Monday, January 19, 2004
I Get What This Is Now
It has come time to face another crossroad in my life. I have experienced many of these, some of which had clear pathways to follow; some left me scratching my head as to which way to go. I’m not talking about a new job (though that would be marvelous,) a new relationship or a decision on something major to buy. I’m talking about acknowledging my singleness once again.
This week, I will be journeying to Schroon Lake, New York to partake in another Christian Singles Conference. Attending this winter meeting will make it my fifth since I became technically single. And, as has been my experience, I will be satiated with the love of God, good fellowship, and lessons to follow that mirror my life.
But what has my brain in a dizzying fall? It is my purpose in singleness. Why am I here, in this way? I want to be able to say, “I get what this is now” and know, and go on. But the lines are still full of static, the books are all out of focus and my heart does not feel that I am ready to be single.
What is it like to be single again in this world? I will ask that question of my friends who have always been single, as long as they can remember. To those who lost their marriage to divorce and are now alone. And even to those who feel so isolated in a bad marriage, that being single is more identifiable to them than being married.
I will tell you that being married was the greatest thing to me; half of another person, going through this world as one. I didn’t look back the day I proposed to my wife, which was only six weeks from the time of our first date. I was ready to be married and I loved being married. The vows we took that May day made the world looks sparkly, sunny, bright. “Til death do us part” had no meaning to us, it was a dark cloud on a bright day, one to be ignored. One day, twenty years and one hundred and two days after that beautiful day of expressing God’s love for us, I was no longer married. I was now a widower with a nine-year old son. And still, that was not being single, there was some strange comfort, a connection with the past, being widowed.
Two years and three Christmas days, two birthdays and anniversaries have passed, and I look for the meaning, to say “I get what this is now.” Grief, I’ve learned, never takes a holiday, though I’ve tried to stuff it, to deny it. A year ago in August, I took a magnificent vacation out West, and drove around Colorado just a month after the wildfires died down. And my longest day of travel occurred on the anniversary of Joann’s death. I did find that the anticipation was worse than the day, which was a seventeen-hour drive from Colorado Springs to Durango (with a few stops in-between.) It wasn’t until the trip home that I began to think through tears how beautiful that trip was, and how much would my wife have loved it.
Today, I see God shaping me and molding me through trials and tribulations, and I also see myself coming out a stronger man. But I still want to see what my purpose is in singleness, in being a single parent, in being a friend. To know what “this is now.” Perhaps this week, I will know what that is. I will see what I need to prepare for. I will be happy, and rejoice in what I do. “Being Single” will mean opportunities to shine. And I will know….
Gil Gross, in for Paul Harvey, told this story on the radio this morning. A young woman named Jodie S. Lane, a doctoral student, was walking her two dogs along 11th St on the lower east side of New York City Friday afternoon, when her two dogs starting yelping and writhing in pain. They had walked over a metal grate, and what Jodie didn’t know at the time was that the grate was exposed to a large electrical current from an exposed wire. She moved quickly to save the dogs, but suffered a massive jolt of electricity herself. She took a step or two, and an eyewitness told a reporter that she said something, her last words, before she fell and died. Those words were “I get what this is now.”
À bientôt.
|
This week, I will be journeying to Schroon Lake, New York to partake in another Christian Singles Conference. Attending this winter meeting will make it my fifth since I became technically single. And, as has been my experience, I will be satiated with the love of God, good fellowship, and lessons to follow that mirror my life.
But what has my brain in a dizzying fall? It is my purpose in singleness. Why am I here, in this way? I want to be able to say, “I get what this is now” and know, and go on. But the lines are still full of static, the books are all out of focus and my heart does not feel that I am ready to be single.
What is it like to be single again in this world? I will ask that question of my friends who have always been single, as long as they can remember. To those who lost their marriage to divorce and are now alone. And even to those who feel so isolated in a bad marriage, that being single is more identifiable to them than being married.
I will tell you that being married was the greatest thing to me; half of another person, going through this world as one. I didn’t look back the day I proposed to my wife, which was only six weeks from the time of our first date. I was ready to be married and I loved being married. The vows we took that May day made the world looks sparkly, sunny, bright. “Til death do us part” had no meaning to us, it was a dark cloud on a bright day, one to be ignored. One day, twenty years and one hundred and two days after that beautiful day of expressing God’s love for us, I was no longer married. I was now a widower with a nine-year old son. And still, that was not being single, there was some strange comfort, a connection with the past, being widowed.
Two years and three Christmas days, two birthdays and anniversaries have passed, and I look for the meaning, to say “I get what this is now.” Grief, I’ve learned, never takes a holiday, though I’ve tried to stuff it, to deny it. A year ago in August, I took a magnificent vacation out West, and drove around Colorado just a month after the wildfires died down. And my longest day of travel occurred on the anniversary of Joann’s death. I did find that the anticipation was worse than the day, which was a seventeen-hour drive from Colorado Springs to Durango (with a few stops in-between.) It wasn’t until the trip home that I began to think through tears how beautiful that trip was, and how much would my wife have loved it.
Today, I see God shaping me and molding me through trials and tribulations, and I also see myself coming out a stronger man. But I still want to see what my purpose is in singleness, in being a single parent, in being a friend. To know what “this is now.” Perhaps this week, I will know what that is. I will see what I need to prepare for. I will be happy, and rejoice in what I do. “Being Single” will mean opportunities to shine. And I will know….
Gil Gross, in for Paul Harvey, told this story on the radio this morning. A young woman named Jodie S. Lane, a doctoral student, was walking her two dogs along 11th St on the lower east side of New York City Friday afternoon, when her two dogs starting yelping and writhing in pain. They had walked over a metal grate, and what Jodie didn’t know at the time was that the grate was exposed to a large electrical current from an exposed wire. She moved quickly to save the dogs, but suffered a massive jolt of electricity herself. She took a step or two, and an eyewitness told a reporter that she said something, her last words, before she fell and died. Those words were “I get what this is now.”
À bientôt.
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