A Date With Myself

I did something Friday night that is really out of character for me.

I did something ALONE.

If you know me, I can be pretty independent but when it comes to going and doing things (unless it is shopping or a trip to Walmart or something), I NEVER do things alone. And I think for a while now, that never-do-anything-alone thing has kind of defined my life a little.

When I was younger, I'm pretty sure I was as close to a shadow for my sister as you could get. Whatever she did, I wanted to do. Unless it had a dramatic ending like GA camp, and then I was out.

As I got older, I always had something to do with someone. Whether is was putt-putt golf or a get-together at someone's house or the movies or dinner with a boyfriend, I always had something to do and someone to do it with.

When I moved to Birmingham, away from friends and family, I basically had to start life all over again. That meant making new friends and finding my way around this new city. People have told me that I'm good at making friends. I tend to disagree. I'm good at making aquaintences when the opportunity presents itself, but establishing relationships and keeping those relationships has been something that I've had to learn how to do again since I've moved here.

(I'm by no means at a lack for friends here. I just realized that this post is starting to make me sound like a no-friends loser, but bare with me. I have a point.)

With my job being as time-consuming as it is, and with friends not always being available to do things whenever I can (and vice-versa), I've struggled with the fact that there are things that I miss out on because my time is very limited.

But lately, I've discovered a newfound sense of pride in myself and a go-get 'em attitude. So, I decided the heck with it, the next thing that comes along that I want to do, I'm doing it whether I have a buddy to tag along or not.

I have a friend who works at the Red Mountain Theatre Company in downtown Birmingham, and she is always raving about their shows. (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that she is the public relations/marketing director and that is her job. Absolutely nothing.) There have been several shows there that I've wanted to see but haven't for lack of money or friend to go with.

This weekend was the last run of The Drowsy Chaperone and I've always wanted to see it. This was my last chance. Everyone I'd want to take with me either was working or lived three hours away. So, I decided to bite the bullet and go by myself. Besides, Nicole would be there working and I'd at least get to see her smiling face on the way in and out.

I could not have made a better decision. The show was incredible and the night was perfect.

And as I sat there in the audience, I realized how great it is to be a lover of the theatre. There is something about going to a show that sucks you in a takes you away. As soon as the house lights go down and the stage lights go up, you are instantly transported to another time and another place. (Cue Sandi Patty and Wayne Watson)

The characters on the stage become more than just characters. If they are good at their job, you immediately connect with them and they become life-long friends of yours. You laugh when they laugh. You cry when they cry.

I could not have had a better time this weekend on my first big outing alone. It was nice, for a change, to go enjoy something by myself without having to worry about what the other person with me wanted to do next.

I've often questioned God on why he has kept me single for so long. I've touched on the main reason - he wants me to want Him more than I want anything else. The other reason? I think he's wanted me to learn how to enjoy life by myself.

And I am.

One Single Struggle

I started this post as another edition of Blog-Linkity Goodness but this one link I have to share kind of calls for a whole post of its own.

Let me preface...

Lately, I've been burdened a bit (read: a lot) by the direction my life is headed. I've prayed for many years Psalm 37:4.

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

I think for a long time I've just been praying the second half of that verse.

Recently, I've really been confronted with frustration about my singleness. If you would have asked me four years ago if I would still be single at the age of 26, I would have laughed in your face and told you my whole wedding plan.

Nowadays, I'll tell you my whole wedding plan, but I just am not laughing as hard anymore.

So many thoughts run through my head. My parents were married at my age. My sister was four years younger than me when she got married. All but two of my best friends are married. I see college friends who have now been married for four or five years and are now having their first or second child. Girls who were freshmen when I was a senior in college are married and having kids. I'm watching people live the life that I thought I would be knee deep in by now.

And it is a little bit disheartening. And I guess it is okay because that is the way God made me. He gave me these desires and these emotions for a reason.

However, over the last two or three years, I really started concentrated on the first part of that verse.

"Delight in the Lord."

For a large part of my life, I didn't really understand what that whole "delight" word was about. Except that is was half of the title of the best Stone family dessert - Chocolate Delight.

But God has recentlyshown up in my life in a way that I've never seen before. He has shown me things about myself and Himself that I had failed to notice before. And I think that I wasn't noticing those things because I wasn't looking for them and I had been distracted.

I'm a believer in the notion that nothing is coincidence. God has a purpose and plan for everything that happens in our life because it all fits in to His will to bring glory to His name.

I think the mixture of maturity and singleness, along with the grace of God and the love of family and friends, have made me who I am today. I think that at the end of high school and throughout my college career, I was distracted by the feeling of falling in love and finding a husband when I should have been actively pursuing my One True Love.

I had replaced desire to be loved and fulfilled by God, the one who loved me first and will never stop loving me, with the desire to fall in love to a guy and be married and start a family.

It's what every girl dreams of, right? The guy, the proposal, the ring, the dress, the church, the house, the picket fence.

What I have just become to grasp is that I've been going about it all wrong.

God has commanded us to love him with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love each other as we would love ourselves. THEN everything else flows from that.

I have realized that what I need to focus on is being in the center of God's will. After that, everything will fall in place. And if I'm not pursuing a relationship with God day after day, what the heck am I doing? Why would I not want to spend my time getting to know the person who created me, who knows my ins and outs and still loves me anyway. Isn't that really what all of us girls are looking for in a guy anyway?

You know, Psalm 37:4 is written the way it is written for a reason. In elementary school, we are taught cause and effect right? One thing leads to the other. If push the gas pedal on my car (cause), it goes (effect).

When we delight in God, when we actively pursue him and long to fall deeply in love with him, his desires become our desires.

I know there were times when I dated a guy and became interested in something that he was passionate about because he shared that passion with me. And vice versa. That's what happens in our relationship with God.

After "the break-up" my junior year of college, I really (surprising myself and taking a lot of advice from my sister) dove deep into God's word and tried to figure out where my fulfillment was coming from. Was it coming from God or was it coming from this boy? Before I could really figure that out, I became entangled in that relationship and again and never really learned that lesson. It took God transplanting me into a completely new life for me to figure out that was tapping into the wrong source of fulfillment.

So...I say all that to say this. This morning I stumbled upon, or shall I say, God led me to Jimmy Needham's website for a reason. Not only is this guy and talented musician who loves the Lord and writes about it from his heart, he's given his wife, Kelly - a girl who struggled with the same burden I am currently struggling with - an outlet to share her story and to encourage girls like me. The wisdom and humility in what she writes is overwhelming and I found myself feeling like I was reading the inside of my own heart.

I know that I'm not the only girl struggling with this burden because I know that I'm not the only girl out there who feels like the desires of her heart aren't being satisfied on the timeline that she thinks they should. So I wanted to share Kelly's Page with all of you fellow singles out there.

Kelly gives some amazing insight in how she walked through this struggle before meeting Jimmy and backs it up with some incredible scripture. As all things should be.

One of my favorite quotes (because I have a lot) from what she writes is this: "Instead of finding fulfillment in Jimmy, I found in him an incredible gift from God that daily turns my attentions back toward Jesus. I love that our God is a jealous God. he longs so much for our affection, that he won't give us anything that will threaten his place in our hearts."

I don't want my husband to be a distraction from my affection towards God. I want our relationship to be a gift that we praise him and give him glory for everyday of our lives. Because that kind of love only comes from God and only He alone is worthy of the glory.

(500) Days of Summer

This movie was incredible. Incredibly heart crushing. But incredibly brilliant. When it came out in theaters, I didn't think much about going to see it. But all of a sudden, a few weeks ago, I started hearing lots of people talking about it.

Since two rounds of plans crashed and burned for New Year's Eve, and since I couldn't seem to keep the vital organs like lungs on the inside of my body for more than 30 minutes at a time on the faithful turning of the decade, I decided to go to my favorite place, Blockbuster (where else can you buy Alfie and Dreamgirls for three bucks each? The $5 bin at Walmart has convinced me that I shouldn't pay more than $9.99 for a movie. Ever.), and rent a few movies for the weekend. I got Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which I slept through the first time at my parents' house but was anyone else as surprised as me to find out the true identity of Snape?), Julie & Julia (a whole 'nother blog post in itself), and (500) Days of Summer.

This movie hit way too close to home for me and almost mirrored my past (and present) relationships to a level of creepiness that is way off the scale.

The story is about a guy who is a hopeless romantic. From the time that he was young, he's always known there was that "one girl" for him. He's waited all of his life to meet "the one" and one day, as he sat in the otherwise mundane weekly idea pitch meeting at his job at the greeting card company, Summer walked into his life.

Summer couldn't have been more wrong for this guy, considering her utter unbelief in the theory of love, destiny and fate. Because of circumstances beyond her control when she was younger (i.e. her parents divorcing), Summer doesn't see the point in relationships or putting a label on things. She says why go through all that pain?

Summer and Tom enter into a relationship that looked from the outside, and on Tom's side, to be love at long last. Tom considers Summer to be his girlfriend yet Summer still refuses to put a label on things which always results in the ever-resurfacing argument about how relationships are a two-way street.

Long story short (SPOILER ALERT), Tom and Summer call it quits after about a year and a half. Tom is crushed and still pines after Summer, with his hopes building upon the sporatic contact he and Summer have and then being utterly dashed upon Summer's mention of "hoping this means you are ready to be friends".

When the duo reunite at a coworker's wedding celebration, Tom thinks this could finally be the opportunity when the time is right for both. Maybe Summer has had a change of heart. She's realized that Tom's her perfect fit. And soon we find out that Summer has had a change of heart. It's just not for Tom. She meets a new beau and "just knows". Just like Tom has told her before that he "just knew" that he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with her.

As the credits rolled and I began to eject the disc and put it back in its case to send back to the movie store, I couldn't help but be reminded of my history of relationships these days.

For about five years, I was Tom. I was completely head over heels for someone that I thought at the time was "the one" but as I look back on it, was completely wrong for me. And that's why we aren't together now. Tom's wise little sister in the movie told him when he was still in the mourning period and it was getting kind of old, that he was looking back and only remembering the good times. He was missing all of the signs. When he looked back again, every fourth memory was good but the others were the ones that he was missing. The ones that made him realize that things weren't as good as he thought.

When I was young, like most Southern little girls, I imagined going to college, meeting the man of my dreams and my bridesmaids, having a ring on my finger by the spring semester of my senior year and married a year later. Well folks, I don't know if you've been paying attention but, I'm 26 and still single. Really single. Like I haven't had a relationship in about 4 years. Dates, yes. But someone to call my own, no.

On the other hand, nowadays, I find myself being more like Summer. Not as cynical but almost. I've seen way too many relationships end in the past couple of years, relationships that I saw as perfect, yet I was wrong. It doesn't bother me much when young couples break up after a few years, but when relationships that have born children and couples who have built a life together for 10, 20, even 30 years come crumbling down in a heap, it's hard for a young girl like me, a hopeless romantic to think that anything good can come from a relationship these days. What's the point when it's all going to come to a screeching halt someday when I'm not looking?

(I know, I know. God's got everything under control. Believe me. This is just babble. I know when it comes down to it, it's all in God's perfect plan what happens. He uses marriages and divorces for his glory and I'm seeing that right now.)

I also look at my life and see people in my life that are completely right for me yet I don't see them as "the one". So does that mean they are "the one", and that the timing is not right? Does that mean we are just meant to be really good friends for the rest of our lives?

I don't know. What I do know is that life is life. Things happen, relationships bloom and fail, but life goes on. It goes on in the movie, and it goes on here. And there are always other fish in the sea. I'm starting to see that now.

So...audience pariticipation time. For those of you reading and are still single, are you Tom or Summer or a mix of both? For those of you who are married, either for a little while or a long while, did you "just know" or did you decide after a while that this was someone that life just didn't feel right without?

"This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story."

When In Doubt...Check Facebook.

So I stumbled upon this article today that was published like a year ago. It's funny. And so true.

It's about how, for many young adults, especially college students, a relationship isn't really a relationship until it's been confirmed on Facebook.

Most of you know what I'm talking about. It's not legit until you've changed your status to "in a relationship", "engaged", "married" or even "it's complicated" (which makes no sense to me whatsover).

I've often found out my friends were in relationships (or engaged) through Facebook. I'm guessing that's the line of communication these days (or a tell-tale sign that I'm not a very good friend).

"Don't bother telling anyone. They'll find out when we confirm it on Facebook anyway."

And what happens when your status changes to "single". The resounding, yet silent/make-believe sound, the "duhn duhn duuuuuuhn" rings loud and clear and immediately the questions start pouring in.

"What happened?"

"Why the change?"

"Trouble in LoveLand?"

And what if you are the requester of the relationship and you get rejected? I mean, I guess it's comforting to know that at least the whole world doesn't take notice until it's in bright blue or scrolls onto the news feed (but at least it doesn't say, rejected).

Many people try to cheat the system. They just don't fill in the blank. It's probably a good call for those of fickle mind, but I had a friend who tried this very thing. He was listed as single and then, all of a sudden, for some reason, was "no longer listed as single". (See this is where the news feed gets you.) As expected, the questions start pouring in, and in his own illusive way, dodged the question until eventually, it had been confirmed on Facebook. Of course, being his friend, I found out before Facebook did, but such is the situation.

It's sad when technology has the final say in our lives, well, at least our relationships. The world is truly coming to an end. Well, at least it will when I can no longer log onto Facebook.

Oh, and FYI...