A year and a half ago, I moved into a house with three amazing young women. We have intentionally built into each others’ lives through roommate nights, praying for one another, serving one another, working through disagreements, and simply doing life together. I love these women dearly, and the relationships we have fostered run deep.
This month, one of these young women got married and moved out of our house. Another is engaged and moving out this upcoming summer. While I am excited for both of them to marry great guys, I am saddened over the loss of our close, sister-like relationship. My third roommate, who has been my closest friend during my time in West Lafayette, decided to take a job in Tennessee and move away within the next month.
Pertaining to my family, this year my little sister started a relationship a thousand miles away, my little brother got engaged, and my older sister got married and moved farther away from me. My family used to predict who would be the first to get married, and the answer was typically me. Now I am the only one who is single.
This past year, in light of all this and after going through another break up, I have been working hard to try to make something of myself. Since I wasn’t in a relationship, I switched gears and started focusing on achievements. I am working on a master’s degree. I am serving the international community at my church. I am pursuing a biblical counseling certification.
However, at the end of the day, I still receive pity. I can overwork myself trying to achieve impressive feats, yet it is not enough to avoid others pitying me due to my lack of a significant other. When others pity me for this reason, I sometimes feel inferior. However, when I google search the meaning of pity, it says "the feeling of... compassion...". Why am I upset at others showing me compassion? I think it is because I pridefully just want others to think that I have a life worth celebrating, and pity seems to be the opposite of that. I need to change this distancing and unhelpful mindset.
Another unhelpful minset I have adopted is that I should be “strong enough” to go through all of this unfazed, although that has certainly not been my reality. I found myself crying uncontrollably a few nights ago in the depth and breadth of all the loss of relationships, all the shifting priorities of the people around me, and all the lack of consistency and stability in the friends and family that I have. I carry these losses. I wish I could take it all in stride and not let it affect me. In fact, as I was crying, I told myself that I was being pathetic.
As I was wrestling through all of this, I was reading a book called “Putting Your Past in It’s Place” by Steve Viars. In the book he brought up Psalm 73 as a passage that shows authentic suffering. As I was reading the psalm, I noticed that the psalmist didn’t just take everything in stride, put on a plastic smile, and move on with his life. He was honest with God about what he was going through. He experienced pain and loss, and he brought that to God to see what God had to say.
I realized that I was not allowing myself to suffer authentically. The loss I experience is real, and it hurts. God doesn’t want me to sweep everything under the rug, but to bring that to him. The hope he gives is not that my losses are not that bad, but rather that his purposes in them are for my maturing and for the good of others. 2 Corinthians 1 says, “If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort.” I want to have that same mindset as I go through trials – that this experience will help me better comfort and minister to others in the future, and in the meantime, these trials are an opportunity for me to draw nearer still to Christ.
Another thing that I realized is that my focus has been skewed. God does not call me to build up a name and kingdom for myself in such a way that others do not pity me. That is a worthless cause. Even if I achieve my goal, what eternal good really have I achieved? Rather, God tells me, “Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, do it all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). As a single woman living a life where my closest relationships all seem to be fading, God calls me to walk this path for HIS glory and not my own. With this is mind, I reflected, “What would it look like to be more concerned for His glory rather than my own?”
- Stop boasting about my achievements to try to make other people proud of me
- Evaluate my motivations to see if I am serving/toiling for my name or for His
- When people show compassion towards me, I can give thanks for their love and concern for me. I can also share my hope in Christ, his love for me, and that I already have so much more than I deserve. I will take with open hands what God offers to me in thanksgiving.
- When I find myself as the only single person surrounded by couples, I can thank God for his unique writing of my story. I can ask that I would glorify him by looking to love those around me well.
- I can be real and authentic with others. Maybe me showing authentic suffering and how I process it with God will encourage others to do the same in their own myriad of trials.
- I can pray and cry about my losses to my Father, who wants me to come to him, and give up my façade of having everything together. I can pray that He would shine in my weaknesses, and thus He would get all the glory.
I sought the Lord, and He answered me
And delivered me from every fear
Those who look to Him are radiant
They will never be ashamed.
Psalm 34:4-5
So, after reviewing my past year, I want this year to be focused on being authentically RADIANT. Not a fake radiance of having it all together, or a temporary radiance of building my kingdom, but a radiance that comes from seeking the Lord – a radiance that leaves me never ashamed. What about you? Are there ways in which you are not authentically suffering? Are there ways in which you are trying to build your kingdom rather than God’s kingdom? May we both bring all these things to God, looking to him, and coming away radiant and unashamed.
This was so good, encouraging, and challenging, Allison! So thankful for the way you are seeking to be authentic in your relationship with the Lord and others, and I pray what you shared here will bring glory to God and His kingdom purposes. I loved this sentence: "The hope he gives is not that my losses are not that bad, but rather that his purposes in them are for my maturing and for the good of others. " Amen and amen!