Wrestling Angels

I’ve been asked to share in a class about my experience as a single person. I guess I am now considered an expert in the subject. They are also passing out a letter to the class written by another expert, a 47 year old man who recently got married for the first time. He is much more gracious about the subject than I am. I wonder if his reflections would have been different a year or two ago, before he met his wife? I doubt it. He seems like a much more even keeled person than I am, a person of steady faith and endless patience.

I, on the other hand, resemble Jacob after a night of wrestling with an angel on the banks of the Jabbok… covered in mud, clothes torn, wounded, limping, and exhausted.

I have wrestled with singleness for as long as I can remember. From that first overwhelming crush in second grade (I am pretty sure his name was Ricky. I just remember he had great hair, brown and thick, bright eyes, and dimples when he smiled.) through a series of first and only dates in high school and college, a few boyfriends in my 20’s, and now, the random blind dates of my 30’s. When asked what I wanted to do with my life, I always responded that I just want to get married and have kids. When I became a Christian in high school I found out that this was the best answer a girl could give. It was only slightly more pious to say that you wanted to marry a pastor. I quickly adjusted my answer.

What a surprise to find out that God had not called me to marry a pastor. God had called me to be a pastor! I resisted it for as long as I could. I was always sure some guy would come along a rescue me from all of this. Instead, I find myself nearing the end of my 30’s with a career I never dreamed of or asked for. I am ungrateful, I know. But it is like getting someone else’s Christmas gift. You write your letters to Santa, you drop hints to your parents, you clip advertisements from newspapers… and on Christmas morning your brother or sister opens the gift you’ve been dreaming of. Your gift is nice. It might even be amazing. It just isn’t what you asked for.

My wrestling with God has increased in recent years. Biological clock and all… I have come face to face with my own version of the health and wealth gospel as I consider a God who might never answer my prayer, who might never give me the desires of my heart. I have had to adjust to a life much different than the one I expected. I am having to make choices I never imagined. I am struggling to let go of a dream without letting go of hope. I am struggling to hold on. But I am holding on. Holding on until God blesses me. Holding on until I am given a new name. Holding on until I can walk away saying “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”