Sexless in the City, continued

"Girl, you'll never guess what I did!"

Cradling the phone under my ear with my shoulder I was wide-eyed and intrigued. " No, tell me."

"I just bought a house!"

I almost choked on the carrot I was eating, pretending it was a orange-glazed sweet roll. "What ?!"   I was intimidated and excited for her all at once.

"I don't know...I just did it. My mom co-signed for me and God worked all the details out...I still can't believe it.!"

Since we both came from the campus ministry this house was a defiant crossover into the world of adulthood.

  We had known each other since our sophomore year of college and we practically grew up together...  in the church. The church leaders where she lived disapproved of her getting a house becasue she was not married. Since she was single it was viewed as irresponsible.

My friend went on to explain how she just couldn't wait to get married before she could do the things she wanted to do in life. She, like me, had turned 30 and she wanted a house-so she did it.

Neither of us said it aloud, but this house was a finger in God's face, letting him know he wasn't going to stop us from living our lives, chasing our dreams and being happy. It was also a "screw you" to the church, becasue  the christian culture disrespected single people and treated us like children....

____________________________________________

"You know what I really want to do?"

The commercials were on so we had a couple minutes before the movie came back. I pulled the covers over my legs and looked at my roommate. "No, what?"

"I want to adopt a baby."

I'm wide-eyed. "Really?"

"Yeah. A russian baby, from one of those  orphanages over there."

"So when do you want to do this?"

"Well I know I don't want to wait to get married to do it, THAT I already know. I'm what-34 now.... if I wait too long I won't be able to do it. It takes alot of energy to chase around a two-year-old."

My inner circle of girlfriends were going through serious growing pains.  Most of us had grown up in the church, spending our formative years there. The problem was we weren't forming anything but dysfunction. We were in a culture that promoted marriage as a sign of spiritual maturity and of God's blessing but at the same time this culture demeaned us for wanting to get married. We were always too focused on it and not on this god of ours.

Our church and our religion had smothered us to the point which our growth was stunted. We were functioning in society but socially challenged. 

We were bipolar from our god's high demands. Having an existence centered around pleasing this god by not sinning sent us on an emotional rollercoaster of highs and lows.

The christian world of angels, demons, prayer, hearing god's voice made us schizophrenic. The voices in our head were always there:

god is unhappy with you

you're probaly going to hell

why can't I stop sinning?

I shouldn't feel that way

I shouldn't feel this way

I shouldn't want to have sex

I shouldn't want to be married

I shouldn't have dreams outside of god's plan for my life

what IS god's plan for my life?

why isn't god not answering my prayers?

We were borderline personality disorder because we were juggling the secular world and the christian one.

We were "in the world but not of it"

We were always on evangelism duty. We had to be examples for "the lost" and that meant we had to be perfect. SInce the goal was to catch souls for Jesus we had to catch people by marketing ourselves to them. This meant we had to amputate parts of our personality for the sake of our image.

We had to become like paul in the new testament-becoming like whoever our potential converts were.

We'd become comelians in our own skin.

The older we got, the more tired of it we got. Since we were taught that leaving the church was leaving god, we tried to cope the best way we could. Since we were taught that there was only one way to have a relationship with god, we tried to decorate our cookie-cutters and put spinkles on the cookies to give it a personal touch.

Singles in the church were brushed aside and forgotten about. Better yet, we were like cinderella- a servant doing all the dirty jobs while all the married people were treated like the wicked stepsisters.

My friends were fed up with it and wanted to live their own lives. They were taught to only look for a mate within the church-and fear was psychologically instilled in them-us-to view men outside as lost and going to hell and to believe they would lead us away from God. My girlfriends were holding out for god to answer their prayers and when the years flew by without any change they realized the church formulas weren't working. It was sink or swim if they wanted to live their lives. I'm glad my friend who bought her house did.

You have to be allowed to live your life in the wild. Just because we make mistakes doesn't mean we are wrong or  that we are outside of God's will.

God's will is for us to be free....