Everything glorious.

This afternoon I've been revelling in my first free day in a long time. When my evening plans fell through, I moved to the piano to play around, something that happens only occasionally these days. A rare afternoon off, a rare chance to play the piano just for the joy of it, and the rare opportunity to pull out a book of songs I probably haven't touched for two years. It felt like no accident then that today, Valentine's Day, I flipped the music book open to Everything Glorious, a song by David Crowder.

'The day is brighter here with you,' the lyrics begin, 'The night is lighter than its hue would lead me to believe, which leads me to believe that you make everything glorious.'

As a single thirty-something whose experience falls somewhere and everywhere between slightly crazy Austenesque old maid and the werkin'-it-Beyonce-style single lady, being a party of one in a world of pairs often feels less than glorious. When I started writing this post, I kind of got lost recounting the ungloriousness of extended singleness. It's a list that runs the gamut from petty, first-world annoyances -- never getting to take a plus one to a party, for example, or having to deal with car stuff on your own, or wishing food processors weren't only gifts for brides -- to the loneliness of being in a situation that 95% of your peers have not experienced, and then to the very real grief that comes when you realise the narrative you've always imagined for your future -- maybe one including children -- needs to be completely rewritten.

But none of us needs another list of why extended singleness can sometimes stink. We can come up with our own lists at the drop of a hat, and recounting these griefs leads nowhere (except, possibly, to the freezer for a tub of icecream).

What we do need are songs that remind us that glory is coming -- and not the beautiful but limited vision of glory that is romance and a white gown and to have and to hold. I mean a glory that takes a broken narrative and turns it into something wonderful, a message that now is not all there is, a promise that takes our ashes and gives us beauty.

Weeping may endure for a night, but the night is lighter than its hue would lead us to believe, and joy comes in the morning. Because someone is at work making everything glorious.

"Be more attractive."

Yesterday a friend sent me the link to a recent post on the Boundless blog. The tagline to the post reads: “If no one’s asking you out, here’s the solution: Be more attractive.” Author Josh Loke offers three ways for women to attain this attractiveness: demonstrate respect, look good, and be fun. Specifically, he adds, “If girls are looking for a guy with humor, kindness, stability and initiative, etc., guys are looking for a girl who’s hot.”

Somebody hold my flower.

A blog post like this presupposes that a woman’s one goal in life is to find a date (or enough dates in order to up the numbers and somehow statistically find The One). But let’s bypass that red flag in order to concentrate on what the injunction to “be attractive” actually says to women everywhere. It says that your success as a person and a woman is measured only by externals. It says that you have ‘arrived’ only when men are asking you out. It says that if this isn’t happening, then it’s for no other reason than that you are not enough. It says that your flaws – both the ones you can change as well as the ones you can’t – make you unlovable and unworthy of love. It says that whatever you are already doing, no matter if it’s your best, it isn’t good enough.

The thing is, there’s nothing new about this message. It isn’t some earth-shattering revelation. Culture screams it from every poster on the side of a bus, highway overhang banner, and prime time commercial. It’s something that many women tend to believe about themselves anyway. It’s knitted into our culture and it can often be woven into our psyches. So we don’t need to hear it from people whose stated goal is to encourage and inspire. What’s more, the principle behind the idea isn’t even true.

I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who didn’t want to be the best version of their self. Most of us are actively working at this in smaller or greater measure in various ways. For many of us, this ‘best possible version’ includes looking after our bodies and expressing our personalities through the way we present our faces and bodies to the world. I like wearing makeup. I like cute dresses. I like spending a little time on my hair of a morning. It makes me feel ready for life, like the cheeriest, most confident version of myself. A bright lip colour and tamed hair and suddenly I am Joan of Arc. It would be certainly be cool if my personal version of beauty caught someone's eye. But that isn't why I do it.

And in many ways it’s irrelevant anyway because no matter how much effort I put into my personal attractiveness, no matter how much effort you put into yours, there's still going to be an arbitrary line in the critical sand of our culture which has beautiful people on one side, and those who fall short on the other.

I was born with a slight physical disability. It’s only a minor one as far as they go but it means I have some impressive scars and my attempts to learn how to jog keep getting pulled up by injury. I have weird feet and I’ll never be able to wear sexy heels. This is certainly a mark against me in what begins to seem like a high-stakes attractiveness contest. Add to this mark the flaws that I could correct with surgery if I had the money (which I don’t) and I believed I could justify it (which I also don't). Then of course there are all the basics: nose too big, eyes too small, skin too flawed, and twenty-five other things I’d be able to list off because we all get so good at recognising where we fail to come up to snuff.

There is nothing unique about me in this respect. Most of us could rattle off a list of our own remarkable failures to be beautiful. But vague hand-wavy ideas like “be more attractive” imply that with just a little more effort anyone can achieve the nirvana of beauty and finally catch the eye of a passing gentleman. And when people say “be more attractive”, we believe it to be true. If I could pull together all my components and recompose myself into my picture of the ideal externally beautiful woman, I would be tall, slim, elegant, and graceful. I would have narrow shoulders, sleek straight hair, and devastating cheekbones. My skin would be flawless, my hands small and strong. I would be athletic without really trying. But the thing is, I know girls exactly like this. What is more, their inner beauty is just as powerful and profound as their luminous external beauty. Yet they, too, are wondering, “What’s wrong with me? What do I need to do?”

The standard for physical beauty is ridiculously subjective. It is trend-driven and culturally specific. It also has a tendency to be wealth-privileged, ageist, ableist, and exclusionary. Some of us, no matter how much effort we put in, will never be typically beautifully. And that is okay. Every single one of us is far more than our face or our breasts or our waistline. And it’s a little beside the point that I am hoping to make but perhaps it’s worth a reminder: ugly people get married. Awkward people get married. Overweight people get married. Flawed people get married.

One commenter on the post illustrates why telling women to “be more attractive and boys will like you” is an unhelpful mindset:

“I've never ever been asked out over the entire course of my life, and neither have either of my two sisters. We all love Jesus and are very active in our church(es), and we are all perfectly fit (run marathons). We look attractive (well, maybe I'm not, but my sisters are both super cute in my opinion). We are also employed (or studying to be employed) in meaningful ways (medicine, actuarial science, and/or music). We all have hobbies that we are really good at and enjoy. We all would like to be committed, godly wives and mothers someday. We may be a bit reserved in public/around people we don't know well, but in reality, we've got to be the funniest, most hilarious bunch of girls on the planet (in my opinion). We live in a fairly large town near one of the largest cities in our state.

But, I'm trying to remind myself that there's always room for improvement. Maybe what I need is to improve my looks. Or could it be that I don't think of anything to crack a joke over during the 10 minutes of coffee hour after church (this period of time is always truncated for me because I'm either playing a postlude on the organ or teaching Sunday school--sometimes I don't even show up at coffee hour at all!)? Could it be our academic/professional interests that put people off? Could it be that we're Asian?? Could it be that we were homeschooled? Anyway, I'm trying not to think that we all happen to have the gift of singleness...although, of course, it is possible."

This commenter sounds like an awesome, well-rounded, fascinating person. And her first paragraph asserts that. However, she moves from these confident observations -- I am a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman who has a full and creative life -- to the almost apologetic confession that ‘there’s always room for improvement.’ And in one sense she is right: all of us can be better. We can all grow. That’s one of the things that makes life so interesting and the Christian walk so challenging. But the standard imposed upon her by this blog post has it wrong: the assumption is that because no man has asked her out, then there must be room for improvement.

When someone says “What is wrong with me?” to my mind it rarely arises out of personal conviction and a passion for growth. Rather, it’s steeped in despair and shame. People who force us to ask “what is wrong with me?” are not being helpful; they’re being bullies. “How can I be a better person?” is getting closer to the mark. But “How can I be a better person so I attract the attention of a man?” is so far off-base.

Taking care of oneself is good for the soul. It enhances the lives of those we care about because we are happier and healthier as a result. It gives us courage and personal freedom. It sets us loose to more freely care for others. It allows us to be our authentic selves.

So be healthy for you and for the people you already love. Be healthy because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Be your own form of beautiful because your creativity reflects the splendour of the creator’s hand. Don’t strive to reinvent yourself in order to attract the eye of every possible good guy who passes you by. If your personal brand of beauty is bohemian layers and hippie hair, do that. If it’s farm girl chic with dungarees, boots, and a bare face, do that. If you believe external details are mere periphery in a world where people are hungry and dying, then act on that. Be your own form of beautiful because to do so for any other reason is illusory and transient and it might work -- but it might not work, too.

Be your best you. But be it for you, for the one who made you, and for the people who already love you. If that fails to capture someone's attention, it says less about you than you think. Be great, but be great because life is now, not because it will begin once someone notices how truly lovely you are. The world doesn't magically move out of black and white with true love’s first kiss. Life is already happening and it’s in full colour. Shine bright.

A hug for the third wheels:

One of the challenges of extended singleness that’s not often discussed is the idea that you are no one’s special person.

I realise, even as I write, that this seems glaringly obvious.

But there is a subtlety to this idea that I’ve not seen explored in the singleness discussions that I’ve encountered. There can be a loneliness to being alone, sure. That much is obvious. But there is a unique, entirely other kind of loneliness to being alone when everyone around you has their one person – that person who is their responsibility, their care, their focus. It's the one they check in with, the one whose opinion they will defer to, the one whose schedule they will shape their lives around.

It is lonely to have nobody, but it is another kind of loneliness to be nobody’s somebody.

As nobody’s somebody, you become the dispensable variable in relational equations. It is you who might have to change your intended meetup time to fit better with what your girlfriend’s boyfriend wants. Your sister might need to pause in the middle of a deep and meaningful conversation with you to take a call from her husband at work. Your plans with a friend will fall through because her toddler is teething. If you don’t know your guy friend’s new love interest, chances are you won’t know your guy friend for much longer, either. You will grow accustomed to being the third person, or fifth, or seventh in gatherings where all the other attendees are pairs.

All of this is good and fine. It’s healthy, even. It’s sanctifying and humanising to be reminded that our own needs are not paramount. It is good to be adaptable, and to learn to hold things loosely. It’s good to know that others’ lives don’t carry the same freedoms that singleness does.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt to be reminded that everybody you care about most is aligning their lives closely to another person’s, moulding their days and hours and moments to fit another’s, but that person is not you. You are loved by many but not at the top of anyone’s priority list.

Is it selfish to mourn that a little? Is it greedy to even notice? I don’t think so. It is a genuinely difficult thing to be nobody’s main priority and to have a multiplicity of primary priorities yourself. It’s even harder to talk or write about it without seeming small-minded and petulant. But the sorrow is real, I think, and it is okay to acknowledge its existence.

What’s more important, though, is to acknowledge how significantly you (me, we) are loved in spite of the fact that we aren’t anybody’s significant other. We are surrounded by people who care, and if their care must be broken into pieces and scheduled around parents and children and spouses, that does not make the love any less genuine; it just makes it real.

And in reverse, we can treasure the opportunity to pour our own unfettered love into the lives of others, with all the freedom and creativity that the unattached life gives. It brings its own challenges, this season, but there are also some very cool pluses. We need to remember those in the moments when the other stuff aches.

Group-smoosh:

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day.

I don't know. That simple sentence is frought with such an intensity of feeling. There are people in love who know that tomorrow will be merely an overflow of the togetherness they already possess. There are guys freaking out because they have no idea what they're meant to do to make it special. There are people complaining about commercialism and greed and "just another excuse to try and sell greeting cards and chocolates". Then there are the waiting few, the scattered band of soloists who -- whether they regard Valentine's Day as a ridiculous first-world rort to make people spend money, or as a rich celebration of romance -- scuff their toes in the dust and wish for their duet to start.

To these few, these treasured superheroes of going it alone, I want to say something magical and wonderful and perfect. Only there isn't one thing that's magical and wonderful and perfect to be said, because to say it -- to try to say it -- would be to diminish how hard it can be sometimes to eke out life singly in a world that's made for pairs. There are many excellent things about travelling solo, and I hope that you experience all the best of them. But if the balance for you is weighing more heavily to the side of heartbreak than hallelujah, I want to smush you into a big group hug and let you know that you're not alone in being alone. And you're not ignored, either.

So, I wrote a thing. And it's messy and raw because love and lovelessness are messy and raw. But it's for people like you and me who might be waiting for something but don't ever have to wait for grace. SMOOSH.

Oh, Valentine's Day.

If I wrote a history of my love life, it wouldn’t be long enough for a novella.

I’m talking flash fiction here: less than a handful of kind and very quiet guys who paid some small measure of attention to me (sometimes without my knowledge). There was also the occasional bushman-bearded oddball who waxed lyrical about his model train set and offered to buy me Kentucky Fried Chicken, or the rural firefighter with a not-so-secret double identity as a blacksmith. But that’s not even a love life, really. It’d be more accurate to call it Varying Degrees of Interest.

Nevertheless, I love love.

I know that, for single people, Valentine's Day is supposed to be about tears and loneliness. I've had my share of both, but that's not all singleness is about. There's much more to it than that. Call me an incurable optimist, but for me Valentine's Day signals hope. Even at its worst, it's merely bittersweet. This day may remind me of a hope deferred, but it also points me toward the future -- a future that, whether there's a man in it or not, is drenched in love, because God is love.

I wrote some words about this very topic over at YLCF.org. I cried while I was writing this piece (a new first!), only a little bit because I grieved what could have been. Mostly, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for what is, and the half-aching, half-rejoicing hope found in excellent promises. Dear awesome friends who are on your own today, there is SO MUCH GOOD.

Happy Valentine's Day. I mean it.

Everything's okay.

I can't work out how life can be so strange and yet so normal all at once. My sister -- my baby sister -- is getting married next year. This is crazy. Bizarre. Absurd. Beyond comprehension.

And yet it's also not any of those things. Because... it didn't come about with a clap of thunder and a puff of smoke. It came slowly (okay, sort of slowly) and by the time it was all happening, it seemed the most usual thing in the world. Life's like that.

Being the eldest of five kids and the only remaining single girl is another of those things that should be strange, but isn't. People keep saying, quietly, gently, "And how is Danielle doing?" Mostly I hear about it afterwards, as if the subject is too delicate to broach in front of me. But several of my precious friends have asked, "And -- are you okay?"

I feel so loved when they ask it, but I've begun to shy away from the question. There is no real way to answer it properly. To do it justice. Even saying "I really am okay" sounds slightly defensive.

But this is the marvellous thing: I mean it. I am okay with this. I am okay with not being married yet. I am okay with my little sisters being wives and mamas before me. I am so okay.

I also know that I know that I know that I'm still fighting keen to end up with the man God has in mind for me. I am not oblivious to that subtle ticking of the thing they call a biological clock. Sometimes I ache with loneliness, but don't we all -- married or no?

In the meantime, however, I am content. And, while this contentment might last for just a season, I'm going to enjoy the strange normality of it. It looks a lot like grace, to me. God is good.

PS. And I meant to say: THANK YOU all times a billion for sharing my writerly excitement. You're all awesome.

PPS. How did it get to be the end of October? I heard carols playing on the radio today. I kid you not.

BookJournal :: marriage advice to singles?

My aunt's recent blog post discusses how a single woman can benefit from reading a book about being a wife and mother. I laughed when I saw her post: I'd just begun reading Carolyn Mahaney's Feminine Appeal myself.

And I must confess that when I hit the second chapter, 'The Delight of Loving My Husband', I groaned. So little of the way into the book and I'm already up against something entirely irrelevant to my life just now? But my obsessive-compulsive streak kicked in and I determined to read through the chapter, rather than skip it so early on in the piece.

I was glad I did. Mrs. Mahaney's advice on loving a husband slotted right into what I needed to hear just then about loving the people in my life. Any relationship founded on Christ, whether it is a marriage partnership or one of casual acquaintance with the other kids at Bible study, must be motivated -- and dominated -- by selflessness and a desire to serve. I was mired in a selfish cycle of thoughts, most of them to do with how I wasn't getting anything out of certain friendships in my life. Ugh.

This quote from Spurgeon was particularly cutting:

He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. He overlooks ten thousand of their faults, because he knows his God overlooks twenty thousand in his own case. He does not expect perfection in the creature, and, therefore, he is not disappointed when he does not find it.

So there you go, Aunty Nell! This single girl's only two and a half chapters in and already learning some powerful stuff.

(The rest of you go check out the post; the list of benefits you'll find there is much more general -- and therefore more relevant -- than my little moment).

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conversations:

Bethany -- sounds like a great sermon series to watch! When I Don't Desire God was like manna to me when I was reading it; definitely what I needed to learn.

Damian -- I'm always nervous about coming across like a creepy stalkerperson, too :), but then I'm usually blessed when someone else with some nerve leaves a comment or message. I look forward to keeping in touch with your Christ-walk through your blog.