October 20, 2014

Reflections

A tap-tap-tap on the wall of my office cubicle drew my attention away from the computer screen. I swiveled my chair around and saw Rachel Child, the finance manager for Adventist Review. Beside her stood a woman who would change my life.

No, I haven’t found a wife in my first two months of working as news editor at Adventist Review. You might be aware of my difficulties in finding a spouse, as published last year in a Review article titled “My FriChik-loving Future Wife.”

It turned out that the woman at Rachel’s side, whom I’ll call Mary, had read the article and determined back then to speak to me. Now she saw her chance. This summer I moved to work at the General Conference’s headquarters after 17 years in Russia, and Mary happened to be visiting the area from her home in California.

After introductions, Mary, 84, sat down beside me, clutching a wad of photocopied pages in hand.

“I am single,” she said. “It’s OK to be single.”

Mary proceeded to tell me a series of stories, starting with her discovery of a little-noticed manuscript by Adventist Church cofounder Ellen G. White.

Mary was sorting through a lot of items donated by an elderly friend five or six years ago when she came across the typewritten document on yellowing paper. Seeing that the top of the document simply stated “By Ellen G. White,” Mary glanced down the text and stopped with shock at this passage:

“There are men and women throughout the country who would have been accepted as laborers together with God if Satan had not laid his snares to entangle their minds and hearts in courtship and marriage,” the text said. “Did the Lord urge them to obtain the advantages of our schools and missions, that they might sink everything in courtship and marriage, binding themselves by a human band for a lifetime?

“By accepting the work of rearing children in these last days of uncertainty and peril, many place themselves in a position where they cannot labor either in the canvassing field or in any other branch of the cause of God, and some lose all interest to do this.”

Mary, who gave me a copy of the manuscript, told me about the surprise—and relief—that swept her. For three quarters of a century she had fretted about being single. She had pleaded with God for a spouse. Well-meaning people in church had urged her to tie the knot. Her own friendships had been interrupted when friends had gotten married and, again, when they had become parents.

Families with children seem to gravitate toward other families with children, she said.

“I thought I’d get my friends back when their children grew up,” she said. “But now they have grandchildren!”

Mary said she had never heard a single word of affirmation from within the church about being single. Until she stumbled across the White manuscript.

After some research, she learned White had made the comments at the 1893 General Conference session, and the remarks had been published in the General Conference Daily Bulletin on February 6 of that year.

Mary recounted a remarkable story of how her status as a single woman had given her opportunities to share Bibles as a missionary in Africa that could not have been matched by a married woman—or any man. She spoke of how she never would have had the time as a wife or mother to write books.

Now, I don’t know if God wishes for me to remain single at the age of 41. Mary said she didn’t have an answer either.

But I do have assurance that God has called me to my new job and to funnel my energy into His cause—no matter my marital status. God’s call for all of us, whether we are single, married, widowed, or divorced, is to love Him first.

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