Dear Rockstar, There Are Worse Things Than Being Single

Dear Rockstar,

Mum tapped  out her thoughts on our iPhone while she was trying to get you to sleep in for a bit because we had a long day that ended with cell group. Then she realized some of what she wanted to say at cell was also stuff she wanted to say to you about relationships and single-ness someday. If you ever cast about wishing you’d already found The One to spend the rest of your life with…

A Single Ghost Chair

1) Know that there are worse things than being single – you can marry the wrong person. You can have children with the wrong person. You can then remain trapped, knowing that the loveless relationship keeps you from finding true happiness elsewhere. You can watch other people you love get hurt because of your mistake.

Mum knows a girl whose mother made this mistake. She’s been hoping her parents split up for like, decades – ever since she was about 14. A broken family was better than the Real World Education she was getting about how two people who once must have loved each other could then demonstrate such a capacity  for cruelty and bitterness – forever and ever, til death do they part.

Having known this girl gave your mother the conviction to do everything she could to  make it work with Daddy. Regardless how many of her Philippe Starck dining chairs your father chucks out during his manic cleaning sprees.

Two Girl Ghost Chairs

2) Your relationships with other people affect and change you, whether you like or notice it, or not. You can marry someone who brings out the worst in you, or be in a relationship that makes you someone you are not proud to be.

(By the same token though, some challenges in your relationships can actually bring out the better in you. Mum likes to think of it as Refiner’s Fire (which refers to the process of purifying metal by applying heat))

That is to say, it works both ways and try not to form expectations about how your life changes or how you change with another person. Expectations also mean disappointments. Disillusionment. Placing an expectation on another person is another way of letting someone let you down. Or forcing someone to meet some need you have. It’s not that different from expecting a job or a home or even a child to fulfill you. Yet the ability to be fulfilled comes from within. (In Mum’s case, her faith has helped so she doesn’t try to live her life through you and your achievements.)

Single Ghost Chair Playing Violin... But Only If It Enjoys It...

The only one who wouldn’t fall short is God, and even then there will be times when you will have no idea what the freak is up with Him. Because we all fall short.

Thing is, if you’re messed up you’re going to hurt other people in your life who love you. Being with the wrong person and having them mess you up I believe falls in this category. You cannot take care of anyone – children, friends, other loved ones, if you cannot take care of yourself. That’s why you’re supposed to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you go trying to help others.

3) Because Daddy was not Christian (and Mum had accepted Jesus just several months prior to when we met, having come from a fairly staunch Buddhist/Taoist background), your mother doesn’t believe Christians should only marry Christians, though she does fervently hope you will one day accept Jesus and yes, maybe even settle down with a Christian girl.

Boy Chair Meet Girl Chair

This is only because having the faith in common should indeed make the relationship stronger, if only insofar as to be able to share faith-related dreams, aspirations, beliefs. Yet the two “packages” which are two people coming together are just that – entire “packages” of many factors good – and bad. Mum doesn’t believe the only “right” packages are the Christian ones – your father was not a Christian when we married, and not for quite a few years after. We rarely (if ever) fought about it. (For one thing, your mother just didn’t want us to fight over faith.)

The reason Mum doesn’t say you should just date a Christian girl is because she believes we can never know all the ways in which God intends to use us. Nor do I believe He uses only Christians, or the “good” things people do. He uses everything for His plan and we were never meant to know or understand all of it. But Mum does often check herself for ways to serve. She doesn’t believe that only happens helping out on Sundays, not taking a cheap, backstabbing shot at work for personal gain can also be a way of serving.

Different Colored Chair Going All Different Ways

Mum will however advise you not to attempt “Evangelistic Dating,” ie dating someone with a view to converting them to your faith one day. This is because she doesn’t find it very different from any of the other ways in which you date someone less-than-right for you and then hope to “change” them so they are more right for you. (And well she was once the non-Christian to someone else’s evangelistic dating efforts. She found it a giant turn-off so practically speaking you might not be able to get a non-Christian girl that way anyways.)

If you choose someone who does not share your belief system, certainly hope that one day they will, but be prepared that it may never happen. Because the resulting disillusionment from the disappointment of not having a different, more spiritually fulfilling relationship will affect you.

See, Rockstar? You can see the black thru the yellow... Profound. Hmm.

It is for this reason more than any other that Mum says have a good think about who you choose to be with. Each time you have a bad relationship experience, you will be changing, affecting your own personality and what you have to offer someone in a new relationship. We all carry baggage from our past experiences. And we owe it to each new relationship not to enter without a good detox.

Love,

Mum

PS: The above were your mother’s own (very fallible) views… For the sermons we attended, click here and select “Launch Media Player.”