Who Wants to Die Alone?

Posted by Laura

The song "Some Nights" by Fun was my jam a few years back. I'd crank it up and belt it out in the car whenever it came on the radio or my iPod in the car - I may or may not have the song currently on repeat. I find it a beautiful challenge to find what you want to live for and live passionately in the moment without waiting for what the world tells you that you need. I read a lot into the song, probably. Regardless, it became a particularly apropos anthem when I decided to move overseas - there's a line that says, "I'm sorry to leave, Mom, but I had to go - who the      wants to die alone?"

When I signed up to be a missionary overseas, I heard a lot about how single women are over represented in the mission field, and if I was staying a missionary for long I was condemning myself to a life single and alone. I have several problems with this. First of all, they were saying I was never going to get married just because I was following God rather than finding a husband to follow. Rachel alluded to the book we've discussed writing, and our working title for a long while was "Chase God Not Guys" because we were fed up with the idea that Christian women should find themselves a nice Christian boy to support in ministry rather than serve God first and maybe find a guy along the way. I happen to be really passionate about education, and I absolutely love teaching high school students, so training and finding a fulfilling position doing that was a way better use of my time than searching for a husband the past few years.

The other, perhaps more significant, issue I had with the idea that people though I was going to die alone as a single missionary was that a guy was the only one who could fulfill the loneliness in my life. This one baffled me more than upset me because I didn't realize how unique the relationship I have with Rachel, Sarah, and Jordyne is. None of us are in any way against the idea of getting married, but we recognize that single doesn't mean alone. We are a crazy unique intimate family, and I'm able to stay on the mission field here because I have these three intelligent, witty, and loving women to keep me sane even though we are oceans apart. The four of us are spread across time zones, and yet we remain closely connected as we regularly message and Skype each other. Sure, sometimes I find myself feeling a little lonely late at night when no one will sing Rent songs with me or have super passionate discussions about the ways lessons from worlds created by Joss Whedon or J. K. Rowling impact our own world. I've got about eight people I can call up and have these important conversations with along with conversations about how I'm struggling to get my students engaged in the lessons on soteriology or how I'm frustrated with my frequent muscle spasms (a story for another paragraph). Thanks to a six to nine hour time difference, those conversations don't always happen in the moment, but I find great comfort in knowing they will happen. I do have people who are always there for me, and I'm never alone. I don't have them physically next to me constantly, but I have no fear of dying alone.

In fact, because I have these close friendships, I'm able to stay overseas away from them physically but constantly encouraged by them to thrive in my life in Germany - to thrive in my teaching, to thrive in my new friendship building, to thrive in my personal growth with Jesus, to thrive in my physical recovery from my recent paralyzing accident. Yeah, I suppose that's an unavoidable fact you should know about me - I was paralyzed in a rock climbing accident in January 2014. I was told I'd likely never walk again - more specifically that I had a 1% chance of ever walking again. I manage to walk with four footed canes about five hundred meters now, though I'm still mostly wheelchair bound. A large number of people expected me to bail on my awesome teaching job here in Germany as soon as possible and book it back to my family in the States to recover from this. I chose to stay. Sarah came to visit me in rehab in Switzerland (she'd actually booked tickets just a couple weeks before my accident), and I frequently checked in with my friends back in the States. I never felt the need to leave here because teaching here is what I'm supposed to be doing. I love my job, and my friends offered me the emotional support I needed to push through the struggle of learning life in a wheelchair and adjusting to the lack of communication between my brain and my bottom half. The people who expected me to leave Europe didn't know that I had this support system in place before I even left America. I have a wonderful community here in Germany that I'm getting to know who help me tremendously, but these friends scattered across the States continue to give me soul care that I will always desperately need - whether I'm single or not.

The chorus of "Some Nights" says, "I'm still not sure what I stand for," and that's the line I can confidently disagree with. I know what I stand for, and I know that I don't stand alone. After all, who the      wants to die alone?