“Pillow Talk”

I was scrolling through Twitter the other day and came across a blog post by this guy, Noah Herrin. Noah is a preacher, blogger, and creator.

His most recent blog post is titled Pillow Talk.

It was so, so good. Naturally, I messaged him on Instagram and asked if I could feature it this week on The Poiema Life and he kindly agreed.

Enjoy!

“I’m a 22 year old College Pastor (23 next week – let me hold on to 22 for a minute OK). It’s kind of weird. Many of the people I have the privilege of speaking to every week are older than me or the exact same age. Because of that – I’ve found we struggle with very similar things.

I’d say 90% of the conversations I have with “struggling” young adults are centered around relationships. Which is weird. They’re asking the single guy for advice? If you’re trying to figure out how to find your Sadie Robertson don’t come to me bro, I am definitely no Hitch.

But I understand the frustration. We’re human beings. We CRAVE intimate relationships and we reach this age where we can’t stop thinking about finding Mr. or Mrs. Right. It dominates our thoughts. It’s like there’s this internal urgency that starts hitting us when we hit a certain age….”Uh-oh…I’m still single??” // “Am I going to be a cat lady” // “It’s fine ill just marry the Wendy’s 4 for 4”. And Let me tell you – the doubts definitely don’t slow down when you hit 23 and it seems like everyone wants to know when you’re gonna put a ring on it. On ANYBODY.

Although it was never meant to be – singleness often feels like a storm. Our biggest storm even.

If you’re like me, you pray for your future spouse every day. I mean that. Every single day. God I hope she knows she’s gonna be so loved. God give her strength today.

But for a LONG time. I didn’t do that. Constantly searching for the one and worrying about when and where I’d find her. Worrying about all the things I can’t control. Never praying. Worrying in my mind and CALLING it prayer (I was really good at that).

When your search for your spouse is more important than the pursuit of your savior there’s a huge problem. You’ll never be the man or the woman your spouse needs you to be when you’re trying to make things happen in the season God’s trying to mold you in. But we chase things we were meant to wait for. We try to make wrong things work because we don’t want God’s timing we want ours.

We want to know where Revival in our country is? I believe we’d see it if we started chasing Jesus half as hard as we’re chasing a wedding ring. We’re signing up for Christian Mingle – Dear God just make me anything but single. We stay up late scrolling through Instagram worrying that we wont ever be hashtag goals. Why? Because we think we have to make the way. Worrying comes from thinking we’re in control. How easily we forget all the other situations and storms that God’s come through in. A God who created love and we think he’s gonna leave us out of it?

We do what the Disciples do in Mark 4:35 // They find themselves in the middle of a massive storm and Jesus is asleep. Comfortably. On a pillow! I wonder how many times in our singleness we’ve asked God to wake up.

The Disciples look over and see Jesus asleep and they start trying to take control. Throwing water out of the boat. Grabbing the sails. They finally wake Jesus up and he seems so confused. It’s almost like Jesus believes it would have been more normal for them to fall asleep next to him in the boat. Like what they should have done was grab a pillow, pick a spot out on the floor and start talking to God about the storm.

God if you aren’t moving neither am I. God if you say I need to be single then I’m ok with that. God as long as I’m with you in this storm I know I’m gonna be ok. I know I’m gonna come out of it closer to you and closer to being the one my future love needs me to be.

Stop trying to control the “storm of singleness.” Stop playing tug o war with God over who has control of your life. Take the rope, tie it around the cross and say your will be done. Give me a pillow God, we need to talk.”

– Noah Herrin