggoned thing I want to, all I have to do is put in the work.  No, powerlifting didn’t prove that I was strong – it proved to me that I wasn’t as weak as I believed I was.

See, I know how hard powerlifting training is.  Most people – men included – can’t endure it.  But I did, and if I had the time (seriously – to commit to powerlifting to compete, we’re talking about HOURS in the gym SEVERAL days a week, and that’s just the beginning of it), I would again.  I know what it feels like to miss a lift in training AND in competition, how crappy that feels, and what it feels like to want to keep trying until you master that weight.  Just like anything else, being successful at powerlifting isn’t about being the strongest person in the gym, not really.  It’s about being willing to put in the work required to accomplish the goal of mastering the weight in spite of long hours, ridiculous supplementation (Animal Pak is the BOMB though; I think I need to go back to taking that stuff…), rivers of sweat, calloused and rough hands, scraped and bloody knees, repeated frustration, and sho nuff physical pain.  The progress is slow and sometimes it feels like no matter how hard you try, you keep getting beaten by that stupid 5 lb jump.  Until the day that you finally move that weight you’ve been fighting with like it was meant to move; as if that 5 lbs finally realized who the heck The Baws is in this game, and that Baws would be YOU.  Through powerlifting I came to realize that just because something is hard to accomplish, and takes time and work and laser-focused commitment that no one else can even come close to understanding (oh, not everyone was supportive, amused, or had positive things to say to me when I was training and competing – not at all) to overcome, it doesn’t mean I can’t accomplish and overcome it.  It just means that’s the price I need to pay to get it done, if the goal means anything to me at all, that price ain’t too high, and I’ve got enough in the bank to afford to pay it.  More than enough.  In fact, it’s pocket change compared to that feeling of CONQUERING, finally, that thing that stood like a defiant boulder in the path of my success.  That’s what I got from powerlifting, that was the point; what the work I put in and the accomplishments I earned taught me about myself.  Not that I am strong as much as I am CAPABLE, more than equipped, very well-qualified and FULLY ABLE to do just about anything.  I.  Want.  To.  Do.

So yes, powerlifting helped my self-esteem a bit.  I did indeed develop a bit of swagger as a result of it that I didn’t have before (yes, Jacquie got a lil swagger – just a lil bit).  But that’s only part of the story.  The accomplishments I experienced in the past few years didn’t completely slay the negative self-talk demons I’ve fought most of my life.  Because with every level of success you have in life, there will be new challenges.  And that’s yet another story…

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A few years ago, I left a church because an email was circulated by a someone in a position of some authority and influence containing negative and incorrect statements about then-candidate Barack Obama.  At the time, I remember that I wasn’t sure who I was going to vote for, and was still gathering my own information, so I wasn’t committed to either candidate yet.  But the content of the email was pretty inflammatory, accusing Mr. Obama of possibly not being a US citizen and almost definitely not being a Christian, and went on to say something to the effect of the reason he was leading in the polls was because “Christians weren’t voting their faith.”  Committed to a candidate or not, this email made me pretty angry, because 1) the man couldn’t have been elected to the Illinois Senate, where he’d served a couple of terms, if he weren’t a U.S. citizen; 1) he had released his birth certificate and had more than proven his citizenship at that point (which was insulting to demand he do in the first place, but I digress…); and, 3) he had publicly professed his belief and faith in Jesus Christ.  I responded to the email chain, saying that I didn’t think it was right for Christians to participate in this kind of misinformation-spreading, even if they didn’t agree with his politics, and that accusing him of not being a Christian was just wrong as he’d said he was one – we don’t have a litmus test for Christianity, so how can we question someone’s faith when we don’t know them?  I went on to say that suggesting that people who would vote for him rather than John McCain weren’t “voting their faith” seemed a lot like suggesting that people who don’t vote Republican are somehow acting against their Christian faith, and that seemed wrong to me, since there is nothing in the Bible that I knew of that tells us who we should vote for in political elections.  “Voting is a matter of personal choice based on a lot of factors, faith possibly being one of them, but it is not right to judge someone’s level of faith based on the way they vote, because voting is no litmus test for Christianity,” is what actually I replied to the email chain.  The responses I received from some people were some incredibly mean-spirited stuff.  I cannot tell you how shocked and hurt I was.  I tried to get over it and I stayed at that church for a while, because I didn’t want to leave because of silly political disagreements, but the passing out of voting guides supplied by politically conservative organizations, and sly, obviously negative comments sprinkled into sermons and even praise and worship night prayer time about the “liberal media” and the “liberal agenda” made me feel extremely uncomfortable there.  Not because I’m necessarily politically liberal all the time – I’m an independent and see benefits and issues with each of the two major political party platforms, and those of other parties.  But I became increasingly uncomfortable because I felt more and more like that church couldn’t have seemed like such a welcoming place for people who may have indeed been politically liberal, and I just didn’t want to be a part of a church that made ANYONE feel unwelcome for ANY reason.  I remember thinking that I didn’t want anyone to think I felt the way some in the church did, and I really didn’t think I should have to ever explain that I didn’t!  The more I thought and prayed about it, the more I came to the conclusion that the church just isn’t the place to take sides on political issues at all, because all that does is create yet another division within the body of Christ and causes people to look at, and sometimes treat, folks who don’t vote like they do negatively.  And that is not good.

So here we are again in 2012, and the vitriolic tenor of American politics from four years ago has not really changed, and neither has the schism that I saw growing in the body of Christ in 2008 (I noticed a lot of the same, and worse, caustic rhetoric being bantied about on shows and in  writings of renowned Christian “leaders” that conveyed the “us vs. them, and Obama is “one of them” kind of theme) that has been created by the infusion of politics into the Christian church.  Or was it the insertion of the Christian church into politics?  I don’t know which is the chicken or the egg and which came first, but I do know this:  it bothers me that among Christians, who we choose to vote for has become this litmus test for Christianity that we actually argue and fight about; if you support the wrong candidate (or are even on the wrong side of a particular issue), then you’re not really a Christian who really loves God.  You’re not voting your faith!  I thought about this a lot after a few conversations I’ve had and after watching the interesting social ripples of the past few months, and I’ve come to some conclusions.  I don’t know how interesting they are, but I’ll share them anyway.

First, if we want to be honest, from what I understand, NEITHER political party fully represents the standards of God.  As a Christian, I recognize there are serious issues regarding the things I believe on both sides of the political fence.  Just looking at two issues – abortion and social welfare (which doesn’t really do any justice to a complete comparison of Republicans and Democrats, but I’m just making a point here using two of the Big Issues For Christians):  sure, Republicans support using legislation to protect unborn life (overturning Roe v. Wade).  But they don’t seem to be very supportive of the government providing much in the way of social services, especially those that would help women who keep those babies sustain that life.  I feel like you can’t say that you want the government to tell women not to abort their babies, but turn around and say you don’t want the government to help women feed and clothe and care for those babies the government told them they had to keep.  To be fair, not ALL Republicans believe in the drastic reduction or complete gutting of social programs for the poor; the number of socially moderate and even liberal Republicans, while remaining true to “traditional” fiscal conservative ideologies (industry deregulation, tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy), is actually growing according to some Young Republicans themselves http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/us/politics/young-republicans-erase-lines-on-social-issues.html.  I like spending less money all the time as long as quality and people don’t suffer as a result.

Sure, Democrats support the government helping the poor and disadvantaged when they actually need it, and have even overhauled the welfare system in this country so there is drastically less abuse and fewer instances of cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance (that was Bill Clinton, by the way, who passed welfare reform legislation).  But they also support funding Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions in some areas of the country. In this country, the latest statistics show that almost 3,315 babies were aborted EVERY DAY in 2007 (according to the U.S. Census, 1,210,000 abortions were performed in 2007 – the last year data was tabulated http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6001a1.htm. 3,315 is the total number of abortions performed in that year divided by 365 ).  This is simply  unfathomable and unacceptable.  To be fair, not ALL Planned Parenthood locations provide abortions (so they’re not the only guilty parties in this bloody mess) – some abortion providers are private and really are cash-only services; some don’t provide abortions at all, and as an organization they do provide other critical and life-saving health services to poor women, like free mammograms, contraceptives (if you don’t want women who aren’t going to be abstinent not to get pregnant and you don’t want them on welfare, you’ve got to do something) and pap smears (if you knew how much those things cost…).  So the questions is how much of Planned Parenthood’s services are dedicated to abortions, and the answer is debatable, depending on who you ask and what their agenda is.  But I get a lot of my political information here http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/planned-parenthood/.  They say it’s about 3%, and the federal funds cannot be used to fund abortions.  I’m inclined to believe them.  However, I’d prefer that my tax dollars not go to ANY organization that provides ANY abortions EVER.

Now, these are just two issues real quick and extremely watered-down that I used to try to show that both parties are in direct violation of God’s standards, because God hates the shedding of innocent blood/murder (Proverbs 6:17 and a whole bunch of others), and He hates the disregard, oppression, and the taking advantage of the poor (Proverbs 22:16, 22-23, and whole bunch of others).  So when I vote as a Christian, which sin do I vote against?  Which sin is worse?  Which sin is not so bad?  If I believe that there are no degrees to sin, and all sin the same, how can I say that I vote for a “lesser evil,” when it’s all – abortion and not helping the poor – sin, and by definition, all evil?  See, I recognize that as a Christian, I really can’t, in good conscience, vote for ANY candidate of ANY party that espouses ANY values that are against ANY of God’s standards EVER.  So really, if I were really “voting my faith,” as I’ve heard so many Christians say they’re doing when they staunchly support one party or another, I really wouldn’t be able to vote.  AT ALL AND EVER.  But that’s just from an entirely Christian point of view, and that’s just how I see it.  But I have to add, even more honestly from my Christian perspective, in THIS election, if I were to vote STRICTLY my faith, there is no way I could vote for someone who doesn’t even believe that Jesus is the Messiah.  http://www.gotquestions.org/Mormons.html.  I’m not making a political plug, I’m talking about Jacqueline Malone “voting her faith” as a Christian, if I really honestly and truly were to do such a thing.

But as I said previously, I don’t believe there is anything in the Bible where God tells us how to, or even that we should or should not, vote (if I’m wrong, somebody tell me, please.  I do hate being blatantly wrong).  Therefore…

As an American who is thankful to live in a country in which elections are free and relatively fair (generally speaking, though they haven’t always been, and have been a little sketchy in the recent past), I choose to look at the situation from the perspective of which candidate do I believe has the best interests of the most people in consideration in his (or her – it’ll happened again forreal this time) policies.  Understanding that not everyone believes the same about government and governing, not everyone has the same life experiences, and not everyone has the same needs, desires, abilities, and skills in this country, I consider which candidate has policies that will help the MOST people in America.  Not who will help the people with the most, not who will help the people with the least, and not even who will help the people who believe like I do the most.  But which candidate’s policies will positively affect most aspects of most Americans’ lives, regardless of what they believe as far as religion or anything else is concerned.  And THAT is the point of voting in the United States of America.  It is not supposed to be a vehicle to advance a particular religious agenda, Christian or otherwise, because seriously, how can you force people who may not believe in God to obey God through man-made legislation – where in the Bible is that EVER done (again, somebody tell me where in the Bible a secular government used laws to make people obey commands God gave to the PEOPLE OF GOD, because if it’s there, I don’t know where it is, and if it’s there, I’d like to know), and how is that going to work in getting people to WANT to turn from their sin and pursue a relationship with God?  No, voting in THIS country is supposed to continue to maintain a society not in which all Americans are Christians or are living by Christian values, but in which all Americans are provided equal LEGAL protection under the law, an opportunity to have access to the tools and avenues through which we can all obtain and maintain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of what we believe, including the right to believe in Christian values for our PERSONAL lives, and even to believe in no religion at all.  It is NOT a perfect system and it sometimes falls noticeably and woefully short of its very lofty goals, but I’ll take it over all others, because the goals are higher than any others!  If you shoot for the stars and miss, doggonit you’re still on the moon!  Besides, I look at the Middle East and the religion-based governments there and that is all I need to see to know that I do not want anybody’s religious values to be enforced through legislation in the United States.  But, that’s just me.

So, if deciding from that perspective leads me to vote for a Democrat, when I tell that to a Christian who is voting for a Republican, I ought not have to defend too much why, as a Christian, I’ve chosen to vote as I do.  And the same is true for a Christian who chooses to vote for a Republican and expresses his or her choice.  We can discuss it a little, but as soon as it gets heated and people’s feelings get all involved, the discussion needs to end, because there is nothing, NOTHING that should come between two Christians’ ability to be unified in their faith, not whether one eats meat and the other only vegetables, not whether one worships on Saturday and another on Sunday, and not whether one votes Democrat and another votes Republican, or heck, chooses not to vote at all.  Whatever we believe and do, including voting, we should be fully convinced FOR OURSELVES to believe and do it, and not condemn others because they believe and do differently.  As long as we’re not talking about who Jesus is, it ought not be an issue between us.  But if we use what we have chosen for ourselves as a platform to condemn, denigrate, question the faith of, and judge another believer who has not chosen as we have, we have sinned (Romans 14).  I’ve been guilty of this in the past.  I may not have been mean and nasty about it, but I sure have been questioning where I really didn’t need to be, and continued a heated discussion when I should have just let it go or not gotten involved at all, and I ask the Lord’s and my brothers’ and sisters’ forgiveness for that.  Admittedly, it’s hard to walk away from a debate when you like to at least get people to admit that they understand your perspective, even if they don’t agree with it.  But I’d rather, much much rather, be unified in love with my brothers and sisters than be “understood” about my vote for who “should” be in political office.  Because all authority, regardless of who we vote for, is appointed by God anyway (Romans 13:1-7) so why the deuce waste all this mental and emotional energy arguing about it; and, debating or defending who I vote for just isn’t as important as my love for not only those who share my walk of faith, but for all men, and it never should be (Romans 12:18).

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I was thinking about how a relationship I had with a friend recently fell apart.  It happened slowly, through a series of events over a period of time.  There was disrespect and taking advantage and resentment, and it left me very hurt, very angry, and very, very sad.  I tried to believe that the behavior was not intentional and that the person I thought was my friend was not really perfectly alright with mistreating someone who tried to help them, but after a while, I had to come to terms with the fact that the person really was just selfish, childish, and perfectly fine with being that way regardless of how it affected  me, and there was really nothing I could do to help or change that.  As I thought about that relationship and how it went (and whether I could have done something more, something less, something differently – you know how we do even though we know it’s really not us), I started thinking about relationships in general and had some interesting thoughts:

The first came from the lesson I learned through this experience, and that is that maintaining a friendship isn’t easy.  For friends to remain so, they each have to pick their battles, decide what they want to make an issue and address or just let go, or they’ll be fighting over every little slight, every little thing  all the time, and eventually get tired of fighting and go their separate ways in anger.  They have to be supportive of each other, or else one of them will feel like the other one really doesn’t care about or their interests.  They have to defer to each other sometimes, do what the other wants to do even though they may really not feel like it or are into it, or else one of them will feel like the other is selfish and always wants to have everything their way.  They have to learn to communicate the way each other is receptive to hearing, or else one will always feel like the other doesn’t listen or doesn’t know how to talk to them, and doesn’t care.  They have to make time to spend time with each other, or else the friendship will drift apart for lack of participation and interest, and the former best friends will become more acquaintances than anything else.  They have to be honest with each other when difficult things need to be said, but they have to say those difficult things with care and kindness, or else the person who needs to be talked to will only hear anger, accusation, and judgment and not the truth that’s being told.  They have to make efforts to appreciate each other’s kindnesses and support, or else one of them is going to feel like the other one is taking advantage of them.  They have to respect one another even if and when they don’t always agree, or else one of them is fittin’ to end up with her weave torn out and her feelings hurt.  Too far…  Anyway, GOOD friendships with mature people who all try to do their part in the friendship go exactly like this, with ups and downs, struggles and recoveries, tears and joy.  Mostly, good friends laugh at the struggles when they’re over if they even bring them up again at all, and, well, rejoice in the joy of having each other in their lives and feel blessed to know such caring, supportive, awesome people who just love them back..  I am feeling particularly warm and fuzzy about a great group of ladies and two dudes right now…  [singing Can You Feel The Love Tonight]

The next thought I had was that almost all relationships between human beings contain a level of difficulty through which we all must navigate in order to maintain them.  When you think about it, this isn’t actually all that profound, because generally, human beings are complex, messy creations.  We can’t help but complicate things – EVERYthing – with our different personalities and perspectives and priorities and ways of communicating, and those ever pesky feelings of ours that we let control our behavior toward other people.  And I’m not even talking about people in friendships, I’m just talking about how we are on TUESDAY at WORK after the staff meeting when all the coffee’s gone.  HOW HARD IS IT JUST TO MAKE ANOTHER POT OF COFFEE???  Oh, don’t act like you’re not upset when that happens.  Anyway, this thought (not the one about the coffee, but the larger thought) led me to this…

Now, marriage, I know, is a much more intense and obviously more permanent relationship than a friendship, even a bestest friendship forever.  And even though what married couples have to navigate is a lot more weighty, and a lot more costly if you get it wrong or ignore it, than what friends have to, the basic obstacle course in a friendship and in a marriage seems very similar:  you need supportiveness, compromise, communication, positive interaction/affection, appreciation, honesty with gentleness, and respect, and not necessarily in that order.  I’m sure I’ve left some stuff out, because I have my own personal pet peeves and you have yours, but you understand what I’m getting at, right?  The basic ingredients needed in a good marriage aren’t all that different from the basic ingredients needed in a good friendship.  I don’t care how mystical and syruppy romantic people like to make marriage out to be, it’s really the development of something deeper, greater, fuller from what better have started out as a great friendship between a man and a woman.  Ok, ok, a man and a woman who were hot after each other.  But if they couldn’t or didn’t take the time to be good friends first…

All those thoughts coalesced into this idea:  those of us Single Travelers who are serious about our friendships and understand the value of them and the people in them have already had some basic, cursory, entry-level experience with the basic, cursory, entry-level requirements needed for a good marriage.  I’m not saying we know it all and are completely prepared for marriage because we are great at being great friends; what I AM saying is that I think a lot of us Single Travelers know more than I think a lot of folks think we know about what marriage requires.  Because if a decent friendship requires work to maintain and is difficult at times and it’s just a friendship, then OF COURSE marriage, a much deeper and more intense relationship than a mere friendship, requires work to maintain and is difficult at times!  That’s just LOGICAL!!  So seriously, I can’t take too many more married people telling me how difficult marriage is and how much work it is as a justification for telling me that I shouldn’t want to be married, or as the reason I should be glad I’m single, as if the relationships I have don’t require any effort at all!  Come on, man!!!  [throws chair in frustration, then goes back to get it and set it right]  And you know, maybe a lot of single people don’t realize that we know more than we think we do about marriage…then again, if we haven’t the first clue about what is required to value someone in a friendship and are used to having jacked up relationships with our friends, then I guess those of us with those kinds of friendships really don’t know…jack, and before we even think about entertaining the idea of getting married, some of us Single Travelers need to learn how to value and respect people and let go of selfish desires and tendencies in plain old friendships.  But all of us are not that way.  Not at all.

As I’ve said before, some married people and pastors and other Holy Married People are incredibly supportive of single people, and don’t treat us as if they think we all believe that marriage is the magic elixir for all our single ills.  But too many seem to believe that all single people are absolutely, completely, and utterly clueless about even the most basic requirements of marriage, and I know, fellow Single Traveler, that many of us just aren’t.