Ticketed in the Church: Writing While Single?

Anytime a person writes about their life, they have to choose what areas of their life they wish to write about and the areas they wish to keep personal. I actually started writing about being single back in 2007, mid-way through my time in seminary. I came to a point in my life, after twenty-five, when I began to acknowledge that I may be single for far longer than I had anticipated.

For years I wrote about my life, but neglected writing about my thoughts and experiences being single. Mostly, I didn’t want to come across whiny, needy, or desperate (Ironically, just writing that makes me come across whiny, needy, and desperate). So, in 2007 for a brief stint, I wrote about being single on my main blog and on my Facebook; however, during that time I learned that my more personal experiences, thoughts, and insecurities regarding singleness did not need to be on my main blog.

If writing is about choosing your boundaries, how much you will open up, I learned that writing about being single needed to only be available to those who could take the hard truths I was seeing and living; therefore, back in 2011, I moved all my blogs entries about being single from my main blog to a separate and anonymous site.

Why anonymous? Basically, when you work as a minister, you are open to public scrutiny, so while I have the desire to write and share, I don’t desire for bosses, coworkers, patients, and their families into that part of my life. And honestly, I also did it also to cut down on hearing cliché phrases and responses from those who are married, trying to console my dark times by telling me I will find someone in time, I should focus on myself, or how they long for the days of their own freedom and singleness.

So, while this vast area of my life has been stricken from my public writing, it does still exist, it exists because I use writing as a way to process life and hope others will join me in their journey as well, that life isn’t all the happy pictures and status updates we post and see, but is sometimes tough and gritty and uncomfortable.

I want to make (you) my readers uncomfortable because I am not always comfortable. I see a lot of areas of life to ponder, and while none of them are off limits necessarily, some areas deserve more privacy and care. That being said, being single is just one area of my life and if a married person believes a single person is to be pitied or avoided for their singular status, I’d say that person is forgetting that the cornerstones of any relationship is built on love, friendship, and trust.

In fact, Jesus had a lot to say about friendship,

Which will be the focus of my next blog entry.

But for today, let's take a second to think about the unneeded divisions we place between people, not just married and single, but male and female, rich and poor, and so forth. Then remember that, for those of us who call ourselves Christian… In Christ, We are (Supposed to Be) One.

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³ For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. ¹⁴ Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. – 1^st Corinthians 12:12-14

~ Doubledb

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