Hey
Currently listening to CB's Forever, and not gonna lie, the JK Wedding thing makes me giggle a little with delight every time I think about it . . .
I understand why it had to happen, but my own engagement being broken off really hurt, and it's not the easiest thing to think of most times.
But here's where I'm at with being single - it's so good and VITAL for me to be single right now, really embrace it, and really bust through a few deep areas of my heart that are still behind walls so that I can love my wife out of the overflow of these areas, out of an overflow that loves a Jesus who is not content to let someone stay where they are. And it's not like he forces you to face your deep hurts and fears so much as shows you through the Spirit how needed that confrontation is.
So though I am rather hopelessly single right now and not even looking in the slightest, when I hear this song, I picture my wedding day. I wanna marry someone who will
A) Let me wear a kilt
B) Do something crazy for an entrance with me
C) Both.
My wedding day is going to be anything but solemn and serious. I will purposely invite people who are depressed to come, because I plan on having more than enough positive energy for everyone. I'm a horrible dancer, but best believe I'ma dance forever.
And I have no idea who that bride might be, but my Papa has a good idea. I'll let him show me when He thinks I'm ready.
I hope he's not waiting for my skills to improve, or I might as well embrace celibacy now :)
G
"Celibacy Today -- The terms offered by...a formal vow of celibacy are as frightening as they are appealing—and strangely, they are no different from the terms posed by marriage. While chastity binds married couples to a shared intimacy and singles to refrain from sex, both callings are self-sacrificing as well as self-giving, and both rise from an engagement of love and of faith.
ReplyDeleteThis said, celibacy is not necessarily a terminal vocation. God could certainly call a single adult into a new way of being in the world. But that presumes that he or she was first in full possession of a previous identity. In other words, our attentiveness to marriage as a holy calling—a calling "not to be entered into lightly," as the Anglican service book puts it—proclaims itself most strongly when it is assumed by two people who have first known themselves to be celibate.
Though some churches may flinch from ordaining a celibate vow, we might still use the word celibacy to rightly honor and rightly name the countercultural life to which singles are called. In doing so, we encourage more than just abstinence from sex. We bless the single vocation. We recall the church's history and remember our true family. We christen singles as called-out ones, with familial gifts that amplify the church and her outward-looking mission."
Marcy Hintz in "Choosing Celibacy", Christianity Today, 9/12/08, http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2008/september/20.47.html
Thoughts??
I still wanna get married :)
ReplyDeleteI hear ya though - or , rather, I hear Marcy. And it's definitely where I am right now - finding myself as a celibate person before entering into something that I took far too lightly the first time around.
I think part of not knowing myself as a single, celibate person manifested itself in how I would constantly look to Tamara for approval and my own sense of worth, and while that has changed, I'm still on the journey of discovering this child of God known as Greg.
Thanks Marah :)
I am with you. Behold, the challenge of viewing these non-married years as more than just the pre-marriage holding pattern and "celibacy" as the holy season of life that it truly can be. '
ReplyDeleteAnd I, too, am praying my celibacy is not "terminal".... which strikes me a funny this morning. I know dear Marcy meant terminal in the sense of vowing to never marry, but sometimes I feel like singleness is a social disease that is slowly killing me. Accurate perception? Probably not.
And yet.... does not our Father lead us to places that reveal our indigenous lies and our puffed up selves so that He can "kill" those diseased parts of us? I've heard marriage described as the most powerful holiness maker because such close proximity to another person quickly reveals our own selfishness and self-centeredness. However, I think that when we are open to hear from God, ANY season can be used by Him to make us more LIKE Him.
He is using this season to make us holy. Dang. Go Him.