Embracing Singleness to the Fullest

I'm single. Some days I don't want to be single. But most days I am incredibly grateful to be single. 

Why? I have had the incredible privilege to experience Jesus and community in a way that I wouldn't have been able to were it not for singleness. Period. 

This past weekend I went on a run after a few random conversations with people talking to me about relationships, singleness, married friends, etc. My dating life and relational status come up more often in conversation than I even personally think about, but I guess it's what people think to talk about. "So Kimberly, is there a guy in your life?" "So Kimberly, do you even want to be married?" All questions that I personally enjoy being asked because they remind me that God has things to teach me and use me for right now, right where I am. Single. 

So here it is…  a few ways I've experienced Jesus and community in my singleness. 

Being Known and Loved: Sweetwater House Roommates. 

When it comes to knowing Jesus in a more intimate way, I think of the women I live my life with in the Sweetwater House (both official roommates and those who are practically roommates). It started with Mandi and God using and continuing to use that friendship as a means of sanctification for me. 

Can I just say, Mandi lives in Fort Worth now with her husband and she is here in Austin for 36 hours and dropped in to our house while I was gone to work. I came home to a note on my desk which read, "I read your whole journal. We're caught up. I love you." Talk about being known. The fact that my response to that was laughter and the thought, "well that was probably the most efficient way for her to know what's going on… I wonder what it said about her?… Oh well, she loves me anyways." Also note, Smash said she read parts out loud. Welp, there ya have it folks…

Currently, I live with women more awesome than my imagination could conjure up. I have a community here in Austin that only God could have created. I've had a LOT of roommates and I've sought intentional community for a good while and even been trained on it.  But this community currently, is the most chosen, intentional, like-minded home I've ever lived in with women. 

Each night one of us cooks dinner so I eat 4 incredibly healthy, homemade meals four times a week. Last night, we as roommates sat around our kitchen table just talking about life, food (a common conversation), guys, work, family and random junk that I talk about on a very regular basis. My roommates know me. Like seriously. They know when I'm slightly off my rocker. They know what Jesus is teaching me. They know how I engage with the Lord and what stresses me out. They know how anal I am about cleaning and yet love me still. Now THAT is grace. Like seriously. 

Community is straight up tough. STRAIGHT UP. When you want to live vulnerable before people and you want to be known (which we all do) and still choose to love people, it gets tough. I can't tell you how many times I've thought/said out loud/ and heard spoken, "you don't have to earn or do something for me to love you. I love you out of the abundance that Jesus has loved me." That's the Gospel. We cannot earn it. It is a gift given to us in the midst of our inability to even kind of try to obtain it. 

The Sweetwater Community. It is hard. But man is it sweet. 

Doing Ministry out of our home. 

Since high school, God has pressed upon me to embrace singleness and use it for His purposes as it is a unique time. Here are some things from our community that encouraged me recently in this area:

1. Love Covers. Have you seen that on my Facebook? Well Love Covers is our chance once a month to open our home up to 25-30 middle school, high school and college age women to come together and talk about identity in Jesus and how that plays out. 
2. Three times a week our house is open to different small groups to open the Scriptures, talk, learn, pray and be in community. 
3. More people than I'm probably even aware of call our home a "safe place" and have access to it whenever they need. It is not uncommon to come home to someone sleeping at our place to find rest and peace. Praise Jesus! 

So singleness is all peaches?

No. Singleness is potentially one of the loneliest things people could experience. There are really hard moments. My community changes and changes pretty frequently. Transitioning out of singleness, aka dating and relationships are a stinking mess. I mean, seriously, there are multiple blogs worth of stories. 

Yet, singleness is one of the sweetest places to commune second by second with Jesus. And I mean second by second, which if I'm pretty sure is something necessary in marriage as well. So praise Jesus that I get to walk with Him through life regardless of who is around me, and yet even in the midst of changes in community, He provides people to do life with. 

So for those of you who are single and struggle some days with accepting that, welcome to the club. But remember, this is a time for God to use you and teach you. Please please please don't waste it. [on a side note, if you don't know how to use your time, come talk to me… I know tons of children and youth who could use some Godly mentoring.] 

I cannot fathom my life without this stage currently. Honestly, I feel like having experienced this stage of single adulthood, I'd have felt robbed of amazing experiences had I not had the chance. Now, I do not even come close to saying that I do singleness well or that I actually do embrace singleness to the fullest. If anything, I believe God continues to show me how He embraces me and carries me through life's stages. So in reality it's not so much about me but more about Him. He's got me. He's got you. And whether we are single or married or whatever, He is ever present and walking with us through it all! So why not embrace your today, whatever that looks like!