So, November was a very busy month for me.

But I've already told you that story.

Sometime between my birthday and Thanksgiving I passed a very different sort of milestone.  It's not something most people would note, and with everything that was going on, I almost didn't remember it myself, until one night, seeking a little bit of quiet, I went for a short drive alone to sort out my thoughts.  Then it just kind of hit me sideways, like a little flashing light, just out of my line of vision, not that big a deal, but something I needed to remember.

The middle of November marked my 10th year of voluntary celibacy.

I undertook this journey when, at the end of my relationship with my daughter's father, I began to question why I kept getting into relationships that were pre-destined to end badly.  I constantly chose wildly inappropriate men, and ignored glaring red flags.  I was tired of my own behavior, and wanted to take a closer look at myself.  I also wanted to know what kind of relationships I would have, and how would they develop, if I removed sex from the equation.  It was to be, for me, a grand experiment in reshaping the way I viewed relationships, as well as my expectations regarding them.

Oh, the things you learn about yourself, when you remove all of your normal distractions!  It's important to note here that, for me, sex was a huge distraction.  It kept me from focusing on what I felt were my inadequacies, fed my mistaken notion that it was an equalizer between me and the "pretty" girls, and slowed down my eventual realization that relying solely on sex was no way to create, or maintain, a relationship.  Hard lesson to learn, but it's always better to figure that out sooner rather than later.

Some of what I learned I've touched on in other posts.  I finally figured out that I was jumping into relationships due to acute insecurity about my looks, or perceived lack thereof.  I realized that desperation attracts all the worst personality types, and any relationship with someone every bit as desperate and needy as you are is doomed to fail.  The most important takeaway from my strictly enforced vacation from relations, was that I started asking myself relevant questions about myself and my relationships: where did I want to go, what did I want to do and how do I relate to others?  It was only later that I found out that these are the kinds of question that relationship experts wish all people would ask themselves before entering into relationships and/or marriages.  Yeah, it would probably put them out of business, but a lot of heartache could be eliminated by a minimal amount of self examination beforehand.

1)  Who am I, really?
     Very few people know enough about themselves to really answer this question.  To be honest, though, most people will always be a work in progress, as the older we get, and the more we learn, we hopefully gain insight and wisdom, and become a little more refined in our behavior and approach to life.  But a little self-knowledge goes a long way.  I know that I am a rock and roll loving, Center-left, feminist, Christian introvert, with a serious tendency towards over helpfulness, that I channel into customer serviced based careers.  Knowing that about myself, why would I want to get involved with someone who hated rock music, was hard right politically, and really didn't like people who were different than themselves, just because he was good-looking, or had money, or a nice car?  This is just the situation that all of us, men and women get ourselves into, then cannot extricate ourselves from after we realize that we have gotten involved with the wrong person for the wrong reason.

2) What do I want/need/expect?
    If you have no idea what you want in a relationship, it's a lead pipe cinch you probably aren't going to get it.  You would think that was common sense, but this simple truth misses most people by a wide margin.  When I talk about wants, needs, and expectations, I am not talking about physical traits.  Everybody has their own specific set of features that works for them, so hey: Whatever Blows You Hair Back.  But once you have your person with your physical features of choice, then what?  Making sure that you know that you want someone who is kind to others, need someone with a sense of humor that is at least somewhat similar to yours, and expect to be treated with a certain amount of respect is merely scratching the surface of finding out what internal qualities are important to you.  In the end, it's those internal qualities that are going to determine whether of not what you have is a short fling, or the romance that will last until...

3) What really matters?
    I've noted before that the older I became (and frankly the longer this experiment has gone on), the more philosophical I became.  I came to the conclusion that if I couldn't make better choices in romantic partners than the messy people I kept attracting, then it was just better all around for me to simply not be in any relationship at all.  The focus was then on getting my life to the point where I was content no matter what happened, rather than pinning all of my hopes on my happiness coming from the outside, being provided by someone else.  Making peace with yourself, ( quirks, flaws, odd dents, and needed improvements), is the best possible thing you can do for yourself, and eventually for whomever you decide to bring into your life. 

Or not.  In my 43 rotations around the sun, I have known many, many people whose primary goal in life was to get married. For a while, I was one of them.  As I got older, had children, struggled, renewed my faith, and simply kept living, it finally occurred to me that I was content with the basic parts of my life, whether I found a romantic partner or not. I had achieved a certain peace, and that was all that really mattered.

This path of celibacy is not for everyone, nor is it a cure-all for relational ills.  I knew what my weakness was, and I removed it.  That's not to say it's been an easy spiritual walk.  I am a complete hedonist, and I know it.  While I was getting my head together I used food to soothe my emotions, and subsequently gained a lot of weight that I now have to lose. These things happen. 

What's most important to me, is that I am not where I was ten years ago.  What I hope, is that I now know enough about myself to make better relationship choices, even if that choice is not to be involved in a relationship.   As far as I've come, to my own mind, I still have a long way to go.

Here's hoping the next journey will be every bit as interesting as this one.
    

I've mentioned somewhere before that I sing with a few choirs.  Make no mistake, though: I am no one's idea of a soloist.  (In fact, I sing so low that you might not be able to hear me!)  I blend extremely well, however, and this suits me just fine.  No pressure to do anything other than fill in the background, and plenty of opportunity to observe the audience reaction to the song.

Judging from the amount of praise we get after our performances, I think we do okay, even as our numbers dwindle, and we don't get around as much as we used to.  Often I hear people wondering aloud how we can stand up and perform like we do.  They wonder if our lives lend themselves to performing without a care in the world, or at least that's how we appear to them, anyway.  Speaking as an introvert with almost crippling stage fright, and way too many personal things going on to count, I'd like to offer at least a partial answer to that question.

In late 2001, gospel artist Kirk Franklin released a song called "Why We Sing".  It took it's chorus from an old hymn, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow", which talks about not being worried about how you are going to manage the things outside of your control currently going on in your life.  In the singing of this refrain, you discover the reason so many of us sing, even in the midst of the chaos going on around us:

"I sing because I'm happy,"

Right now, I have every right to be in the middle of a nervous breakdown.  One child completely unmotivated and making no progress, another having fairly serious socio-emotional issues, stagnant job mobility or opportunities, serious financial issues that might soon see me tossed out of my apartment despite starting a second job, and unless I am willing to pay a professional, damn near no one to talk to.  And I know for a fact that I am not the only one going through serious difficulties right now.  Yet, I can still say that I am happy.  Regular prayer gives me just  the release valve I need, right when I need it most.  Not prayer in the sense of asking that my issues be resolved for me, so much as venting, and grasping to understand at least some of it.  I have rarely not come away with the understanding that nothing is forever, not even issues.  One child will eventually find a direction, the other will grow out her issues, and even if the financial issues don't get worked out in enough time to save this place (bad decisions made out of desperation do come back to haunt you), this won't be the first time I've had to move during bad circumstances.  I am not the only person to have ever gone through these things, and people do understand.  I am not alone, although it might look that way from the outside.  My happiness is not based on a lack of want, so much as it is based on the knowledge that everything ends, good, bad or otherwise.  Which leads to:

"I sing because I'm free,"

We have an interesting concept of freedom here in the US.  We celebrate our own freedom while sometimes actively denying it to anyone who holds a different viewpoint from our own.  This is not true freedom in that you are creating a hate that will make it hard for the next person to exercise their freedom.  I speak here of the Christians that mistreat anyone they feel is beneath them, either because they are not a Christian at all, or they feel that that person is not Christian enough.  If your practice of Christianity involves condescension, or belittling someone else's beliefs or lack there of, here's a hint:  Christianity - You're doing it WRONG!  Christianity is not an ego driven quest to make everybody just like you, and our Constitutional right to freedom of religious practice extends to EVERYONE, including those who practice no religion whatsoever, as well as my progressive, feminist take on Christianity.  So long as no one is actively being hurt by any particular practice (or if they are being hurt, it is dealt with properly), our freedom to believe as we will is protected.  Freedom to worship when, where and however you choose is not a freedom  extended all over the world, and we deny it to one another at our peril, lest we lose the one thing we are denying to someone else.

"His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me"

This is a concept I know people have the most issues with and questions about.  The idea of an all knowing and all seeing Father in the sky.  I've always viewed this aspect in a metaphorical sense.  The world places a great deal of emphasis on the individual, and in the US especially, personal responsibility is both a buzzword, and an expletive, depending on the context it is used in.   This is the reason most people have a hard time dealing with anything outside of their control.  So when people need to reach out for understanding, especially when things go wrong, and occasionally when things mysteriously go right even when they had every reason to go catastrophically wrong, the idea behind Faith, the feeling that someone out there cares about you, can empathize with your struggles, and in some way will always be there for you, is a necessity that keeps some people together in the middle of situations that would crack someone else.  For some, this might be their only method of finding some sort of peace that the outside world is trying to deny them.  The plight of African American churches and congregations in the South, both during slavery and the civil rights movement comes to mind.  Why disturb them if for no other reason than people that were meant to be cowed into silence and cooperation with their own oppression were finding peace, comfort, and often the strength to continue fighting within them?

While I am specifically telling my own story above, I know at least some small portion of it will apply to everyone that sings in every choir across the nation, maybe even across the world.  We are far from perfect, and we find the strength to sing through all of our worst trials, because we know that in some church, somewhere, someone is waiting for something positive, some shred of encouragement, something that will help them keep on going through the next day, and we might, maybe, deliver that.  If we can help someone, even if it just momentarily brightens their day, we've done something right.  I've said that I'm no soloist, but I do have a few favorites that I can listen to repeatedly as there are just notes that they sing that really appeal to me: Brenda, Sharon, Inez (these are all Sopranos, BTW.  I sing soprano, so perhaps there is a bit of bias there!  :)  ) Tomi and Willa.  The songs we learn, I often find myself singing to myself for days on end, and often refer to them at times when I need peace or comfort, and sometimes, for celebration.

And that's the reason why I sing.

Just a quiet Monday of what is going to turn into a busy week.

Contemplating the old hymn "It Is Well with My Soul.

It was written in the late 1800's by a man who lost everything: money, property, his children.  And yet he kept going. Despite tragedy, and most likely in the face of naysayers.  Because you know whenever bad things happen to good people, there is always someone around to point out how they would have done it differently, and not had such a terrible outcome.  They do not hesitate to make themselves known loudly, and often in the most condescending tone of voice possible.

Yet, he wrote:
"When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know,
It is well, it is well, with my soul."

This isn't passive acceptance.  Far from it.  It is finding a deep place of inner peace in the middle of terrible circumstances.  From that place of peace, he was then able to deal with whatever was going on around him from a calm, spiritually focused place.  Death, disease, wrath, anger.  Whatever the world threw at him, he could withstand it because he had developed the internal spiritual and emotional tools to handle it.

Is it well with your soul?

What trials or circumstances are you facing today?   Are you holding on to hurt, anger, pride (one of my biggest faults, BTW), envy, past regrets?   Been lied to, or about, or otherwise slandered?  Or perhaps you are just in a season of things not going particularly badly, but not exactly good either.

What do you need to achieve that peace?  Sometimes, as Christians, I think we miss a grand opportunity during our weekly Sharing of the Peace.  We get so caught up in the pageant, we miss the purpose.  Somewhere, inside that Sanctuary (for some, that is the only safe space they see all week), someone is desperately in need of that peace.  We are to share whatever peace we have with each other, usually via a handshake or a hug.  Sometimes we see the need, and acknowledge it.  A lot of times, we don't, if only because it is covered up with a coat of "I don't want anybody to know anything is wrong.".

Lest you think this is specific to Christians, anybody can achieve this inner peace.  First, there has to be is a willingness to admit that there are some things you may never understand, especially as tragedy and difficulties go. Second, know that you absolutely cannot control every circumstance and every person around you, nor should you try.  Last, know that once you have put forth your very best effort, sometimes there really is nothing left to do but wait.  All of these things were hard for me to do, but I needed to work on them in order to be a better daughter, sister, mother and friend.  Let me tell it, I still have a long way to go, but like anyplace in life worth going, the destination is often far less interesting than the journey.

Wherever you are in your journey today, I hope it is well with your soul.  May peace be with you, today and always.