It's Just Different

"It's just different."

They were words I muttered too often as I doomed myself to a certain loneliness as a single lady. In my mind, the moment a friend got married, there was just no way that we could ever connect in the same way we had before. I would still be single and they were now married. We were too different. Obviously. It's as though sex changed everything. Or a life partner. I don't know. I just knew that they would never understand the fullness of my emotions. We were in different life stages now.

Woe is me.
And so I isolated myself further from people as we got older. Before long, my options for friendship consisted of the few late twenty-somethings that were single or the young twenty-somethings that definitely couldn't understand my plight. It's as though just being around married people served as a reminder that I was very much single. Always the third wheel. Who wants that?

But now I've crossed over.
Initially I felt a disconnect (even though I probably only created it in my mind). Single people won't think that I can relate to them anymore now that I'm married. I convinced myself.  It's just different. They might even dislike me now!

And I get it.
But I don't.

Because I've been there.
The last decade of my life of struggling through the ups and downs of being single, owning single, loving single, hating single... those years aren't lost. I just maybe have a bit more hope in my cynical nature than I used to. But the years were real. And, it's not that different. I'm not that different.

Maybe I have to spend money differently, or adjust to a bedmate, or learn better communication skills, or how to be an introvert with someone right beside me.... but it doesn't mean that I have to spend every waking hour with my husband. It doesn't mean that I don't want to have conversations, friendships, adventures with people outside of him. It doesn't mean that I can't possibly understand the frustrations that result in being single... whether that's through my own stupid expectations or the ones I feel like the Church or society is placing on me.

Because I do.
I get it.

And my point is that I fear it's far too easy for us to isolate ourselves from others for one reason or another, especially as a single person. There are always a lot of excuses for not making an effort, for not reaching out, for not accepting the reach outs.... and one of mine was: but they're married. And now, I just think: SO?

So what.
I fear that I spent too many years pushing a way, running from, believing this lie that I had to live in solitude because others wouldn't understand, believing wholeheartedly that they could no longer relate. How can my friend who has been married since she was twenty, who is birthing children, possibly get it?

I bet she could.
If I had given her a chance.
Because we aren't that different.
Because those don't have to be the things that define us.

I'm still broken and I still need people. People that the Lord places in my life who remind me of His love, His grace, His faithfulness and goodness. People who are older, people who are parents, people who are younger....sometimes even children. People who are in a different life stage than me (*gasp*). And together, as we live in community... refining happens. Together, as we share life... we grow. We start to look a lot more like Jesus when we graciously open ourselves and our hearts up to those who are "different" by allowing them to know us and seeking to know them.

It's not that different.
It is.
But it isn't.
Not enough to separate us from each other when all we're really craving is to be known and loved.

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