The best talk I ever heard given on the subject of Singular Living was at church, at a Singular Conference actually.

To preface: I am not in the habit of attending such events, in fact, our Singular ministry has evaporated in recent years. Too much desperate and dateless stigma attached, no real fruit in terms of peoples trading up (?) from Singular status and a much bigger push to connecting with the community as a whole. Anyway, I found myself at this particular conference and listening to a woman, who married later in life (read 30yrs old… Good Grief!) telling us poor tragic Singulars how she got over it.

Anyway, her message was this, “Recognize that you are in a season, and do that season well”

I actually think that this message translates to all areas of life not just the Singular versus Co-operative living issue etc. However, that was the best advice I ever heard, and pretty much the only advice I have taken in regard to Singular living. And so, because I have chosen to do this season well I thought you might be interested to know how that sort of mind set works itself out…

1. I won’t cry myself to sleep because I am alone.
2. I won’t feel compelled to be anyone other than who I am.
3. I won’t feel bitter, or twisted, or angry at God that this is where I am at. It may be my fault, it may be someone else’s but apportioning blame doesn’t change the facts.
4. I will look after myself and treat myself the way I deserve to be treated. Let’s face it, if I don’t who will?
5. I will keep in touch with my family and love their kids as much as if they were my own. I will not resent their co-operative or their parental status.
6. I will love the Lord my God with all my heart. Yes… Really.
7. I will not sit around waiting for my life to start. Baby, my life is in full swing…
8. I will say yes when I am asked even if my first thought is no…
9. I won’t say yes again if I don’t mean it.
10. I will take each day as it comes.
11. I will extend every courtesy to everyone I meet. God does, who am I to be any different.
12. I will have no regrets: I will make no excuse.

This is really only a starter for being well seasoned… Still… I think it is a good start, and who knows where it could lead?

It is a strange thing that in my church there is a definite epidemic of singleness. I believe I have already mentioned the monuments to the stupidity of men, (my other single girl friends). I wish I could explain this phenomenon, instead, I’ll reflect on myself and why I, at all of 36, am still single when there is this perfectly nice guy apparently interested in me.

Am I too fearful? He sent me an SMS during the week telling me not to be scared… It was a bit random actually, I had been delayed for the evening at a meeting and didn’t respond to his first inquiry after my day. His 2nd sms said this “Don’t be scared” He may have been going for amusing and witty. I have no idea where it came from even if he had been reading this column I would still question whether I could have been interpreted as fearful?

I replied to him in the form of a question and received no reply. It was weird and while I should have, I chose not to bring it up at D2 yesterday.

D2 was nice, a drive in his new car and a waterside lunch. I enjoyed the experience but am more firmly convinced that pages of romantic history are not going to be written with our story. I think my body language may have given me away I had avoided the welcome hug and did a flit from is car when he dropped me off at home so while he had planned to meet me at church this evening today he changed his plans. Truth is, this was a good thing from my point of view. To have a strange bloke with me would invite speculation and I was not up to that particular scrutiny, not with him, not today.

I would like to be able to say the reason for the thumbs down is that I am too this or too that, or he is not this, or not that but I can’t pinpoint things with any kind of accuracy. I just know that quintessential je ne sais quoi is c’est n’est pas la.

I have too many friends who would say… “give it another shot, you could fall in love next week”… or “God, you have had a nice time on two dates… who is to say it isn’t just a question of time?”

Where does that come from? Truth to tell it ticks me off and creates more pressure. Time is precious and not to be wasted. I don’t want to waste his. Or mine wishing away the days hoping that tomorrow the bells will ring or lights will go on. I guess a shared passion does not a kindred spirit make.

That was what got me started thinking about kindred spirits earlier. I have kindred spirits, guys and girls, attractive and not, all of them utterly awesome, some of them old friends, some of them new, truth is at least one of my kindred spirits is someone I have never actually met!

I think if I felt that YGM2 was such a one then the attraction that is so overdone in the movies may be something I was prepared to wait for. But the sad fact is, (and maybe it is an indictment on my character or lack of it) I just don’t see YGM2 as a kindred spirit. Surf is, so is Tez, so are the girls … But I believe that YGM2 is not and, nice though he is, I think I would feel a lot less stressed if we went our separate ways. Meeting up with him, for me, feels less about nervous excitement… than dread. A pressure to feel something that wasn’t there for me. The thing I hate about this whole business is that it makes me feel like a real sh*t. It is so unreasonable…

Reasonable is explicable – this ephemeral, unreachable, fleeting emotional stuff is not my forte. Which brings me full circle to the reflections on singular living.

Maybe I am just to bloody good at being on my own.

Tomorrow is Monday, I will be back at work – I’ll be happier then…

I promise.

Usually it is my internet hook up that ties up my phone line… (Yes, I am still on dial-up … Sigh)

Tonight I was actually talking on the phone. To a friend that I last spoke to around 2 years ago.

Don’t you love having people in your world with whom you totally pick up from whence you left? it is Utterly Brilliant.

TwinSet and I were friends at my last outpost of Kiwi Living – in Northland, and she is great, a real treasure. In the years (5.5) since I left she and her husband have trained for the ministry and are now full time pastors. Complete with twin set and pearls and the odd plate of scones…

They have a small church of 40 stalwart members and a wounded one at tha sadly…. Maybe I should give them Curate’s address by way of encouragement…

Anyway, we had a proper catch up, on all our own news and the news of the members of our old parish. Planning not to leave it 2 years before we do it again…

D2 with YGM2 tomorrow … going out to explore our shared passion…

For Photography!

(Had you going though didn’t I?! )