For many single people, there is the haunting hope that out there somewhere, is a silver bullet--e.g. marriage--which will bring us "home," enabling us to exhale in a way that single life does not allow.  But in reality, as most married-for-at-least-a-bit people know, there is no such thing as a silver bullet in this life.  The manifestation of the "ache" just changes contours depending on our context.  In this excerpt from the last chapter ("Homeward Bound") of my recently released book, Revelations of a Single Woman: loving the life i didn't expect (reviewed by Judy Nelson, January 9, 2006), I talk about this ache and my belated discovery that learning to live well with the ache is in fact part of how we all--married or single--move towards the rest of real Home. 

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The question remains, however: What will we do when we are aching, when we are homesick? What will we do when we discover that no fantasy [wo/man], no ideal job, no chic lifestyle, no Pottery Barn digs, and no positive self-talk will completely rescue us? One option is to just keep eating chocolate ice cream and watching more Friends reruns or the History Channel in hopes of numbing out the homesickness.

Alternatively, some of us might pour our discontent into anger at men’s passivity [or women’s independence], God’s poorly exercised sovereignty, our own endless “issues,” whatever (or whomever) else we can blame for our painful longings. If we’re not careful, we can allow our legitimate hunger to drive us toward fruitless encounters with [members of the opposite sex], unhealthy expectations of friends, overinvestment in jobs that don’t give back, hiding out, or hoarding more and more cash, hoping that one of these will be our ticket home. I have tried sips of most of these homesickness antidotes and know enough to know they aren’t the cure.

There is another alternative, however. ...It is to simply let the ache work on us, shape us, and thereby do its job. When we let the ache become part of our story and not something to be conquered through striving or numbed by our narcotic of choice, it can serve us well. It can propel us forward, paradoxically, in life-giving—even joy-giving—ways. It can remind us that we are made for something more—that this life is not all it was intended to be—and it’s good to want more. It can remind us that our longing for intimacy, connection, and home is real—it’s part of our DNA, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It can prompt us to look at our lives honestly and face current realities head-on. But most of all, if we can “walk with the ache, even when it hurts,” as my friend Caroline likes to say, something amazing can occur.

We can receive with the ache the gift of standing face-to-face with fundamental questions that people have grappled with for aeons: What makes for a truly happy and satisfying life? And where is God in the midst of it all?

Sitting with those kinds of questions is scary. It’s scary not just because unmet longings can feel almost physically painful, which they can. But more significantly, it can be scary to sit with those questions because we worry that the answers might be profoundly disappointing. What if a truly happy and satisfying life demands a [spouse] or good sex or a sparkling career—and you are decidedly short on all three? Or what if ideas about a loving, trustworthy God were long ago deconstructed for you? And now, because you can’t see or touch him, you fear there’s no conclusion other than that he’s, at best, just far away? Of course, we’ll never be able to wade through our fears and questions if we don’t risk facing them. And the ache can help us face them, if we’ll let it.

When we do, we just might discover that this place of our fear is also the exact place where faith has a chance to show up. It is in the asking and in the fearful place where we have the chance to believe and discover that some kind of home is out there, and it can be found by anyone, starting now.

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