Does listening to a marriage sermon ever get easier?

I have to be just gut honest. When I realized what 1 Peter 3 was about this morning after a beautiful presentation about the Gospel, I wanted to leave the church service. Seeing that this would be inappropriate, I sat and just wondered/prayed if there would be any message/hope for the single girl sitting in the middle of the room who wants to be married. Aka me. Sermons about marriage are not always easy for me. Okay, honestly, they're never easy.

I was having a wonderful morning after battling a little "Why you are you still single and lonely and boring" pretty much the whole weekend. I desperately needed rest this and to catch up on sleep and naps and eating at home but I was excited about going to church this morning and to lunch after. It was the longest I've been out of the house all weekend because sometimes I need to hibernate because my introverted self can't take so many people so many times.

When I walked into church, there was nothing weird or strange and my anticipation wasn't heightened or not there, it was just a pretty normal church feeling (which is not bad for me either). We're singing and then I'm not because I kept thinking about a book I read this morning and I'm analyzing in my head whether what we are doing is really glorifying God or not. (These are the things I'm thinking about while I'm carrying on conversations with you most of the time and I'm sorry. As sorry as I can be anyways.) When we sat down to start the message and I realized it was on husbands and wives, my heart just sank.

The same way that a heart sinks in sermons about children for the mother who is not able to have kids or has lost a child. The same way that a heart sinks about marriage and legacy for the spouse who has lost a spouse. The same way Father's Day is hard for the child who's lost his or her Father and Mother's Day is hard for the woman who doesn't feel she's good enough to be a mom. Or a spouse who's husband or wife is deployed on Veteran's Day and Memorial Day. Life just isn't easy and that's real. Sermons aren't easy to hear and that's real. 

I'm so thankful to Jesus that I was sitting with Shannon and Carson, because otherwise, I would have just cried throughout the entire service and have been so angry because marriage sermons are hard for me. The only brief break I felt was when I could think about politics for a few minutes and trying to figure out what other people were thinking but that didn't really make any difference. The only time being single was addressed was in the prayer at the end when they asked us to pray for our future spouse if we desired to be married. I just cried. Plain cried.

I'm not sure what the church is supposed to do really here. I understand that when you're teaching through a book of the Bible, you can't pick and choose what is taught (nor can you at any other time really) so you can't skip over husbands and wives and such because it's there. It's also not that I have a problem with it being there or with them preaching on it. It's just hard to sit through it when you're not "there" so to say.

I do want to be married and to have someone to live life with and go on adventures with and travel with and talk to and vent to and listen to and learn from and love well. And I don't want to just be married to be married or to say I'm married. And I realize that marriage does not solve problems or make life easier or make anything less complicated because I completely believe that it changes everything but when something you want is something you can't have at the moment, it's a little bit difficult to sit and pray and patiently wait or take notes for something that doesn't apply at the moment. I didn't even play the comparison game like I usually do today. (Miracles do happen.) I am just begging God to either help me be content in the process or just help me be content in the process.

Still praying and believing that Jesus is sending a sweet man to me who loves Him more than anything else. I know he won't be perfect and it probably won't be anything like everything in my head but I'm okay with that. I want to walk with a man who loves Jesus and loves people and the rest of it, we can figure out in the process.

I don't know if listening to marriage sermons will ever be easier for me while I'm single (which seems like a million years so far) but I do know that I can trust God to know what's best and that can be enough at this moment. I may question it in 5 minutes but He's pretty patient with me even though I'm not with Him. I'm really grateful for that. Still praying. Thanks for listening. -Melis

Messy hair. Pretty nails. All ears. Blind men.

Life is so complicated that I cannot begin to express the nth in which I believe this. You never know it when you're young and sheltered and then you grow up and realize that life wasn't all that easy then either. You just had some Angels, parents and grandparents and loving people, who guarded all of that yuck-o stuff from you. 

In all the pictures of adult women, they always looked so put together. I mean, honestly, how do I not wash my hair and I'm dirty and a celebrity doesn't wash her hair and its a thing. How is that a thing really? Last week, I pinned my hair back three days in a row-- it was wet and messy and falling everywhere and I really could have cared less because I was so tired in the morning. Thursday afternoon, one of my compassionate "sons" was like you look really nice today, you fixed your hair.... Implying wow, you have tools and items at your house that allow you to style your hair so you look like a decent human being. Barely, son, barely. 

Another one of my boys had been having a rough week, and I had been patiently asking AKA nagging him to no end, trying to figure out what was wrong. When he broke it down for me while my entire class was outside, my ears miraculously opened and I could hear him... Actually listen to what he was saying and hear him and see him for what was really going on. I thought my lack of sleep called for a messy hair day and the vain attempt at pretty nails to cover up the mess in my brain that was kind of falling apart. I'm just like that sometimes so once k finally had myself together on the outside, I was possibly approachable for a kid who's inside is coming apart. 

The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet but they shouted all the louder, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!" 

Jesus stopped and called them. "What do you want me to do for you?" He asked.

"Lord," they answered, "we want our sight."

Jesus had compassion on them and to used their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed them. 

(Matthew 20:31-34)

Jesus sat with my boy and all his words from his brain and took my messy mind and cleared it for a moment. He gave me ears and him sight. For the first time in a bit that I remembered. So today, when he stared off into space, with tear-rimmed eyes... I knew that my seemingly uncomplicated life needed to pause and take notice for a minute to fill up a space and open my ears. My messy hair and messy nail beds and put together outside didn't make any difference but it gave me a minute. A minute to pass the rebukes of the world who tells me all the freaking time to stop listening to kids and stop investing in my job and to take more time for myself. Those voices were shut down and silenced and it was the men, "Lord, we want our sight." The words changed a little, "I want to be seen and heard."

But Jesus's compassion remains the same. Constant in every rebuke and complicated life. In every moment that makes no sense to us. In ever injustice. It covers up vain attempts on the outside with beautiful righteousness and He puts His hands and feet on us and they get to be seen by those who get to receive their sight. A beautiful picture to be seen, especially if you've ever walked through darkness or being blind. 

May He heal my blindness and your blindness too. And may we stop covering up the little things in our lives but let His love and grace and compassion cover and spill over.

-Melis