Earlier this week I had a fascinating conversation with some friends about how much honesty is helpful in a dating or marriage relationship. For instance, how much should a dating couple share about their past experience? Or in a marriage, how much should a man divulge his sexual thought life to his wife? This is an extremely delicate question because there are two opposite yet dangerous errors that you can make in this area–sharing WAY too much and hurting someone more than is necessary, or sharing way too little and losing the element of trust and open communication in your relationship.

I shared with my friends that, when Ike and I were dating, we had a rule of full-disclosure about our past. We didn’t go into great detail about our past relationships because we didn’t want to create visuals that the other couldn’t forget, but we also wanted to know each other thoroughly.  I might not like the things that Ike did or the decisions he made, but I still want to know the path that led him to me. I want to understand the experiences that shaped who he is today. I also wanted him to know that I love him entirely and unconditionally, flaws and all. At times the conversations were intensely painful, but I’m glad we did it. The knowledge of his past doesn’t hurt me anymore, and I now trust him immensely.

For us, we were concerned about the danger of hiddenness and lies in our marriage. We promised each another that we would never lie to one another (except about surprise parties!) or intentionally hide anything that the other should know. If one of us gets a text message from an ex, even an innocent one, we tell the other. No matter how seemingly small or insignificant, we are careful not to dismiss such interactions with the excuse, “It doesn’t matter” or “He doesn’t need to know.” If we do, then that little white lie (or omission) becomes an entryway for deception to enter our marriage and damage its structural integrity. As you can tell, we take this VERY seriously. And we have enjoyed the fruits of that decision.

However, Ike and I also benefited from the fact that our “baggage” prior to our relationship was about the same. Neither one of us had more or less experience than the other. That made it a little bit easier to be honest with one another. But in relationships where one person has more baggage than the other (especially when it is significantly more), there is a new level of complication. The truth can almost be violent to the person with less baggage, and while that doesn’t mean that it is better left hidden, it does require a greater degree of mercy and calculated timing.

As I reflected on the above discussion with my friends, I decided to survey a number of colleagues who have been married longer than I have, and also serve as pastors at local churches. I compiled some GREAT advice that I am going to bear in mind for the future, so I thought I would share it with you now. As you think through the nature of honesty and truth-telling, here are some pointers to bear in mind:

+ Jesus dealt differently with different people. He did not speak truth to the woman caught in adultery in the same way he spoke truth to the Pharisees. That said, consider the person with whom you want to be honest. Do you have the kind of relationship in which they feel safe, and honesty is well-accepted? Will they be hurt by the truth and is there any way to prime the conversation in advance? Should you unload everything all at once, or gradually build up to it?

+ If you are too eager to tell a hard truth then you should probably wait. When you know that you are going to hurt someone with a truth, the telling should come from a place of godly sorrow, not harsh judgment.

+ Do not engage in honesty for the sake of honesty. One friend pointed out the danger of a culture that is all about “being real,” thereby leading people to share MUCH more than they should. With this in mind, remember that honesty is only a tool for love. Sometimes loving people means hurting them in the short-term by sharing difficult truth, but that does not make transparency a virtue unto itself. There are times when withholding information can be loving.

+ Don’t wait too long to share your past with your boyfriend or girlfriend. It only becomes more painful the longer you are together. One colleague recounted his early dating relationship with his now wife, sharing that he informed her of his past after just a few months of dating. Things were getting more serious but he didn’t want to proceed under false pretenses, so he explained that he had a rocky past and that he would be happy to share as much as she wanted to know. At that point in their relationship, it was early enough that she could receive the information without being devastated by it.

+ There is no true imbalance in baggage. Although people may come to a relationship with past baggage that is more hurtful than other types of baggage, the reality is that we are all broken people saved by grace. While it is important to understand how your past can injure the person you love, it is also important for the person with “less baggage” to work toward showing grace. Chances are the person with more baggage feels sick about it, but they are helpless to change the past. This is an opportunity to reflect God’s grace back to them. It is difficult and painful, but consider Matthew 18:21-35 (The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant) and work toward showing mercy and forgiveness.

+ Have an accountability partner for on-going struggles. While it is important for married couples to talk about their weaknesses, any sins that are particularly hurtful to one’s spouse need to be handled tactfully. Have a same-gender friend with whom you can share the gritty details, because it is not loving to share them with your spouse. He or she needs to be aware of it and know that you are taking the necessary steps to fight it, but anything beyond that is not merciful.

When it comes to honesty in relationships there is no formula. There is also no way to take away the pain of difficult truths. Sin results in brokenness, and that is the reality of the world we live in. That said, I will close with a passage of Scripture that is a helpful directive amidst the messiness of honest relationships: Ephesians 4:15-16

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

The verse is ultimately about spiritual maturity, and it reminds us that in order to cultivate a mature community of believers in which Christians relate to one another in edifying ways, there must exist a careful mixture of both truth and love. Truth can be conveyed in ways that are unloving, but love without truth is not really love.

This weekend my church had a guest preacher named Dr. Dan Allender, a psychologist, who spoke on the topic of intimacy. He preached out of Genesis 1-3 and raised an issue that I had NEVER before considered. In Genesis 3 we read about God’s curse upon Adam and Eve as a result of their sin, a curse that we continue to experience today. For women in particular, our plight is spelled out in verse 16:

To the woman he said,“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

I’ve read this verse many times before, so none of it was news to me. That is, until Dr. Allender made the following comment in regard to the pain of childbearing. He said, “Women cannot avoid this curse simply by not having children.”

Dr. Allender’s words revealed a tremendous deficiency in my prior reading of the curse upon women. My assumption of its scope had been far too small. Whenever I considered the pain of childbearing, my mind immediately flashed forward to the delivery room where I would be in massive pain for a day, and then it would be over. End of story. The second part of the curse, I chalked up to the occasional difficulty in marriage.

But what if I hadn’t gotten married? And what if I can’t have biological children? Does that mean the curse doesn’t apply to me? Are only married women and mothers especially cursed?

Clearly not. The effects of the Fall are cosmic in nature–nothing is left untouched or unbroken. So when the Bible talks about the “curse,” it is not so much an arbitrarily designated punishment in two areas of a woman’s life, but instead a description of the all-encompassing brokenness of her life and relationships.

But how does the curse relate to women who aren’t married and don’t have children? Here, Dr. Allender pointed to the reality that women experience pain and hardship whenever they give birth to new relationships, whether it is a mother-child relationship, or simply a friendship. For women, relationships are both our greatest source of strength as well as our greatest source of agony. Broken relationships with parents, children, spouses, or trusted friends can wound us in ways that we almost never recover from. That is not to say that men are not wounded by their friends or family members, but when I look at my life in comparison with my husband’s, there is a thematic difference between the two of us. For me, the pain of wounded relationships has a recurring role.

Similarly, the broken male-female relationship described by the second part of the curse is not limited to marriage. It can play out in dating relationships, friendships, or even in families. Any time a woman looks to a man for wholeness in an idolatrous way, and any time a man dominates a woman in an oppressive or violent manner, it is a mark of the curse.

Why does this matter? Why bother harping on the curse? First, because it gives a name to the common turmoil of female relationships. From the time we were little girls, our relationships have been under the curse. Rather than feel isolated by or enslaved to those broken relationships, we can be empowered by the knowledge of our common condition.

But more importantly, the whole span of the Bible is the story of God’s undoing of the curse. And we are a part of that story. As daughters of God we are called to serve as agents of redemption in a world plagued by the curse of Genesis 3. Its reversal is ultimately accomplished by Christ, but we still get to be a part of the overturn. Our lives are signposts of hope directing people toward God’s good and perfect future. No matter our life circumstances we are all under the curse, but as Christians we are all part of its redemption as well. Our relationships may test us by targeting our greatest vulnerabilities, but they’re also the destination for our mission of hope in this world.

Last night Ike and I got to have dinner with one of our single guy friends, and over the course of the meal the conversation drifted to the topic of dating. I’ve only been married a year so I remember the ups and downs of the dating world well. Over the years I’ve had my share of break-ups, and I’ve also comforted a lot of broken-hearted friends. It’s definitely tough out there, and unfortunately “Christian” dating is not tremendously easier than any other kind.

Aside from the fact that we’re all imperfect human beings struggling to think clearly when our emotions are raging, it’s hard to pinpoint the one thing that makes dating so hard. To be sure, there are a lot of different factors in any given situation that can trip people up. But the more I think about it and the more I process my own experiences, it’s clear that one of the main contributors to dating speed bumps and train wrecks is sheer cowardice.

Just think about it–how often do men creep into a relationship slowly and confusingly instead of stating their intentions clearly? How often do women lie to men or coldly reject their advances, instead of gently and clearly explaining that they just want to be friends? How many men and women delay a difficult conversation because they like the attention they’re receiving, even if they have no intention of actually dating their pursuer? And how many men and women don’t have the guts to break up with their boyfriends or girlfriends, so they stop returning phone calls and try to gradually fade out?

There are so many ways that cowardice rears its ugly head in dating relationships. We don’t often recognize it as fear because it’s usually masked as “compassion”–we don’t want to hurt the person. Unfortunately our cowardice only ends up hurting them more. It’s a double insult: on top of rejection there is now disrespect.

It’s important to own up to this cowardice, but the language we use about dating often inhibits personal responsibility. It is instead common to speak in generalizations: “All men are dogs” or “All women are crazy” or “I’m always the friend but never the girlfriend or boyfriend.” This language has got to stop. It’s neither accurate nor Scriptural. All of us, at some time or another, has screwed up in some magnificent way along the dating path. So when we’re tempted to place blame on the opposite sex for being particularly confusing or ridiculous, Jesus’ words in Matthew 7 are a helpful directive:

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (v. 3-5)

Like the rest of the Christian life, it’s easy to focus on how we’ve been wronged while overlooking the many times we have wronged others. Dating is no exception. So with that in mind, the rest of what I’m going to say is directed specifically at women and it deals with your personal responsibility in dating. Many of us have been injured, but we have also inflicted injury, and we need to be honest about that fact.

So to begin, one of the primary reasons women get frustrated with guys is their lack of clear intentions. Many single women yearn for men who will “man up” and just ask them out. However as soon as a guy steps up to the task, he is likely to get shot down. Why? Become women don’t want just any guy asking them out–they want the right guy.

That is a common pattern among women and it is extremely discouraging to godly men. It not only sends mixed messages but is exacerbated by the fact that women won’t own up to it. After complaining that guys aren’t initiating, women find ways to weasel out of dates when the “wrong” guys ask them out.

Of course, some of this behavior stems from a desire to spare the guy’s feelings, but it can actually be more insulting to men when we treat them like fragile baby birds. They’re not gonna break and they’re not gonna cry. We need to be kind but we also need to treat them like the men that they are. After all, if they had the courage to ask you out in a gentlemanly way, they’ve earned a little respect.

One big question in all of this is WHY women freak out so much. Why can’t we respectfully decline like a mature adult ? (And I am here speaking of appropriate advances from men, not inappropriate ones) Well I have a theory. One of the reasons women get so wigged out when a guy shows them unwanted attention is that women assume men think like they do. When a woman crushes on a guy, she’s likely to get carried away by her imagination, dreaming about all the reasons why they’d be perfect together and  how awesome their lives would be if they got married. However, I’m not sure that most men think that way. Sure there are probably some guys who get just as carried away as we do, but I suspect a lot of guys are thinking, “Hey, she’s cute. I’d like to take her to dinner.” Period.

Women need to beware of assuming too much about interested men, and consequently raising the stakes to a frightful level. Asking for a date is not a marriage proposal. If you can keep that perspective in mind and maintain a cool head, you’re much more likely to respond as a responsible, godly women instead of making bad decisions out of fear.

With all of that in mind, I want to close with a final verse that speaks beautifully into this situation. It comes from 1 Peter 3:3-6 and advises the following:

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.”

The examples of women like Sarah (Abraham’s wife) remind us that sin is not far behind when fear takes the driver’s seat. We cannot let fear determine the way we treat others. Fear results in a fight or flight response. It causes us to lash out or trample feelings. It is not guided by wisdom or truth. And it is certainly not guided by love.

So if you’re reading this and you’re in the throes of the dating process, I truly sympathize. It is HARD and it is scary! But please don’t sin in your struggle. Respect your brothers and treat them as the wonderfully made members of the church that they are. Honor them according to the image of God in them. Be courageous. Anyone can date badly, but it takes a woman of real character, strength and devotion to Christ to date well.

One of my greatest joys in life is to hear from former students or young women that I have led in the past. After our paths diverge, I sometimes wonder if anything I said or the way I lived my life had any impact at all, so it’s a tremendous affirmation when these women seek my advice or friendship after I’m no longer in an official capacity of leadership in their lives.

Over the years I’ve fielded a lot of questions from these young ladies, and about 9 times out of 10 the questions are about dating! Especially now that I’m married, I’m happy to offer a “from the other side” perspective on relationships. But oftentimes in the process of answering these questions I think to myself, “I bet she’s not the only person wondering about this–I should probably write a blog about this topic!”

Well that is the inspiration for today’s post. I want to highlight two questions I’ve received of late. Both deal with dating, and both are questions that I bet a lot of young women ask. So without further ado, here is some hopefully helpful “big sister” advice for navigating the deep waters of dating:

Question #1: How Soon Should My Boyfriend and I Become Spiritually Intimate?

One dynamic that emerges pretty quickly in Christian dating relationships is how soon you should pray together, serve in ministry together, etc. I would distinguish this kind of spiritual intimacy from simple conversations about faith, which should happen before you ever date–you need to know if he loves Jesus, and the only way you can find out is if you ask!

But what about the intentional investment into one another’s spiritual growth? What about sharing you deepest darkest prayer requests, or making the decision to serve in ministry together? Although these practices would seem like spiritual fertilizer on a budding Christian relationship, I would actually caution against diving into this type of intimacy too quickly.

As I shared with a young friend recently, this type of spiritual intimacy EARLY in a relationship can blur the lines of your own relationship with God. At the beginning of any relationship there are a lot of temptations to overcome, so it is during this time that you have to be particularly guarded about your own spiritual walk. It can, however, be tough to gauge your own walk it has suddenly become wrapped up in the faith of another. The exhilaration you feel after praying together or leading a group of youth together can leave you feeling SO GREAT with God–and also TOTALLY blind to the friends you haven’t seen in weeks, the ministry commitments you ditched to go serve with your bf, or the fact that your quiet times are inconsistent because you’re up late every night chatting with your man and you can no longer wake up in the morning.

You see, spiritual intimacy in dating relationships is not always real spiritual intimacy. In fact, it can be just the opposite. Sometimes when we rush into these practices, we are actually using God to serve the growth of the relationship–not the other way around. And in the process of this misapplication, you become pre-maturely intimate with someone who you are still only getting to know.

That is why the true test of a healthy relationship, EARLY ON, is whether you can stay consistent in your faith independent of one another. As time goes on and you become more serious, it is appropriate to pray together consistently and grow together spiritually, but take it slowly. A relationship will be Christ-centered if both individuals are centered on Christ before they ever begin to date, so take the time to learn whether he has that kind of focus without the crutch or misguided motivation of a girlfriend.

Question #2: What’s the Difference Between Lust and Normal Sexual Desire?

Another great question concerns the line between healthy sexual desire and lust. As you become more and more serious about a man and the two of you are planning to marry, it is perfectly natural to experience increasing feelings of sexual attraction. If you didn’t have that desire then it might mean he’s not the one for you! But what is the difference between this normal desire, and the sin of lust?

The point at which you cross that line is in your imagination. God created sex and called it good, which means it is healthy and godly to desire this good thing. Where you stray into dangerous territory is day-dreaming about sex. It’s so easy to fantasize about sex and let your imagination carry you away, and that’s the point at which a God-given desire crosses into the category of lust.

In day-dreaming about sex, you are allowing your mind to go to a place that God has forbidden at this point in your life. In a sense, lust is like cheating the system–you won’t let yourself go there physically, so you go there mentally. Jesus anticipated this loophole in Matthew 5 when he equated lust with the actual act of adultery–the motivation behind the two is exactly the same.

It should also be noted that when you freely allow your mind to indulge in that degree of intimacy, it will be easy for your body to follow. In the heat of the moment, you are more likely to venture down a path if it is familiar to you–even if only in your imagination.

Well that concludes this edition of Big Sister Dating Advice! If you ever have questions that you’d like to see discussed on this blog, always feel free to e-mail me! Or, if you have personal questions that you want to ask in confidence, I would love to hear from you as well. Even the best dating relationships can be challenging, but as the Body of Christ we can help each other along the way!

One of the common complaints about Christians today (often by other Christians) is that we’re fake. As the indictment goes, no one is being “real.” Words like “honest” and “authentic” are thrown around a lot. We need to be honest about our sins and have authentic community. I’m sure I’ve said stuff along those lines myself.

However, I’ve started to question whether fakeness is the real problem. But let me back up first, and ask you to consider the following scenario: Have you or someone you know left the States to spend time in a developing country, only to return completely disillusioned with American life? It’s like the blinders have been taken off as to how privileged we are and how we take everything for granted. For some of us, an ensuing bitterness towards Americans envelops us. Americans seems so selfish and greedy you can hardly stand it!

What is ironic about this experience is that I, for one, was just like every other American before I went overseas. I loved my comfortable life, and while I knew there was suffering far away I also tithed to the church and I volunteered in my community and that was enough for me. I wasn’t a bleeding-heart activist who cried at night over the dying children in Africa. What opened my eyes to the reality of my privilege was seeing first-hand the want of another. That experience changed me in a way that staying at home could not.

Why then, did I return home with the expectations that others should feel as I do, even though they had not seen what I’d seen? Who was I to judge other Americans when I had been just like them several weeks before? Yes, many Americans are selfish and greedy, but few of them have stared a dying AIDS child in the face, and it’s honestly very hard to conceive of the horror unless you experience it yourself. I cannot fault people for that.

Lack of experience accounts for tremendous naiveté about the world, and this lack of experience is often confused for inauthenticity. Another example of this is teenagers. How many of us were total idiots in high school because we thought we knew everything? Me! Thankfully, my parents were gracious enough to factor in my lack of experience and knowledge about the world in how they responded to me. They knew I would grow up and kick myself for being so foolish, so they responded in grace and love. While they did teach me and discipline me, they weren’t disappointed or disillusioned by what I didn’t yet know.

These two examples illustrate one of the real reasons for so-called “Christian fakeness.” While I don’t doubt that many Christians are pretending to be something they’re not, most people’s intentions are not that sinister. Many Christians genuinely desire to be real with you and to have open, honest, community. Many of us comes across as fake because of our lack of life experience. Many of us who were raised in Christian homes or privileged families have been sheltered from the darkness and suffering of the world. We are limited by our experience, which also limits our understanding of God.

This, of course, is not true of all American Christians. Not all Americans are sheltered and privileged. What’s more, there are some Christians who have incredible wisdom despite their lack of life experience. But speaking from my own life, I have been extremely privileged, which has directly impacted the development of my spiritual maturity. My understanding of suffering and the depth of my sin has been very shallow at times, which meant that my understanding of grace was shallow as well. I didn’t want to be that way, nor was I trying to hide anything. I was simply limited by my experience.

When we think of Christian maturity, it’s helpful to think of it in terms of infancy, adolescence, and adulthood. Spiritual infancy is defined by a consumption of the simple, digestible truths of God. We don’t want to get stuck there, but it’s a necessary step for every Christian. Spiritual adolescence can digest the meaty things of God, but like a human teenager it is also limited by experience. Over time, the combination of solid teaching and experience result in the wisdom defined by spiritual maturity.

To be perfectly honest, I think I am just now beginning to leave my spiritual adolescence. Barely. I’m still in it sometimes. Maybe I’m a spiritual college student.

All of that to say, if you ever find yourself feeling frustrated with other Christians for not being “real,” instead show them grace. Show them patience. We are all on different spiritual timelines so despite having been a Christian for years, many of us are still in our spiritual adolescence. Show the same kind of loving grace that my parents showed me when I was younger, knowing that I was limited by my years. There are much better ways of encouraging one another than slapping people with the label of “fake.”

 In my last post I explored the thinking behind women who would rather hang out with men than women. As the logic goes, women are too dramatic, emotional, boring, etc. For this and many other reasons, “low maintenance women” don’t want to put up with their “high maintenance” counter-parts.

As I concluded in the last post, this mindset has some troubling implications. When we paint all women in such a negative light, we’re no different than male chauvinists who do the same. We are female chauvinists. And this has theological implications. Rather than seeing women as having been made in the image of God and honoring Scriptural teachings that encourage women to fellowship with one another (Titus 2), we resort to superficial stereotypes that ultimately demean one another, and consequently dishonor God.

With all of that in mind, there is a second dynamic in play here. While a lot of women legitimately struggle to make female friends (perhaps they grew up with 4 brothers and that’s where they fit best!), we risk more than theological error here. There is a second dynamic, and it’s relational.

For some women, the excuse for avoiding female friendships can be a smokescreen for a relational dysfunction. Some women prefer male friendships because they like the attention. Plain and simple. They like thinking of themselves as “one of the guys,” the one girl that her guy friends can relate to. Unlike “those other girls,” she really gets them. It is a way for women to feel special or set apart. They’re not just like every other girl.

This is a need that exists within every woman. We all want to feel unique, and we seek to fulfill it in different ways. But rejecting female friendships should not be one of them. While male friendships are important, they also have to evolve in a way that female relationships don’t . As your male friends get married, or if you get married, you cannot be friends with them the way you were before. In fact, if your guy friends are even dating someone then you need to back off, and that can be a painful change. It can also be hurtful when your close guy friends choose to date other women, but never look your way.

These are obstacles that female friendships don’t encounter. That’s why emotional intimacy with a male friend puts you at greater risk than emotional intimacy with a woman. But more importantly, we should never tear down other women as a means for hiding our own idolatry. If you’re using male friends to fill a void in your life, don’t shift the blame.

So yes, it is perfectly fine to have male friends with whom you can fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes it’s great to have a guy friend who can give you brotherly advice or a male perspective. But you need a support system of women as well. Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” We typically interpret this verse in the context of dating, but it’s an important filter for friendships too. Be sure you’re entrusting your heart to friends for whom your motives are clear and emotional intimacy will always be appropriate.

With all of this in mind, examine your motives and the nature of your friendships with men. Are you good friends with a man because you’re secretly hoping it will turn into something more? Are you close to a man as a means for filling some need for male attention? Or are you avoiding female friendships because of pride? Do you see yourself as somehow better or more grounded than most women? No matter your relationship status, this is an important issue for all of us.

This weekend marked 3 months since Ike and I got married. And an awesome 3 months it has been! We’ve had a ton of fun together, but we’ve also learned a lot about one another and ourselves in the process.

In particular, I’ve realized that I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to driving. You see, I’m finding myself in the role of passenger more often than I ever have before. Ike almost always drives, and this is hard for me. We’ll be driving some place that I’ve been a million times, but then, horror of horrors, he decides to take a different route. He turns left where I would have turned right. He takes the interstate instead of the back roads. It starts to drizzle but he doesn’t turn on his windshield wipers because he “claims” he can still see out the windshield.

As a result of these decision-making discrepancies, I continually find myself asking gentle yet immasculatingly annoying questions like, “Love, don’t you think you need to turn your lights on at this point in the day?” or “Did you mean to take that turn? This route seems a little out of the way.” It usually bugs him when I ask questions like that so I’m trying to stop, but it’s really hard. Many times I would do things very differently from him. And as a passenger, I feel completely out of control.

The ironic thing about this situation is that Ike is actually a far superior driver. It’s not that I’m a bad driver, but he’s got a great sense of direction and spatial awareness. He can drive through heavy traffic and parallel park more adeptly than I can. He doesn’t get lost as easily. And he has an almost psychic ability to find parking spaces in a packed lot. He’s pretty much better in every possible way.

Why, then, do I feel this need to be in control when he is clearly the better driver? Why do I have to be in the driver’s seat, or at least making navigational calls from the passenger’s seat? Why can’t I just trust him?

This predicament confronted me head on when we went to Chicago last weekend. We were checking out schools for his PhD work next year, and we could only afford for one of us to drive the rental car. Because of our schedule it had to be me, so I soon found myself in the position of navigating unfamiliar, frantic Chicago highways in a tiny black Ford Focus. My GPS was essentially worthless with all the tunnels, my car was about half the size of every other vehicle on the road, and for some reason about 4 exit ramps in a row were all closed for construction–thereby trapping me on the Chicago highway of peril. By the time I made it to Union Station in downtown Chicago, I wanted to curl up in the fetal position. I wanted Ike to drive.

And therein lies my dilemma. On the one hand, I like driving because I can do it my way. I can go the ways I think are best. I can know that all the hazards are being accounted for. But if Ike drives, we are arguably safer. It is more reasonable and wise to put him in the driver’s seat.

As I wove through a confusing alignment of orange barrels directing me to who knows where, I reflected on all this. What makes more sense? For me to be in control, or surrender control to someone who’s a better, safer driver? The obvious answer is the latter.

It’s then that I realized my whole driving saga was not only an analogy for my marriage, but my relationship with God as well. In the case of my marriage, I like to be in control of my life but God blessed me with someone who complements my personality and abilities. He’s strong where I’m weak, he’s patient when I’m short-tempered, and he’s intuitive when I’m oblivious. Knowing all this, I can either trust my husband, or maintain my independence. I can either benefit from our arrangement, or I can reject it.

But it’s also significant to note that while I was driving through Chicago, my sense of personal control actually resulted in greater fear. What a picture of the Christian life! When we try to control our lives instead of submitting our cares to God, our sense of control is fleeting. Deep down, you know that you don’t really have control. Unlike God, you don’t have the power to orchestrate all things for good in your life. You can’t anticipate how everyone will treat you and what unexpected life circumstances will transpire. That’s why being in control of your life is the most terrifying place to be. It places a tremendous burden on your shoulders that you were never meant to bear, and it sets you up for disappointment. On a human level, control is little more than an illusion. The only person capable of claiming TOTAL control is God.

This is a hard reality for me to swallow, not only when it comes to God but especially in my marriage. It’s a lot more difficult to trust my husband because he’s an imperfect human being just like me. It’s one thing to trust God, the perfect Creator of the Universe, and quite another to trust someone who makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in his lap while using his knees to steer.

But surrendering control and trusting my husband is ultimately another means for trusting God. I trust that God gave my husband to me for a reason, and I need to learn from him. I trust that my husband is a provision of God’s grace in my life, and I need to embrace that grace.

This principle is also true for other areas of my life. Nearly every life circumstance, major decision, temptation or trial confronts us with the question: Do you want to be in control, or God? It took a terrifying journey down I-90 for me to realize that I really do want my husband in the driver’s seat. As much as I like to drive and make the decisions, it’s also a lot scarier that way.

And it’s the same in life. We can choose to be in the driver seat. We can choose a trip of greater anxiety and greater danger. We have that choice. But wouldn’t you rather hand the controls over to someone with THE perfect driving record? (…Pardon the cheesy analogy…) I know that I would, and I’ll remember that the next time I want my husband to take a different route, or stop making his lunch while driving 70 mph down the interstate. I’ll also remember that the next time I wanna jerk the wheel away from God, who knows infinitely more than I about navigating the obstacles and perils of my life.

When I was a college minister I had the following interaction with both male and female students on a very frequent basis:

Emily has been dating a guy for a number of years and they’re really serious. She thinks she’s going to marry him and they have their entire future planned out around one another. But one day Emily’s boyfriend breaks up with her. She is absolutely devastated, feels lonely all the time, and can’t stop thinking about him. It’s as if her entire life’s direction and purpose has suddenly deflated, and she can’t seem to pick herself back up.

When I sit down with Emily to discuss the situation, one of the things we talk about is how God might redeem the situation. Although it seems bleak and hopeless now, God can use her hardship to teach her, refine her, and grow her. That said, I encourage her to embrace her singleness. Don’t worry about jumping back into the dating pool just yet. Take some time to remember who you are in Christ alone. After you’ve had a healthy amount of time to do that, pray about when to consider dating again.

Emily whole-heartedly agrees. “Yeah, I definitely need to be single right now!” she proclaims. “I’m really looking forward to having this time to grow in my faith. Just me and Jesus!”

One month later, Emily is dating Caleb, a guy she met shortly after our conversation. Eventually I grab a chance to talk to her: “I thought you were going to be single for awhile?” And she innocently responds, “Yeah, I was.”

It then dawns on me that my idea of being “single for a while” (ie. 6 months to a year–depending on how serious the previous relationship) was completely different from hers. For someone who has been in a long-term relationship–or has been in lots of consecutive short-term relationships–a month or two can feel like an eternity of singleness. Though she’d only been single for a few weeks, she she felt like she’d been single forever.

The reason I open with this story is that it will help me explain the post’s title. While singleness doesn’t sound like a hard to define category (Some of you are probably thinking, “Geez, I know I’m single! You don’t have to rub it in!) stories like Emily’s lead me to believe that there isn’t a widely held agreement on what it really means to be single. While many people admit that God “is leading them through a season of singleness right now” or that God hasn’t revealed their future to them spouse yet, their lifestyles are sometimes inconsistent with this supposed phase of life. I’m not trying to be sadistic here and tell people who are already struggling with being single that you’re not “single enough,” but there’s a degree to which we need to be honest about whether we are honoring God in the seasons He has called us to. Some people do this well–they are single and they use their time excellently. But others (and I did this myself at times) may be single in name but have multiple emotional attachments that prevent them from ever learning or growing from this time in their lives.

God calls everyone to be single at some time in their life, but a lot of people find ways of almost getting around it. Rather than learning what they’re supposed to from it, namely founding their identity on Christ instead of another person, a lot of people are only quasi-single. They’re single in the most minimal way. And this toe-in-the-water singleness all comes about as a result of 2 main factors:

1. The Way We Define Singleness–For most of us, when we look back over our lives thus far and tally up the number of years spent in relationships, we only count the years in which we had an officially labeled “boyfriend” or “girlfriend.” However, that number of “official relationships” can be deceiving. For many of us, we don’t count the number of people who filled a “boyfriend placeholder” position in our lives, or guys with whom there was a physical relationship but no commitment, or guys that we just flirted with incessantly. Many women have a significant list of men with whom there was never a relationship title, but they either felt like they were in a relationship, or acted like it.

That is not being single. With or without a label, if you are emotionally involved with someone in a way that consumes your time and thought life, or if you’re giving away your heart or your body to another person in an intimate way, then you aren’t really single. What’s more, you’re not being single in the way Scripture envisions this time of your life, a time that allows you to “concern yourself with the Lord’s affairs and how you can please him.” (1 Cor. 7:32) Instead of using your singleness to the Lord, you’re actually finding short-cut ways to avoid it.

2. The Length of Your Singleness–As I described in the opening story, it can be hard to stay single after a break-up. For a lot of women at least, we can lose our identities in the man we are with. It’s like we lose our center of gravity, so we start searching for another guy to take that place. But if you’re single long enough, you will begin to remember what your identity is like apart from a guy. You remember who you were created to be and how God alone really is enough to fulfill you and give you joy. This process usually took me, personally, about a year to work through. It wasn’t until a year after a break up that I fully recovered and remembered who I was again in Christ. That said, when we jump right into another relationship, we make it more difficult to engage this process because we haven’t given ourselves the time we need. It’s not impossible, but it’s very hard.

That said, if you’re the kind of person who bounces from relationship to relationship, or if you’ve never been truly single (no hooking up, no pseudo-boyfriends, no excessive and long-term flirting with that guy you like) for 6 months to a year since you were in 8th grade, then you really haven’t been single very long. You haven’t given yourself the time to heal on the Lord’s strength or build your identity on the Lord alone, without the crutch of a relationship. And the way you measure this amount of time is not how long its been since your last boyfriend, but how long its been since your last emotional or physical relationship with someone of the opposite sex.

So while I’m not going to make a bunch of rules about how long you should be single after a relationship or how long people should experience singleness in general–every person is different and every situation is different–I offer these 2 angles on singleness so that we aren’t deceiving ourselves in a way that undermines this God-ordained seasons of our lives. Again, I don’t want to belittle how tough it can be to be single, and some of you are an example to us all about how to embrace your circumstances to the glory of God! But I fear others of you are short-changing yourselves. Singleness is hard, but it’s also a gift that should not be wasted.

Singleness is a really important phase of every person’s life. For me, it was my chance to learn who I was in Christ apart from any other person so that when I finally got married I wasn’t depending on my husband to fill a role that only God could. So while no one knows when they’ll meet the person they are meant to marry, and no one knows how long their season of singleness will last, I encourage you to live out your singleness with honesty before God. If you’re single right now, don’t hook up with a bunch of random dudes. Don’t hook up with your best guy friend either. Don’t flirt with all the cute guys at church to make yourself feel better, and don’t keep that guy hanging around you who likes you, just so that you don’t feel lonely. If you’re going to be single, do singleness well. Do it in a way that is obedient to God in the season He’s called you to.

Yes, I know it’s not always that simple. You don’t know if that guy or girl you like is “the one.” All I’m asking is that you don’t be sketchy about it, and that you be honest with yourself and with God. Is your dating life motivated by fear, or by a security in the God who has great plans for you? Your answer to this question is likely revealed by your lifestyle–are you doing singleness well, enjoying it and using it to honor God, or are you attempting to minimize the “pain” of it as much as possible?

On the first day of our honeymoon, my husband and I were waiting at the Miami airport when I decided to buy a good book for the trip. I knew we would be spending plenty of time out on the beach, and I also knew I’d get bored just laying there, so I found a bookstore and began to sniff around.

A number of my friends (female friends, that is) had recently gotten sucked into the phenomenon that is the Twilight series, so when I happened upon a display that contained all 4 books, I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t exactly planning on reading theology during my stay in St. Lucia, so this was just the sort of thing I was looking for.

And like my friends, I got sucked in almost immediately. I knocked out the 500+ pages beast of a book in a matter of days. In fact, on our way back home I found myself frantically scouring the Charlotte airport looking for the sequel. Eventually I received a text message from my husband beckoning me back to the gate so that I wouldn’t miss the flight, so I moped back to the gate, sulking that I would have to wait another day before I could continue the series.

Eventually I went to a local store and purchased New Moon, which I similarly finished in just a few days.

This brings me to the title of my blog. Don’t worry, this is not one of those conservative Christian condemnations of all things magical like Harry Potter. I think Harry Potter is awesome, and I think vampires are pretty fun too. That’s actually why I saw the first Twilight movie and duped my husband into going with me–I thought it was an action vampire movie. Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong, but I didn’t know that at the time.

Plus, the books themselves are fairly PG rated. I’m not sure the other two are quite as innocent as the first, but with the exception of some intense kissing scenes, the sex and language is held at bay. A refreshing change from most romance novels these days.

The real reason I have misgivings about this series (and keep in mind that I have only read half of it) is the emotional intensity of the relationship between the two main characters, Edward and Bella. Regularly, both characters make statements about one another that are beyond melodramatic. They’re flat out ridiculous. When Edward thinks that Bella is dead, he tries to kill himself. When Bella is under threat of being murdered by several different characters in the story, she brushes it all off because she can face anything in the world as long as Edward is by her side. He is “her life” and she is “inextricably in love with him.” (after having known him for just a few months)

Bella talks about Edward the way Scripture talks about Jesus. He is her savior. He is her idol. And that idolatry is made to look romantic and enticing for countless young women across the country.

Now in some ways, the heightened drama of this love story is really no different from the likes of Romeo and Juliet (with whom the two are frequently compared throughout the books) but what disturbs me about the books is its near cult-like popularity among young girls today–an appeal that Romeo and Juliet no longer have. I have a 12 year old cousin who is like a little sister to me, and she’s got pictures of Edward all over her room. She’s also read all 4 of the books, as have her friends. She is literally eating it up with a spoon.

And that scares me. In a culture where women derive so much of their worth from guys, where young girls are actually committing suicide when they are shunned by a guy at school, is it responsible to encourage this story line? Bella is made out to be the heroine, even though her obsession with Edward is utterly pathetic. She has no sense of self apart from him, yet she is placed on a pedestal at the center of a supposedly great love story. That is not the message that I want my cousin, or my future daughters, to absorb as they figure out their identities in Christ. Not only could such a message negatively impact future dating relationships, but it could short-circuit their relationship with God as well.

It’s for that reason that I would not consider the Twilight books a positive way to shape my daughters’ worldview, should I ever be so blessed to have some. As I mold them into women who fear the Lord above all else, teaching them to found their identities on Christ instead of men, I fear that the Twilight novels would undermine these efforts. Women love the books so much because it is the sweetest of temptations, feeding their imaginations with illusions of the grandest kind, and I would fear tempting my sweet little one in this way.

With that in mind, I would even be wary of some adult women reading these books, or books like them. For women, our imaginations can be a tremendous source of struggle. They can create in us expectations that do not match with the world, or more importantly God’s plan. When we create such expectations, we go to great lengths to achieve them, even at a cost to ourselves. So for single women for whom this issue is a struggle, or even married women who are experiencing disappointment in their marriage, I would be careful about these books. They have the potential to shape our imaginations in ways that can be toxic for our relationships.

So at the risk of sounding like a prude, that is why I wouldn’t let my daughters read the Twilight books. I’m not sure if I personally am going to continue the series or not–like I said, it’s a quick and easy read, which is sometimes kind of nice. And so far it’s been pretty clean, which is also a nice change of pace. But we must be diligent about the information we consume. At any age, our minds are still moldable because our imaginations are so vivid, so we must be cautious about what it is we’re consuming, and whether it harmonizes with the truth of God.

Cliques.

This is a word that instantly generates feelings of annoyance and disdain. We all knew those girls in high school, that group in college, maybe even some people at your church right now. Few things feel worse than being excluded from those tightly-knit groups who so ably highlight our inadequacies. And that is why we hate them.

I still remember sitting in my Middle School cafeteria the day my best friend moved on to a better group. Even though we’d been inseparable for years, I’d seen the move coming for weeks. She’d been spending more and more time with those “other girls,” and then came the day when she sat down at their table for lunch. I asked her to come sit with me, and she gave me the “please don’t talk to me anymore” look. Brutal.

(Of course I can’t really blame her. She was blossoming into the most gorgeous girl in our school, while I simultaneously spiraled into the depths of what I call me “awkward phase.”)

Because of stories just like mine, we all detest cliques. We’ve all been excluded at one time or another, and many of us still bear the scars from those emotional blows.

But is there more to it than that? Aside from the way cliques make us feel, is there something inherent about their very nature that we should avoid? What does Scripture have to say about this rampant social practice? After all, we may have been hurt by a clique, but we’ve probably been in a clique as well. What might God think about this?

Well to find the answer, we can look at the very first clique in the Bible, and it’s found in Genesis 11. In this chapter, we see the people of Babel growing in number, as well as pride. They have deceived themselves into thinking they can attain equality with God, so they set out to build a tower that will reach to the heavens. God told them to be fruitful and multiply, but they instead hunker down and stick together. They have bigger fish to fry than simply multiplying. They have the rep of the group to protect.

And what is God’s response to this? It goes as follows: “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” (v. 6) So He confuses their language and scatters them all over the earth.

What exactly did God mean by that statement? Nothing will be impossible for them? Did He really mean that nothing at all would be impossible? That they could really become like God Himself if they merely stuck together? I don’t think so.

What God meant by those words was that no evil would be impossible for them. Already they were seeking to replace God, and they were only just beginning. Clearly, no act of disobedience was out of bounds, so what would be next??

This is the danger of the in-group mentality. It is a mentality in which the self-preservation of the group is put first and foremost ahead of every other concern. And when this happens, all other people, interests, or causes are subordinated to the well-being of the group. We have seen the in-group at its worst during the Holocaust and the practice of slavery. We even see it in Christian cliques when pastors and prophetic voices are driven out of their churches for reasons having nothing to do with Christ.

In-groups mentalities are therefore extremely destructive because they use peer pressure to get the whole group to act, at which point their collective actions become all the more powerful. If you don’t go along with the group, you risk being shunned, thereby making it very difficult to change them.

So the larger these in-groups get, the more dangerous they become, which is why God scattered them. As the group gets larger it gains momentum, growing faster and faster. And as this growth transpires, it gains increasing man-power to promote its cause.

God knew all of those things, and foresaw the potential destructiveness of this in-group mentality, which is why He responded so definitively. If left unchecked, there was no end to the evil they could accomplish.

That said, beware of cliques–and by that I don’t mean avoid people who are in them. Rather, don’t be in one yourself. When we are in a clique, we fall prey to the in-group peer pressure, and subsequently hurt others. What’s worse is that these cliques often prevent us from even caring if we trample those around us. We find ways to rationalize why we are so exclusive–”I do hang out with other people…sometimes;” “We tried hanging out with her but she’s just so hard to talk to;” “She’s just at a different stage in life than the rest of us, so she should find someone her own age to hang out with.” All of these are justifications for exclusion, exclusion that wounds and destroys.

How do you know if you’re in a clique? Some of the tell-tale signs include the way you spend your time–do you make an effort to hang out with anyone else, or do you only hang out with one specific group of friends who also happen to be exactly like you? Also, what do other people think about the group? Odds are if you’re in a clique, then people have mentioned it to you before. Listen to them. And finally, has anyone been hurt because of the group dynamic? And by that I mean has anyone felt intentionally excluded. Although friendships are never perfect, which means people will inevitably get hurt from time to time, the group’s willingness or unwillingness to make amends and include them in the future reveals a lot.

If you find yourself in a group that fits any of those qualifications, then you need to do one of two things–talk to the group and make an effort to change, or start making new friends. Cliques can be spiritually toxic, so if your friends are resistant to change then you need to switch social circles.

Instead, resolve to be outwardly focused. God called us to be fruitful and multiply, and this command applies to more than mere procreation. We need to multiply spiritually, we need to be adding to our number daily those who are being saved, as well as making our Christian friendships more fruitful. Reach out to the people in your church, dorm or workplace who need a friend, and reach out to those in the community that the socio-economic in-group has marginalized. This practice will generally take us out of our comfort zones, but if the people of Babel teach us nothing else, it is that we can either take ourselves out of the clique, or God will do it for us.