During my intense case of the condition known as Writer’s Block, my teammates advised me to write about what has been on my heart lately and what I'm passionate about. I have decided that because I am more of a visual learner, to break this blog up into the questions and statements some of us racers and adults have come across in our lives…perhaps, you can relate to few.
“You’re 29 and single?, there must be a demon inside you!”
These words were spoken to a teammate of mine on the World Race. And though, we sat around as a team and laughed about it months later, she opened up to us about how these words spoken to her represented another bullet to dodge and her singleness/age was the repeated target. She spoke to us about how daily she has to remember that her confidence and worth is found in Christ alone. And that her identity can’t be found in any man except for Jesus.
“Why don’t you have a boyfriend Wendy?”
This was the first question I predicted the youth would ask me when I told them to write down any questions they had for our team. I held the microphone in my hand and began to speak the truth I learned from God…
“There is this underlining pressure to be in a relationship and find our future husband/wife. We fear being alone and that singleness symbolizes this idea that there must be something wrong with us or we are not good enough to be loved. Yet, relationships and marriages are actually the most challenging ministries and where the devil can attack us the most with lies. All too often we place the desire to be in a relationship or married as the top priority or focus in our lives. We fantasize about the future and create a list of expectations for the time they ask us out or our big wedding day.
The truth is that our needs can’t be met in other people the way we think they can. I have been single for almost three years now and have learned so much more about relationships being single than when I was in them. When I was your age I went from one relationship to the next wanting to experience love in new ways. I broke a lot of hearts and fell into the illusion that a man could meet all my needs and that I could be his perfect girlfriend by meeting all of his needs. It took a long time for me to learn that only God can fulfill the deepest desires of our hearts, not people. Being single I have learned how to give my whole heart to God and let him lead me in all areas of my life. The hardest area to give him control of was my heart and the desire to be in relationship. It took the Race to reach a place of, if it is God’s plan for me to be single the rest of my life, I’ll learn to be content with that. Because he has the best plans for my life and he is control of my heart – and well, He is good.
“What is on your Checklist for the person you want to marry?”
A male teammate responded with, “Well, first she has to love God, I need to be attracted to her, she needs to love others well, be intelligent, hold a conversation etc.…." A female teammate said, "He needs to Love Jesus and be a leader. I’m attracted to fit guys who have a career and can support me and my dreams”. We talked for hours about our past relationships and husband/wife checklist at multiple team times on the race. We laughed and agreed with each other on certain points and disagreed on other points. Then a teammate said. “I only have one thing on my future wife checklist” That she loves God above everything else. We laughed at him, that’s it? and he replied, “Yes, and that’s all you need on your checklist”…
Some of us have fallen under this illusion of creating a checklist of standards for our significant others. “Prince charming has these qualities and I won’t settle for anything less”. “Well, I have to be sexually attracted to her otherwise there is no point in dating”. It took the race for me to realize that God wants us to rip up our “checklists” and cast them out of our minds.
We fear of settling for someone who doesn’t have the qualities we desire them to have. Yet, our checklist of qualities are actually us holding a sense of control over another and what they should be or become. We begin to set expectations, standards and this idea that our needs have to be met or we are done with the relationship. This was never the foundation God created relationships to have. In truth, relationships are not about us. What God placed together in a union was to represent his relationship for his church. A relationship of love built on the principles of selflessly serving one another. A team effort, where God fulfills our needs as individuals so thus we can love and serve each other with his light and strength. In a book written by Francis Chan and Lisa Chan called You and Me Forever, he concludes that “most marriage problems are not really marriage problems. They are God problems. They can be traced back to one or both people having a poor relationship with God”. A shift in perspective; perhaps this area of insight actually extends to all areas and problems in our lives…including our spouse checklist.
“You’ll meet your future spouse on The World Race!”
This statement has been spoken over me and some of my teammates on the race. Our families, friends, and church brothers and sisters all mean well when they tell us this. But little do they know the seed that becomes planted in our hearts. That little seed of hope and expectation for the pursuit of finding a husband or wife. We meet married couples at training camp and at our launch for the race. Most of them met their spouse on the race and we begin to think “maybe I will too”.
10 men and 31 ladies on C-Squad, we look around at our group sessions and make bets on who will end up together. We have our secret list of couples we would think that would be cute together. We are excited at the end of the race to say “I knew it!”, “I was right!”. We were warned at training camp, launch and on the race about the racers who pursued each other on the race and were sent home because of it, the racers that left the race early to pursue each other and the ones who fell headfirst into sexual sin and acted upon it. Yet, the greatest hurt of all comes from the loss of respect from squad mates, ministry partners and their supporters in which the racers didn’t realize till it was too late. We sign contracts and have sessions about healthy relationships and how they can wait to begin till after the race is over. For some of us racers our hearts begin to wander and we create bonds with the opposite sex that lead to deeper feelings. I speak from experience on this topic…
I speak from experience on this topic because I was under this illusion that I should tell the guy I liked I had feelings for him at the beginning of the race. Little did I understand the deep emotional bond that was created between us. I was in a state of denial in the distraction and my feelings for him became a priority. “I found my future husband!”, I believed. I didn’t understand how to put God first in this area of my heart or that I still needed too. I thought, “we are all adults, I'm sure he knows how I feel about him, so I'm going to just tell him”. Our teams were switched up, the connection faded, I lost a close friend and it took months for us to apologize to each other. I learned so much through this experience though. I learned in humility how to approach him and apologize. I learned how to not let my feelings dictate my actions and I’m learning that God, doesn’t want to us to make it our mission to find our future spouse and to even think we already met them. It’s on the daily we need to surrender this great desire our hearts and let him write that chapter. And the truth is, the story of when we meet our significant other is only a small chapter in the overall story of our lives. God’s overall story in our lives contains the greatest love story. In conclusion, when we give God full control of our hearts we begin to realize it was never about us or the quest to find our future other. The greatest love story has always been about him and his love for us.
“I found my future husband on The Race”
…I found the one who holds my heart is no man at all, but God himself… (:
