Your Vote Counts

Don't get the wrong idea, there may be all kinds of elections to be thinking about right now, but this one isn't political. Take a look to the left, over there. Do you see the poll? This poll helps us know what direction to take the blog in. So take a minute and think about some things. This blog is for a lot of churches - does your church already have a single adult minsitry program in place? Does it meet your needs? What needs do you have? Do you feel isolated in typical church programs and events as a single adult? If so, you may be looking for fellowship with other single adults. Do you want to see more content on this blog in the way of devotionals or other spiritually rich material? Or maybe you feel like your church is already meeting that particular need, and you just would like meet some friends that you can go do fun things with that are harder to pull off with your married friends (that would mean that your needs are social, by the way). Or, maybe your needs are more emotional. That would mean that what you need from this blog comes in the form of each of us supporting each other in our struggles by relating with similar circumstances and trial-and-error solutions. Whatever your needs are, please tell us. Despite any kind of super-hero training classes you may have taken, no one here is a mind reader. :) So, in the words of all those voting season cliches - Vote! Let your voice be heard! Your vote counts! You vote makes a difference! (Do you get my point?)

So do it. Move your mouse over there and pick one. You can do it. There are no hanging chads, no right wing, left wing, no political campaigns. Tell us what you need so that this blog does what it needs to do. Thanks!

In the Meantime...

I'm about to admit something that I feel a little funny saying. Maybe it's going to sound a little funny to you too, or maybe you know just what I'm talking about (I'm taking the risk and hoping for the latter), but when I first got out of college and moved into my own house, I sort of had something in mind. I sort of didn't really expect to be staying here very long. I may have even sort of expected that at some point pretty quick, I would meet a young man that I would end up following, which means I wouldn't be needing this house anymore. Of course, if I wasn't going to be living here for long, it made sense to me that there wasn't much use in going all out to decorate the place. I mean, I'd just have to move it all out later and might not even need it at that point. So why bother?

Two years later, I am sitting in my rather plain living room, in the middle of my plain house with a plain front yard and I'm thinking that whether I elope tomorrow or don't get married for another fifty years, you know, it really wouldn't hurt to make this place feel like home in the meantime...

Raise your hand if you've ever treated single life this way. (Okay, put your hands down now, because people are going to start looking at you funny if you keep doing that.) What I'm getting at is that it's really easy for me to think so highly of getting married that I start thinking that being single is fairly useless. That it's just a period of transition that's not really good for anything. Not worth getting excited about. Not worth decorating. That is so wrong!! Think about some of the blessings that have come your way because you're single. Think about the time you are able to spend reading books, loving family members, or working in some form of ministry because you don't have a significant other to focus on at the moment. I think that God will rejoice with us when or if we find someone to walk His road with, but I also think that He's got reasons for having us walk it without that person for a while. I think that He would want us to use our time wisely.

My point is that living single is a lot like this house I'm living in. No, I didn't expect to live here this long or live single for this long. Yeah, I'd change things, given the choice. But look at this place. Bare walls. No flowers. A chair for one person. Who wants to live this way? Why shouldn't I enjoy it here? Even if I get swept off my feet tomorrow and elope, I'll at least feel at home today, and if I don't get married until fifty years down the road, at least I'll feel at home while I wait. Either way, putting life on hold until I get what I pray for isn't exactly going to help anything, is it?

I don't know how long God has planned for me to be single, but I do know that in the meantime, I've got a Target sack full of new homey decorations that I bought last night and I have no problem admitting it - I can't wait to pull them out.

Three Types of Love?

I am trying to catch up on some reading and prepare a workshop for the Northwest Texas/New Mexico Roundup in August. So I am currently reading THE UNGUIDE TO DATING by Camerin Courtney and Todd Hertz.



Todd talks about hearing a great speaker (he doesn't say who) say that there are three kinds of love. The first is LOVE BECAUSE - we love someone because they look or act a certain way or because they make us feel a certain way. The second type of love is LOVE IF. This includes the loving someone if they are willing to change the way we want them to or if they see things the same way we do.



The third type of love is LOVE PERIOD. This is God's love. His love isn't because or if anything.

I know that this is the love that I am looking for.



What do you think?

Dreaming the Dream of Jacob

I like to tell bible stories to my middle school youth (who created the lovely bulletin board decoration in the picture, by the way) on Wednesday nights and this week we were somewhere around Genesis 28 – Jacob’s Dream. You know the story. He’s fleeing from a bad situation at home and somewhere along his journey, he lays down, falls asleep and has a dream where God reassures him that He is with Jacob and that one day God will bring him back home and will make his descendants reach farther than Jacob could imagine. Jacob wakes up, and remembering his dream, he “…made a vow, saying ‘If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I’m taking and will give me enough food to eat and clothes to wear so that I can return safely to my father’s house, then the Lord will be my God . . . Then Jacob continued on his journey.” (Gen. 28:20 – 29:1)

When Jacob realized God’s promise – “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Gen. 28:15) – he put his exhaustion and worries aside enough to know he would be able to see promises fulfilled, meet his goals and even more simply, be ok. Then he picked himself up and “continued on his journey.”

As I was getting ready to tell this story to my kids, I started thinking about how I have dreams also, and sometimes I become afraid of trying to make them real. For example - what if I put all of my heart into teaching kids at school, and they don’t respond? Should I even try? With that one thought process, I have gone from changing the world to, well, not changing it at all. Jacob might have been going through a similar line of thought – “here I am, leaving my home, my family and my life, to flee to someplace I’ve never been, to find people I’ve never met, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Why not just stay right here?” So in exhaustion, he lays his head down. But then God comes to Jacob in that dream and says ‘Jacob, here I am, I’ve always been here and I will always be here. I’m going to make your efforts reach and spread and grow in every direction. I’m going to be with you no matter where you go or what you do, and I’m going to bring you back home’ and suddenly, Jacob saw a bigger picture. He might have thought, ‘well, gosh, if God is going to be with me, take care of me, make me successful, and bring me back here, then what am I waiting for?!’

Charles Swindoll once asked “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” That is such a powerful sentence for me. Think about it. If you could see down the road and see that this child you are pouring your heart into today is going to grow to be strong and wise as a result, would you hesitate to love him now? If you knew that stepping out on a limb and giving your time and talent to researching a cure for Alzheimer’s disease would prevent millions of lives from being disrupted in the future, would you stop short of getting the right education because you aren’t sure of how you’ll pay for the tuition? If you knew that telling a coworker that you are praying for her in her time of need would give her new strength to make it through, would you be afraid of being scoffed at?

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?


What dreams are you putting on the back burner because you’re afraid you will fail? Just imagine what could have happened had Jacob given in to his worries. The establishment of the entire line of David would have been halted, and without the line of David, there’s no one to give rise to a little boy destined to save all souls.

I think that both the story of Jacob’s dream and Swindoll’s statement carry the same message. Don’t let your fears and doubts be the difference between changing the world (or even your corner of the world) and not changing it. Dare to let yourself step out on a limb without calculating how many birds’ nests you might hit on your way down if you fall. Dream the dream of Jacob: God is with you. God will watch over you. Wherever you go. Whatever you do. He will make His plans successful through you. He will bring us all back home to Him and He won’t leave you. He will do what He has promised.

Jacob couldn’t argue with it, and neither can you. So go forth. Continue on your journey. Go out there and follow those dreams God put into your heart. He put them there for a reason.

The Perfect Day Off

I took a day off work yesterday, to keep my grandson. I had such big plans for the day. I was thinking that a trip to the zoo or the park would be on the agenda. I have a kite in my garage just waiting for a little boy to fly it. There was sand to dig in and chalk to draw with and when all of that was done-there were bubbles to blow. I also thought that while he napped, one or two things would happen. My first option was to write a blog on this site and to do some work on the singles ministry as a whole. The option that my friends suggested was to nap with him. Well, to my surprise (probably no one else's) none of this happened. We played cars and trains and watched the Wiggles and a million other cartoons. We ran a couple of errands and he napped.



It was a blessed day! My normally clean house still has toys and mainly stickers everywhere. I LOVE IT!

Looking back, it dawned on me that my youngest son was Blane's age when his dad and I divorced. (He is 24 now). I looked back at the struggle to pay the bills with no child support coming in. I remembered what it was like to feel like the only thing I had said to the kids, at the end of a long day, was negative. But mainly I remember the joy of watching them grow up and the pride at the young men and young woman that they turned out to be.


It was a long, often tiring journey but one so full of adventure and hope and love. Would I have preferred to have taken this road with their dad, of course. We have the choice to see what we didn't have and there is a long list. I choose to see what I did have. I had bosses that loved me and my kids enough to let me be a mom first and an employee second. I had a community of support including my family. The men in the church and the teachers at the school, helped to mold my kids into being who they are. The Christian foundation that runs through the roots of our family tree also gave them strength and wisdom when I didn't have any and a support system that gives unconditional love and allows for the mistakes that we as humans make and stands us back on our feet to face the next challenge.

It was an extremely blessed day!

Destroying the Evidence

I’m a couple of years into cooking for one person and while I’m not a completely horrible cook, I am definitely a work in progress. Today I tried a new recipe and generally, placing a new masterpiece on the dining room table makes me feel like something out of a Norman Rockwell piece - only without all of those smiling faces looking on eagerly, of course. Then I spend most of my meal thinking about the amount of groceries I bought, just to put most of them in the fridge as leftovers. “It’s a lonely feeling,” I think to myself, “cooking for one person.”

But then there are days like today where I see an unexpected blessing to being single – you can throw that disaster of a meal away and nobody has to know…

Feelin' the Love. Among Other Things...

This may be completely irrelevant at this point, but it’s still on my mind, so maybe it’s still on yours too. I mean, surely there is someone else out there who shares my laughter and feels my pain. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice, because where I live, everyone noticed. This week was centered around Valentine’s Day and I’d like to believe that I’m not the only one who tried not to make a big deal about it, but was foiled again. Foiled like a piece of heart-shaped chocolate.

I’m not one of those people who thinks Valentine’s Day should be renamed Singles Awareness Day. I’m not one of those people who thinks Valentine’s Day was put into existence for the sole purpose of rattling change in consumers' pockets to prod the economy along. I’m fine with Valentine’s Day, I really am. It’s a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling kind of day, right? Well, that’s what I meant for it to be.

I was doing great. I gave valentines to my middle school youth at church and even got some back from them. I was feelin’ the love. I gave valentines to my brother and sister. I was feelin’ the love. I watched the news stories about valentines before work, I listened to love songs on the radio on my way to work and I was just fine. I got a bag of lovely little candies and a candy bar from a couple of my students. I even wore pink to work to show the world that this was one girl who was not afraid to face Valentine’s Day. I was doing great. I was feelin’ the love. Not awareness.

And then it happened. It was the last class of the day, and my boss, in continuation of a long series of practical jokes, and probably without realizing that I really didn’t have a date for Valentine’s, secretly put one of my students up to asking me who I was going to meet up with at the ball game that night (something he totally made up, I might add). And the kid kept up his end of the deal - in front of seventeen other feverishly nosy students, I might add. I handled the situation like a pro though. I smiled mischievously and gave them the same number of details I always give kids about my personal life (which is none) and laughed at the cruel, cruel irony of it all.

Finally, school was out and I thought “wow, I actually made it through this day somewhat unscathed!” And then it happened. Here came flower deliveries for teachers. Here comes the flower lady, and there she goes, right past my room, but still on my radar. (sigh). Oh wait. She comes back! She has half a dozen roses! I’m completely caught off guard – could it be?

Don’t get excited like I did. My student teacher was the one getting the flowers. Oh, yes, they were beautiful. And that’s what everyone else said, as they flocked into my room, seeing the flowers and assuming they were mine. Which brought on an unintentionally cruel series of eager questions about my boyfriend no one knew about. Nope. Sorry, guys. No boyfriend. The flowers aren’t mine. This, then, brings on a series of awkward yanking of feet out of mouths and a mass exodus out the door of my room, which is hard to pull off if you are kicking yourself, I notice. For someone trying not to make a big deal about being single on Valentine’s Day, the rest of the world sure seemed bent on twisting it into Singles Awareness Day, indeed!

When it is finally time to go home, I am racing to the door to the parking lot before anyone can say anything else, but unfortunately, another coworker sees one of those darned bags of candy the kids gave me, assumes the worst, and shouts across the foyer “Hey! You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend!!!” and I, of course, replied for the fifteenth and a half time that there was no boyfriend to tell her about, to which she remarked, “Still?!”

If I had any warm fuzzies left before then, they were blowing away in the wind by now.

I should probably say that later, my folks showered me with candy and a girl friend even sent me a flower, which probably saved my life. I should also say that despite everything, I really don’t hate Valentine’s Day. I’m glad it’s over, no doubt, but I’m still feelin’ the love. I am surrounded by kids that are dying to love someone, I have a family that loves me and doesn’t only tell me that on Valentine’s Day. And above all, God’s got a love so big that He’s had nothing on his mind for thousands - for millions - of years, but to love me, even if I ended up losing my grip on all my warm fuzzies out there in a high school parking lot. He loves you too. Look at the valentines He’s left for you. There’s a whole book of ‘em.

Anyway, like I said, this may all be quite irrelevant now that it’s all over. Maybe I just wanted to publicly dust myself off and say I was brave. I looked Valentine’s Day right in the face. I felt the love. I felt the awareness (darn it!). And I’m ok. If you lived to see the weekend after Valentine’s, then you’re ok too.

On to St. Patrick’s Day!

Throwing Stones...But Not the Way You're Thinking

Once, a few years ago, I was really frustrated with something and I set out to walk down an old dirt road until I’d worked the heartache out of my body. Along the way, I picked up a rock and I put all of my energy into throwing it as far as I could. Then I picked up another and I walked a little further, rolling it around my fingers, and then I threw it, too. Before long, I started thinking of those rocks as little symbols of the hump I was trying to get over in my head, and by throwing them away from me, it meant that there was no turning back. There was to be no more worrying about that particular thing. It was over. It was through. I couldn’t go back and find those rocks if I wanted to. And I kept walking until I ended up back at my house, feeling like I had finally gotten rid of something that had been following me around for far too long.

Today I find myself walking, and I’ve picked up another rock (which, let’s face it, isn’t that odd for me. I can’t help it, I like rocks for some reason, ha ha). But this rock is one that I’ve picked up, not with the intention of adding it to my really cool rock collection (did I just admit to having one of those?), but the intention to take it as far as I care to carry it – and then throw it. This rock represents the months and months that I have been hung up over a relationship that I really ought to give up. I’ll be honest. For maybe the first time in my adult life, I fell in love with someone and fell hard. Unfortuneately, he wasn’t ready to change some things in his life to be able to commit to a life with me. Some days I could see this for what it was and know that the last thing I needed to do was reply to his emails or calls. I knew I was putting my heart into something that, despite its impossible-to-ignore potential, would never materialize. I mean, I had known in my heart that I was meant for this person. I was ready to move far away from home to be where he was. I was ready to move to the end of the Earth if that’s what it was going to take to be with this person. I’d hate myself for thinking along those lines, but I couldn’t pull myself away from him. He was my best friend. And just think – we could be so much more! My days of singleness could finally be over! After a long, long time of the two of us feeling chemistry visible to everyone despite our attempts to mask it, I finally asked him if he ever thought about us in the future tense. And he said yes, he did. I asked him what we should do next. He looked at me blankly and said he thought we could just keep things the same as they were… couldn’t we? He had no intention of marrying me, had no intention of doing much of anything really, except keeping my heart tied up in a relationship that was within reach, but not embraceable.

I was completely shattered. I went to work the next day and cried. I came home and I cried. I felt that God was trying to say that there was something better than this guy waiting out there for me, but I was so broken hearted. And when this guy continued to maintain his presence in my life like nothing had changed between us, it was even harder because in fact, everything had changed. I had to pull away from the one person I had been so sure about in my heart. So I would pull away, but then find myself falling into the same old habits with him. Then I’d collect my senses again and pull away. Then back again. It’s exhausting for you to read, I’m sure, so you can imagine what it was like to feel. At first I would pray to God to change the boy’s mind. Then those prayers turned into “just please get me through this day,” and then they turned into “just don’t let me dream about him tonight.” Then one day I got so tired of having to fight my own self to stay away from something that was clearly doing me more harm than good, that I finally prayed “God, take him out of my head. I need him out of my heart. Whatever feelings I’ve ever had for him, take them away from me. I can’t do this anymore” and it was scary, because I knew that it meant letting go of all of those wonderful memories I had with him. It meant saying good bye to something I’d put my whole heart into.

Just last week, I was walking along the Brazos river, as I often do. I watched its waters moving smoothly from the north to the south and followed its banks until they swept past the horizon. Then I thought - I have been carrying something around with me for far too long. I picked up a rock and carried it in my hand for a while, not sure I really wanted to get rid of this thing I’d been carrying. So I walked a while longer until I was physically exhausted. I stopped and sat down, fingering the rock in my hand. Some voice in my heart whispered to me “Finally. It’s time. It’s time to let go of this.” So I took that rock, and I threw it into the waters of the Brazos river with all of my might. I imagined it getting carried far, far away, so far that there was no getting it back. I stared at the current for a long time and then I walked away from there with the sun setting behind me. Maybe that will be the last time I have to throw that rock and maybe I’ll have to throw it a few more times, but some day I’m going to be through with this. God’s ready to carry it all for me, I know. It’s my heart that needs convincing.

Is there something in your life that you’ve been carrying around for far too long? Is there some past relationship that is holding you back from new ones, that’s holding you back from a stronger relationship with God? Why don’t you come with me? Let’s pick up our rocks for the last time and let’s pray together. Let’s tell God that we are finally going to let Him take our burdens away from our hearts. He can do that, you know. He can take these things we carry in our hearts and whisk them away from us so that we never have to shed tears over them again. Come with me. Let’s take these rocks and together, let’s throw them into his River. Feel the water moving over your toes with me. Let’s finally feel what it is like to just open your hand and let go. Let’s do it on the count of three. Are you ready?

One...two...three -

Meet Darla Flatt

I am an accounts payable bookkeeper by day. At night I work at a Christian Bookstore. I am currently serving on the Conference Board of Discipleship, for the Northwest Texas Conference, as the representative for Single Adult Ministry. I currently also serve as the sitting chair for advisory board for the Family Enrichment Center in Abilene.

The joys in my life include my three kids and their spouses and being Blane's Mamaw. I am looking forward to the arrival of Blane's "baby girl cousin" in June. Her daddy says that she is a princess already!

God is Good All the Time!

What's your story?

Well, we've got some of the basics set up for the blog now (I think) and now we need the most important part - you! C'mon, don't be shy! Post a comment! Tell us who you are!

Contact

To contact an editor of this blog, please email us at umcsam@gmail.com . Thanks!

Meet Kimberly Beck

I am a high school science teacher. When I'm not talking about intermolecular forces between atoms, I'm playing music at one church or working with middle school youth at another. And if I'm not doing that, I'm out on the Brazos river, hiking and hunting for fossils, as a field correspondent of sorts for the Houston Museum of Natural Science. And I love it all.

Welcome to UMC Single Adult Ministries!

To be a "single adult" can mean a lot of things. For some people, it means being content with living on your own. For other people, it means you're in the process of looking for someone to share your walk with God with. For others still, it's a mixture of both. It can mean you are raising kids on your own, it can mean that you're the adult who is taking care of your parents and it can mean that just taking care of yourself is work enough. It can mean that you're living in a small town and looking for a few friends who can laugh through the complexities of small-town single life with you or it can mean you live in a big town and are looking for a network of people that feels like home. But most of all, maybe being a "single adult" just means that you, like a lot of other people (single or not), are trying to walk down a road that is less travelled and well, you'd like to feel like you're not alone. You're not.

Are you new to Single Adult Ministries (SAM)? So am I! This blog is hopefully going to be a great place for single adults to meet each other and share ideas so that we can build stronger programs in churches across north Texas. The blog itself is most definitely a work in progress, and I'm learning about SAM right along with you. Please feel free to post comments and email suggestions about what you want and need from SAM.

Being a single adult can mean a lot of things, but the one thing it doesn't have to mean is being alone.

Welcome to Single Adult Ministries.