Back in the early 2000’s, I was in what you would refer to as a MOM (really weird acronym btw 😂). I was raised in the 1980’s by a mom (not the acronym) who identified (though no one stated they “identified” as anything back then) as a lesbian and I was raised in the gay community (I hear nowadays that saying I was raised the gay community is a no-no, but it was pretty common to say “gay community” back then), along with my brother. I was shown that sexuality is fluid, there is no real sexual identity point and that anyone and anything is up for grabs. As you can imagine, it was a nightmare for a kid/teen to navigate and my brother and I were put in incredibly gross situations with people really confused and obsessed with sex, male and female. Everything I experienced growing up in the “fringes” is now considered mainstream and over the years it has grieved me to no end. My husband is a high school teacher and 1/4 of his students “identify” as somewhere along an alphabet soup spectrum. Yes I’m aware I sound like a curmudgeon waving my fist saying, “kids these days!” 😂 But having grown up, raised by parents (don’t even get me started on the abusive “straight” perspective at my dad’s house riddled with porn and all the misogyny that 80’s movies personified…Earth Girls are Easy, anyone?) who were both sexually broken beyond belief and raising children in the midst of their crazy, I can’t help but feel like “kids these days” are going to need massive help as they get older and realize (in their bodies) that they have been lied to. When I turned 20 and came to know Jesus (through a gay-identified friend no less!) God flipped my world and narrative I had been taught about male, female, sex, upside-down. In the past 25 years in Christian circles I’ve met many, many people who experience SSA, and I even married a SSA man (until he decided Christianity wasn’t for him and he promptly got into the gay club scene, hooked up with an HIV infected gay guy, and left our marriage). I’m sharing a bit of my complicated story in a nutshell to say that the premise of your post is exactly what eventually led me out of the limited Protestant view of marriage and sexuality and into the Catholic Church where seeking your God-given “vocation” is rightly taught instead of shallowly holding up marriage (even a “godly marriage!”) as the high ideal and singleness as something not possibly acceptable but sadly endured (a “cross,” maybe). Now far into my journey with Christ, in my mid-40’s, with children of my own, in a beautiful sacramental marriage with a man who has experienced his own sexual healing (am I allowed to say “healing?”) through living the Catholic view of sexuality (that has been shaped by the paradigm changing Theology of the Body) I am really happy to see other Christians starting to talk about vocation rather than the flattened view that marriage is the end all, be all. I do think that this needs to be lived out in a life drenched in the Sacraments and the sacramental worldview that the Catholic Church holds out to the world, but at least the conversation is being had. I do encourage anyone considering vocational singleness (whether it’s consecrated virginity, the monastic life, etc) to pursue their vocation with an order that has lived this out for years…even a thousand years or more!) and I get a bit cringey-feeling when I hear non-Catholics talk about “vocation” (especially singleness) because the framework for this doesn’t exist fully fleshed out in the Protestant church, and a typical prot. pastor would have no clue as to what this means.
Back in the early 2000’s, I was in what you would refer to as a MOM (really weird acronym btw 😂). I was raised in the 1980’s by a mom (not the acronym) who identified (though no one stated they “identified” as anything back then) as a lesbian and I was raised in the gay community (I hear nowadays that saying I was raised the gay community is a no-no, but it was pretty common to say “gay community” back then), along with my brother. I was shown that sexuality is fluid, there is no real sexual identity point and that anyone and anything is up for grabs. As you can imagine, it was a nightmare for a kid/teen to navigate and my brother and I were put in incredibly gross situations with people really confused and obsessed with sex, male and female. Everything I experienced growing up in the “fringes” is now considered mainstream and over the years it has grieved me to no end. My husband is a high school teacher and 1/4 of his students “identify” as somewhere along an alphabet soup spectrum. Yes I’m aware I sound like a curmudgeon waving my fist saying, “kids these days!” 😂 But having grown up, raised by parents (don’t even get me started on the abusive “straight” perspective at my dad’s house riddled with porn and all the misogyny that 80’s movies personified…Earth Girls are Easy, anyone?) who were both sexually broken beyond belief and raising children in the midst of their crazy, I can’t help but feel like “kids these days” are going to need massive help as they get older and realize (in their bodies) that they have been lied to. When I turned 20 and came to know Jesus (through a gay-identified friend no less!) God flipped my world and narrative I had been taught about male, female, sex, upside-down. In the past 25 years in Christian circles I’ve met many, many people who experience SSA, and I even married a SSA man (until he decided Christianity wasn’t for him and he promptly got into the gay club scene, hooked up with an HIV infected gay guy, and left our marriage). I’m sharing a bit of my complicated story in a nutshell to say that the premise of your post is exactly what eventually led me out of the limited Protestant view of marriage and sexuality and into the Catholic Church where seeking your God-given “vocation” is rightly taught instead of shallowly holding up marriage (even a “godly marriage!”) as the high ideal and singleness as something not possibly acceptable but sadly endured (a “cross,” maybe). Now far into my journey with Christ, in my mid-40’s, with children of my own, in a beautiful sacramental marriage with a man who has experienced his own sexual healing (am I allowed to say “healing?”) through living the Catholic view of sexuality (that has been shaped by the paradigm changing Theology of the Body) I am really happy to see other Christians starting to talk about vocation rather than the flattened view that marriage is the end all, be all. I do think that this needs to be lived out in a life drenched in the Sacraments and the sacramental worldview that the Catholic Church holds out to the world, but at least the conversation is being had. I do encourage anyone considering vocational singleness (whether it’s consecrated virginity, the monastic life, etc) to pursue their vocation with an order that has lived this out for years…even a thousand years or more!) and I get a bit cringey-feeling when I hear non-Catholics talk about “vocation” (especially singleness) because the framework for this doesn’t exist fully fleshed out in the Protestant church, and a typical prot. pastor would have no clue as to what this means.