I am single. (And to clarify, I said I wouldn’t talk about marriage. I never said I wouldn’t talk about not being married.)

Let me start by saying that I am content. God has given me a wonderful life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. However, occasionally being single rots.

There is a little sexist in my head that tells me that as a lady I shouldn’t have to take out the trash, worry about the car, fix maladjusted vacuums, kill malicious bugs, balance the budget, or haul heavy boxes from the car. This is not to say that I can’t do these things. I can. Mostly, I just don’t want to. These are the things that my Dad did while I was growing up.

It comes as no surprise these are also the things which make me feel out of control (except for the trash; that’s just nasty, not challenging). I can put gas, coolant, and oil in my car, but speaking to mechanics (those strange men who speak a foreign language and have the magic to make my car go) is a humbling process. I don’t understand a word they say and they treat me like an idiot. Money is math. I hate math. And bugs are just . . . awful. Bugs are my Waterloo.

When I was living in Brooklyn a great, big, nasty, slimy, disgusting slug (Not a bug, I know, but might as well be) crawled into my kitchen. Gross! So being the terribly clever, very rational girl I am, I spent the next — well — however many minutes sobbing and throwing salt at the slug from across the room. Yes, laugh. I laugh now, but it was traumatizing. And that’s how I feel about bugs.

When I was teaching Public Speaking at BJU, one lecture dealt with how our ideas are linked to each other. Ideas aren’t independent. Ideas are networked. For instance, I brush my teeth because when I was little my mother told me that brushing my teach was healthy. I obey my mom because the Bible tells me to. I believe the Bible because once upon a time the Spirit worked in my heart and I trusted Christ to save me. All these ideas are networked. When we got to this lesson I used it to talk about missions. We believe that we ought to be involved in missions because the Bible tells us to, and we think that’s enough; so we fail to explore all the little ideas that might be attached to missions that might work against us. For me, sad to say, it’s bugs (and coffee – imagine the travesty of no coffee?!?). God calling me to a mission field is no big deal. God calling me to a mission field with big bugs — very big, overwhelming, scary problem.

See, I’m single. I don’t have anyone to take care of the bugs. And I really hate bugs — especially big ugly bugs that defy logic (centipedes, spiders, scorpions). I think about missionary women — Mary Slessor, Amy Carmichael — and part of myself wants to be like them, but another, very real part, wants to live in a place with very good coffee and very few bugs. It’s cowardly, but there it is.

Of course, it isn’t really isn’t about bugs, cars, or money. It’s about trust. Do I trust God enough to take care of the bugs? to give me enough wisdom to deal with a mechanical beast that makes me feel inadequate? to help me be smart about money? It seems so much easier to trust him with my immortal soul. This is, of course, another curse of materialism. I’ll never see or feel my soul, so entrusting it is only occasionally troubling. But bugs, money, and cars I see and feel them and they are almost always troubling.

So I’m single.

When I’m not struggling with trust — which happens far too infrequently — I realize how blessed I am to be in a position in which I get to see firsthand how God cares for me. He does. It’s not that there will never be bugs, but God is trying to teach me (I’m a pretty sad student) that he will never send any bugs into my life without sending me enough grace and strength to deal with them. Bugs remind me that I need a protector. And I have the best protector in the whole universe.

Don’t know if this makes any sense at all, but thanks for listening.