Sometimes I wish that I wasn't the type of person who thought about everything, who analyzed conversations and interactions again and again. It's exhausting sometimes. It's often overwhelming. It certainly isn't a sleep promoter! I thought I was getting better at letting go and remembering the God who understands it all and controls it so much better. The past couple of weeks have been a battery of thoughts, questions, analyzing. My brain hurts. I feel sort of like I have been in a wrestling match. I was just reading online a pastor's description of the wrestling match between Jacob and God. He spoke about the turning point when God touched Jacob and how Jacob would have had to cling instead of wrestle. In his desperation and clinging, he continues to ask, but his heart is changed. I'm not sure that I'm there yet, to the clinging with a changed heart . . . I still feel like I'm wrestling.
I am starting to wonder if marriage is really all it's made out to be. Perhaps it's just better (and easier) to forget about it. But as soon as I say that and start to feel it in my heart, I am bombarded with everything relationship. I go to Bible study and all we talk about is how God's ultimate design is relational. His very nature is relational (three persons). And His design of marriage actually mimics His relational nature. In Genesis, He actually pauses to point out that it is not good for man to be alone. Why? It's not because He made a mistake (it wasn't good like everything else) . . . rather, it seems to be He pauses to make a divine statement about His very nature. God is and created social order, with marriage/family as a display of that part of His character - to mirror the authority, submission, respect, love and honor that is a part of His relational nature and His design for marriage.
So then I am left to wonder . . . can we not just say that being single is the fallen part of this world? I know that Paul talks about how being single is actually better, but isn't relational living, that ultimate display of the nature of God, the redeemed design? And if that's the case, why can't we start talking about relationships Biblically, about singleness as a result of the fall? When does the discussion begin about how Godly relationships look and should be carried out? What true dating and courtship should be about? How to truly display the character and nature of God in our relationships? How to combat the lies of the world that say that we can do what we want, be what we want . . . that in fact, doesn't being single allow us to do that, and so shouldn't we strive for that singleness longer? When will it be okay to call out the role of men in leading and pursuing relationships? When will it be okay for women to be pursued? And, I guess if being single is better, then what does that mean about how relationships look in that life?
And I wonder why we can't, as Christians, speak to truth. Isn't there ultimate truth that begs us to speak it, to display it? There is a right and a wrong - not everything is gray. Isn't that gray area just really a way to make ourselves feel better for not living or speaking the right and the wrong? I'm all about grace, but shouldn't it be founded on the fact that there is truth?
So I am wrestling with what that means, what it looks like, how to do it. And I'm fighting to understand it, fighting against the fallen-ness of the world. And I know that the only true way to accomplish that is to cling to the God of all truth, which I suppose means that at sometime I have to stop wrestling . . . I just wish I knew what that looked like.
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