A Little Encouragement and Coaching....

I love the body of Christ. There’s nothing more beautiful and yet painful than living in community. Just ask my past roommates. I made a statement to a friend this past summer as I was living in a 1 bedroom apartment with three other people, “Everything in the world is coming out of me.” Call it sin or maybe it was the fact that we are in our 30’s sleeping in bunk beds, I don’t know. So I have been feeling this post coming on for a couple of years now and was inspired to go ahead and write it, even at the expense of being misunderstood. How should the Church interact with those of us who are unattached (aka: SINGLE)? I realize we could all post something on here about how we could respond to mom’s, married without kid’s, the elderly, divorcee’s, widows, but because I am unattached, I feel a little more qualified to share my angle with the hope that it will be an encouragement.

While I am unattached at the moment (okay, so I looked up “single” in the thesaurus and it is way depressing – words like “solitary, on its own, lone, solo, only” came up), I wanted to document a few common ways of relating that we unattached people have to deal with weekly.

1. When making announcements at church for the big picnic, instead of saying, “Every family bring a dish”, you could rephrase it to, “Everyone come to the picnic and bring your favorite dish.” It really is the small things that we appreciate.

2. There are two churches that I loved, but I did not go back because you are invited to come to the front “as a family” and take communion. Well, let’s be honest, when visiting a church for the first time I felt….let’s see, how do I say this? NAKED. Please don’t get me wrong, this was/is a beautiful thing, just makes it really difficult to know what to do in that moment.

3. If you are curious about someone’s single status just ask them, “Do you want to be married or do you like the single life?” or my personal favorite, “Is it hard to meet men who aren’t socially awkward and don’t wear white socks with black shoes?”

4. Whatever you do, please do not say, “When you stop looking for him, that’s when you will find him.” That doesn’t even make sense. Am I supposed to go blind? Walk around with my head down? Also avoid, “When I finally became content (at the age of 21) that’s when God brought McDreamy into my life.” I love that I just did spell-check on “McDreamy” and the option was “Creamy”.

5. Thank you for praying for us, cheering us on, and empathizing with us that dating is exhausting. Thank you for listening to our same prayer requests for years on end. On a side note, I’d love to write a blog on “unspoken prayer requests”.

6. If you want to set up your single friend, would you please think through their personalities, calling, and interests? Setting us up because I am the one single girl you know and he is the one single guy you know does not a match make. We love that you are even thinking of us, but I have a nightmare story on this one. It involves my mother, large gold chain, Beavis and Butthead, an election year, and an ex-body builder. ‘Nuf said.

7. Thank you for being honest about the struggles in your own life and saying, “Sometimes it would be nice to be single.” It helps all of us with our perspective. The grass is not always greener.

8. When inviting us to your wedding, it is so kind to allow us the courtesy of bringing a date. Not that I would, but just the option shows such empathy and that you value our friendship over your budget. Heck, I’ll give you $27.50 in order to bring someone, or tell him not to eat.

9. After you are married, would you remember what it was like being single and not talk to us as if we are still sitting at the kids table at Thanksgiving?

10. Thank you so much for the times you include us in your family activities and treat us like family. I love the scripture Psalm 68:6, “God sets the lonely in families…”

11. Please keep telling us how great we are and that some guy is an idiot for not snatching us up. 

Hope this is helpful. I really mean it with as much kindness as I can extend through a blog to the 8 people who might read it. Pass it on if you feel like it might help those who really want to encourage those of us walking this road “solo”.