The other night dear, while I lay sleeping, actually I was thinking about singleness and why I always say it's hard to be single at church, and why I feel like it is and if it really is. Because, those three things don't necessarily go together. And two things dawned on me.
It doesn't seem to me that people my age in the secular world have a hard time with being single. They might not like not having a bf or gf, but I don't see a ton of movies or literature etc put out about not being part of a family unit. What's the difference, I asked myself? If being single is difficult, why wouldn't people in a secular environment acknowledge that fact as much? I believe it's because the church continues to acknowledge the importance of family and to place, biblically so, a high priority and emphasis on it as one of God's greatest means and, in a sense, His first commandment (as far as chronologically). Being at church, particularly my church, as a single person means to be constantly immersed in a culture that affirms the value of something that I want but do not have control over acquiring. The family, as I have believed for several years, is one of God's primary tools on this earth for showing forth His glory and bringing people to Himself. Family, it seems to me, is meant to be the base from which many, if not most, other valiant, courageous, tender, beautiful and meaningful exercises of life are launched. This is in the context of our own family and also the Family of God. So, of course, being in a place where this is acknowledged will be a reminder that one of God's greatest treasures, a family, is not yet a part of my life.
Revelation two, for whatever reason, the American church seems to have a hard time defining woman's roles as something other than wife and mother. These ARE feminine roles of highest priority. But, when we relegate single women to serving as handmaidens to those who are able to carry on those roles, I think we must be missing something. Or when we cloister wives and mothers in homes. I am not really bitter about this. Except when I read books that say that wives and mothers probably won't be very productive in ministry [...] until their kids are grown. Ok, that's not quite what it said, but it seemed that way a little bit. Written by a man, I haven't come across the chapter yet where it talks about the young mom being able to live near her [...] friends and weave her daily routine into their lives just as they do with each other. Maybe that's just a pipe dream. But I'm not so sure. Another example of our tendency to define this roles comes from considering a brief about a book on godly femininity. I was intrigued by the title and wanted to know more about it, but when reading the synopsis, the entirety of the definition was on wives and mothers. I am neither. So how am I supposed to be feminine and godly? Furthermore, I realized this weekend while dancing with a friend of a friend in a purely platonic way, that it felt "good" (in a biblical sense, not just entertainment sense) to be doing something purely feminine, to dance the part that only the woman is supposed to dance. And, I realized that, while I hope all of my life is done in a godly and feminine way, there are few things that I do on a regular basis that only a woman could do. I wish there was more written by godly older men and women on this topic. Dorothy Sayers wrote an excellent short piece on it many years ago, I think it is called "Women are Humans Too". In a sense, her call was that we stop defining people by their industry and instead define all people by their humanity. But I would like to know, what does it mean to be godly and feminine and single?
1 comment:
RE:Wife/Mom ministry on the mission field...all of us, in every vocation, are called to weave our daily lives into those around us and minister in the dailyness of it all. Those called to do it on a foreign field are no different in that respect. I think the fallacy which has arisen is that "mission work" consists of "church planting" or "medical missions" or something like that, which divides the "missionary's life" into sacred and secular very much like we do here in the USA. That which is done specifically for "ministry", i.e. ladies' Bible study, or calling on village chiefs or clinic work, is "sacred" and that which is done to simply maintain life, i.e. cooking meals, laundry, spending time with your spouse or friends, is "secular". (The one exception is is you are cooking or cleaning to meet the need of some unsaved person rather than just for your own family.) Thus the measure of the effectiveness of the wife in the mission field suffers because she must confine her activities to the "secular", although her duties can be considered "sacred" in the sense that she "supports" her husband and thus "allows him to minister...in the 'spiritual' way". That's a false, artificial dichotomy in our view of missions and family. On the flip side, the life work of a woman here in the States who "only" is a wife and mother is just as valid a calling as that of "ministry" in a foreign country. The most effective ministers anywhere are Christ-follwers modeling the following in every day life.
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