Beyond the Categories we Use

"What if we in the church saw each other not as people in different categories from us but as fellow human beings with needs - basic needs like comfort, affirmation, and encouragement - we could help fulfill? What would our lives and churches look like then?"
(Gina Dalfonzo, One by One: Welcoming the Singles in Your Church)

These questions challenged me to think and to dream in the couple of months since I finished this book.

What would it look like if we did this well?

Or, even if we attempted to do this and stumbled along the way?

So often it's easy to draw lines around age or marital status and segregate people into groups based on this. And there is space for this . . . sometimes!

But, I think that, overwhelmingly, we need to crossing those line and forming relationships with people who aren't just like us.

It takes work.

It takes grace.

It takes being willing to have sometimes difficult conversations.

Most importantly, it takes time and being willing to listen. Rather than make assumptions about what people need, want, or feel, we need to stop and listen to what they're saying and then respond the best way we know how. This take investment - it requires time and our energy.

But the rewards are big. Our world grows.

And we often find friends in those places we least expected to.

One of the biggest reasons I've heard for why people only want friends who are just like them if that other people don't understand what it's like if their lives are different. But, as Gina Dalfonzo writes, speaking specifically of friendship between married people and single people:

"You don't have to understand everything your single friends are going through. The truth is, you can't fully understand it, any more than they can understand what you're going through . . . Yet, that doesn't mean you can't be friends." (One by One)

Being able to completely understand everything isn't a requirement for friendship.

A little later in her book, Dalfonzo writes:

"To be thoroughly understood, to talk with someone who's been where you are and really gets it, is a wonderful and valuable thing. But it's not a necessary element of friendship, or even of kindness and respect. . . . We need people in our lives who understand us. . . . But we also need people who are coming from different backgrounds, stages of life, and points of view. We need these people to help us broaden our perspective, look at life from different angles, and get out of our comfortable shell. And they need us too." (One by One)

I'm really glad for the friends I have who get things without me having to explain it - the friends who understand easily. I've written about the need for this recently. We need that.

But, just as much, I appreciate the friends I have whose lives on the surface look very different from mine. I need them too. Often their perspective on things is different and it helps me see what I've missed.

When we draw lines based on surface things to separate, we miss out on this. And when all our friends are the same as us, we also miss out on the beauty of having people who do truly understand. If that's all we know, we don't place the same value on it. We need both friends who understand because their lives are quite similar and friends who don't the same way because their lives are different.

What Can I Do?

What can I do?

How can I fix things?

These questions, or some variation of them, are the most common questions I've been getting recently from people, mostly married, who have read at least some of what I've been writing.

I've tried to offer practical suggestions as I've gone, but sometimes I haven't had a specific answer for what I've written. I'm still not sure I do, but I've come to one conclusion that applies universally to all of this. Really, it applies to any interaction with any person in our lives.

Before I get there though, I want to address an unspoken and probably unrealized implication of these questions. Asking about doing or fixing makes it sound like a project of some kind. Like there's some sort of "one-size-fits-all" solution out there that just has to be applied and everything I've written about will just go away.

Guess what? That solution doesn't exist . . . because this is about people and relationships, not projects to fix or complete.

Gina Dalfonzo puts it into words better than I could:

"Single people aren't projects to be fixed. We're fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, making the journey through life alongside the rest of the church, and dealing with a set of circumstances and experiences that take a lot of grace and strength to handle - which can't always be easily fixed with advice, scolding or rules." (One by One: Welcoming the Singles in Your Church)

I\m not sure that first sentence can be emphasized enough: "Single people aren't projects to be fixed." Approaching things this way doesn't help - it actually hurts all involved.

So, maybe, instead of "what can I do" or "how can I fix it" we need to ask a completely different question. One that goes beyond just looking for a solution and gets to the heart of the relationship and community aspects all of what I've been writing is really all about.

Maybe the better question is actually:

What do we all need to do differently on our part to move through these challenges?

The answer is really not that hard to say. But, living it actually proves to be much more difficult.

Dalfonzo writes:

"If I could take one guess at what the single person is your pew might say to you, given the opportunity, I would guess that it's this: listen. Please listen. Take the time to ask questions, to let the person answer, to hear without judging or jumping in with canned Christian formulas or buzzwords." (One by One)

Listen.

Ask questions.

Don't just look for the quickest advice you could give. Most of the time, advice isn't even necessary.

It's really as simple and as difficult as that.

When I'm in a conversation with some and I say something about being lonely, I'm not looking for advice or instruction on what I should do to change that. And I'm definitely not looking for advice on how to find someone to marry so "I'm not lonely anymore." I don't need to be told that I should be content with life right now.

In that moment, I'm just looking for someone to acknowledge that I feel that way and that it's hard. I just need someone to care. If you can make plans with me to do something to help with that feeling of loneliness, great, that's bonus I'll always appreciate. But, if you just listen and acknowledge how I feel, you've done more than most. And it makes a bigger difference than quoting Scripture or other people's advice at me.

I have a few friends who are really good at listening, asking questions, and caring. They're the ones I'm going to reach out to what I've struggling with some of the things I've written about recently. And I hope I do anywhere near as well as they do when they're coming to me with a struggle they're having that I may not have experienced.

Listening is key. It's where we have to start. It's what we have to keep doing. It really is the answer to what we can all do to make a difference as far as loneliness and the connection with others we need goes.

We All Need Intimacy - It's Much More than You Might Think

What comes to mind when someone says the word intimacy?

If someone asked you to define it, what would you say?

If you're like many people, it was a pretty small box and involved a specific relationship between two people.

I took a chance and googled "definition of intimacy." I wasn't sure what would come up or if I would quickly regret that search. I don't know about beyond the first page of results of the search, but that first page was safe and gave some interesting insight.

There were two things that came up on that first page - definitions of the word from a variety of dictionaries and articles on web-pages for a few different Christian organizations. As I read through what I found, I was struck by a couple of things.

First, the dictionary definitions were generally quite broad and spoke about a friendship where was some level of familiarity between the friends. This was well before any mention of and quite separate from a mention of sexual relationship we often assume is meant by the word intimacy.

Second, it was the writings from Christian organizations that made intimacy out to something was only part of a sexual relationship. Whether they meant to or not, I think most who read those articles would walk away thinking intimacy was only sexual.

Ina time where we talk about how highly sexualized our society is, seeing this made me wonder if we, as the church, aren't at minimum, unwitting contributors to it. Now, I didn't go looking any further for websites that spoke about intimacy from a non-Christian perspective because I wasn't sure what I would find. But, I am left with some questions about Christian contributions to the conversation.

In limiting our discussion of intimacy to sexual relationships, I believe we're missing out on what it should and could be. And, we're contributing to the loneliness epidemic - especially among single Christian adults by doing so.

Sam Allberry addresses this topic quite extensively in his book 7 Myths About Singleness. He writes:

"But the choice between marriage and celibacy is not the choice between intimacy and loneliness, or at least it shouldn't be. We can manage without sex. We know this - Jesus himself lived as a celibate man. So did Paul. Many others have done so as well. But we are not designed to live without intimacy. . . . In the West, we have virtually collapsed sex and intimacy into each other. Where you have one, you are assumed to have the other. We can't really conceive of genuine intimacy without it being ultimately sexual."

But, in doing so, we've missed the point. And we've contributed to the loneliness epidemic we're in the middle of.

So, what is intimacy? What does it look like?

It's friendship. It's those friendships where you allow each other to get close enough that you can speak words of encouragement and challenge to each other. Where you're vulnerable enough with each other that you could hurt each other if you broke the trust of that friendship.

Once again, Sam Allberry explains it well:

"A friend is someone you tell your secrets to, someone you let in on the real things going on in your life. They're the one who really know what's going on with you. They know your temptations, and they know what most delights your heart. They know how to pray for you instinctively. This is true intimacy. In our world, being deeply known and deeply loved often feel like alternatives. We worry that if someone really knows us, they might not love us as much. . . . By its very nature, friendship is a wonderful form of intimacy. The friend is the person who knows you are your sparkling best and shameful worst and still loves you. To be so deeply known and so deeply loved is precious." (7Myths About Singleness)

All of this has led me to wonder if at least part of the problem with the loneliness we see and hear about and experience ourselves if that we don't really know how to do friendship well anymore - especially friendship with people whose lives don't look exactly like ours.

Why Loneliness is Different for Singles: Part 2

What makes singleness different for singles?

In my last post, I started talking about how loneliness is different for singles. As I was writing, I realized that it was too much for one post. And I was concerned this next point would get missed or buried in the length. In my mind, this is the most important reason why loneliness is different for singles.

(You can read Part 1 here if you missed it.)

The most important reason why loneliness is different for singles has nothing to do with having friends.

It has everything to do with what you do with those friends.

". . . having people to do nothing with is quite important to singles." (Sam Allberry, 7 Myths about Singleness)

When I read that the first time, my response was: Yes! Someone finally put it into words that might make sense to others.

This is a big deal.

Allberry goes on to say:

"There are times when I feel emotionally tired but really want company, so it's great to have friends you see often enough that you don't need to spend your time together catching up. If one problem is friends you barely get to catch up with, another is friends you only catch up with. It's easy for married friends to forget this, because they already have people to do nothing with, and having people to with whom to do nothing is not necessarily a need they're conscious of."

I don't want everything I with people to be about what we do or about catching up. It's good when we don't always have to do that.

The most life-giving memory I have of this is when some married friends invited me to go camping with them for a week with their family. Yes, we did lots of things - hiking, games, cooking, and much more. But, we also did a lot of "doing nothing together." We sat in chairs next to each other and read. We sat around the fire in the evening with no expectation of catching up on what was going on in our lives. We sat at the same table, drinking coffee and reading our Bibles in the morning.

I didn't know how much I needed things like that until I experienced a week of it. I couldn't put it into words that I could explain to someone else until now. The idea of "doing nothing together" almost seems like a foreign concept in our culture. But, it's incredibly important that we pay attention to this - especially when there are single adults in your circle.

Often, I don't need an invitation to do something. I just need to be able to be with people without expectations. I know that being alone at that time isn't a good thing, but I'm not up to doing a lot. I really just need to now I'm not alone.