A Road Less Travelled

The other day I had a realization that was so profound it might be worthy of the short list of pivotal moments of my life. And while, as is usual for my life, it was a very ordinary moment it was nonetheless profound.

I was thinking about being married. (Excursus: Whenever I contemplate a life apart from singleness I imagine being married. Not getting married. Important something there.) I was contemplating the fact that when I am married I will have promised my husband that I will follow him wherever God calls him and therefore us. And for some reason I was assuming that because I’d promised to follow wherever I would have to leave Peoria and follow wherever. Like, because I’d promised God was going to make it happen. And then I realized that I was getting upset.

I don’t want to leave Peoria. More than that I don’t want to leave Orange Street. I feel very strongly that I have important work to do here. Okay, currently the work I can point to is teaching Noah and Justice to read and being in charge of set up and clean up of our Tuesday Night on Orange Street dinners. It’s not glamorous, but I feel in my soul such a deep steadiness about my place here that I cannot argue. It’s the same steadiness that convinced me to move here five years ago. And I realized that if getting married meant leaving the place where I was sure of my calling I would rather not. I would rather be here and single with that steadiness than married without it.

Times past I wouldn’t have been able to say that. Not too long ago I was so hung up on getting married I wasn’t even thinking about what I was meant to be doing. I was longing for a place, a heart home, a man who’d call me his. I was craving a man with a mission so I could be married and be sure what to be about. But that Spirit of His snuck up on me and put in me such a surety I feel like a fortress.

Yes, I still want to get married and yes, loneliness still hurts. I haven’t all of a sudden changed into a heartless goon for God and I still am convinced I do not have this supposed ‘gift of singleness’ people are so hot about. But I am grounded. I am convinced of what I should be doing and, shockingly, I’m actually doing it. I have my niche to fill and by God’s might I’m filling it. And I’ll keep on until He whispers it’s time to move on. Cause I’d rather be here, lonely and single, laboring under the smile of God than someplace else, even married, and drifting.