With this year's Valentine's day rapidly approaching, I find myself feeling absolutely blessed to be single. Don't get me wrong, I am not quite your bitter old cat lady (at least not yet), I am just using Valetine's day to point out that sometimes we allow the expectations of family and culture to be put in a more important place in our lives than the very God we say we serve.
I will gladly use myself as an example. See, I am a 27 year old lady, which in my own culture would be questioned often enough. For example, my mom might gently suggest her friend the 55 year old, beer-bellied doctor for me to "go out with" to see if I like him. Or, various other people in my life might ask why I haven't found someone yet or so on and so such, as all my single friends can relate to.
Even though this is normal and nearly expected in my own culture back at home in the good ole US of A, it never could have prepared me for the complete and utter pressure of being a single woman on the missions field in a nation where marriage is worshiped as was Aaron's golden calf.
You see, here in Albania, it is "turp" (shameful) to be a single woman living away from her parents. I am seen as a kind of "wild girl", with all that may imply and often times it takes people a long time to get around their pre-conceived notions and get to know the real me.
Put all that side, and take my closest of Albanian friends, and you will still see that they feel bad for me because I am the weakest link of society because I do not have a man to be the authority over my life, such as a brother/father/husband in the house. The hard part is getting them all to realize that I DO have an authority in my life and His name is Jesus.
Above and beyond all that, which I am fully capable of handling most of the time, comes the even more difficult pressure of working from time to time with the Roma gypsies. In this culture, a girl will marry between the ages of 12-15 (some have even been known to marry as young as 10) and they will work in his parents house, nearly as a slave until he or his parents decide they do not like the bride, at which time they may send her away. For a young girl to reach 16-18 and not have been married would be the utmost of shames. It would mean that there must be something physically wrong with her, such as a handicap that would prevent her from being able to work in her husband's home.
The saddest part of it all is that these marriages never originate out of some sort of school love story, but they are mostly arranged by the parents of children who have never even met each other. The children then have no choice but to marry (I know of cases where people have been physically harmed and death has been threatened because one of the parties was refusing to be married).
Working in this community off and on for over a year now, and forming deeper relationships with some of its young people every day, I see the extreme emotional challenges that this idea of marriage brings on their lives. It is unreasonable for a teenage boy to have to worry about being married to a young girl who is only 12 or 13, having never even met her and having no idea what to expect. Above and beyond that, they would be expected to consummate the marriage before the wedding party can even actually begin. I have known many a marriage to have been medically induced with Viagra in this particular community. It is unheard of in my mind to put a teenage boy, who is scared and sees his future being robbed from him, in a room with a nearly teenage girl while all the family and friends wait outside the door and expect the deed to be done. It is shame on the family and completely unacceptable for the boy not to consummate at this point. So, they by the boy a pill and make him preform. After all there are people who are waiting to eat dinner and have a party just outside the bedroom door...
As you can clearly understand, that while I love the idea of being married and having a family one day, after the past couple of years of working in a different culture and learning about tradition, I am very happy to be spending this Valentine's day single.
Please pray over the nation of Albania, that the Christians will start to be able to put God above the tradition of marriage. Also, pray for the Roma community where there are children being abused by being forced into marriages and therefore sexual relations, at very tender and young ages. Pray for the people who are already working in this community to have the wisdom of God in how to love the people while gently bringing the truth of the culture of Christianity.
I am happily single. I will lay it all down for the sake of the cross. Everything.
I leave you with the ultimate Valentine:
1 John 4:9-10
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Thanks for reading,
Julie
