Narrative Envy

Post Author: Emily Mitchell

Not long ago, I was making small talk with a new acquaintance before a board meeting began, and we were sharing about our recent respective vacations. I said, “I went to Chicago with my parents, and we had a lot of fun exploring the many museums, restaurants, and Frank Lloyd Wright houses.” She made some affirming listening noises, but then she paused. “So …you don’t have a family?”

I felt trapped by the limitations of her question. I had said that I had been traveling with my parents, but obviously they didn’t constitute a family in this woman’s mind. I could say that I’m a thoroughly invested aunt to my sister’s children, but that seemed to circumvent the intent of her question. So, resignedly, I gave her the answer she sought, “No, I do not have children; I’m not married.”

This happens to me more often than I’d like in my Midwestern context. I’ll meet a new female acquaintance and one of the first questions she’ll ask is, “Do you have children?” When I reply in the negative, I sense that she pulls back emotionally. Since we don’t have that common point of connection, I assume, she decides I am not someone with whom she can relate. One woman persevered and questioned, “Do you have a dog?” I do not. I am not a dog person. At that point, she gave up. I felt deemed to have a boring and pitiable existence.

It is difficult for me because this place of greatest scrutiny is also the place of my current greatest pain. I would love to be married and to have children. But that has not been my narrative up to this point.

The tenth commandment is, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s spouse, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” More often than not, I do not covet my neighbor’s house but rather my neighbor’s narrative. I covet the common narrative of adulthood, which is that you grow up, get married, and have kids.

Some years ago, I received a birth announcement from a woman in our young adult small group. She said that she would be quitting her job so that she could be at home with her infant son full-time. I felt immediate envy, and then I had to ask myself, “Why am I envious?” I find my work to be meaningful and intellectually stimulating. Did I really want to trade places with this woman? In truth, I didn’t, but I coveted her narrative, a narrative lived by her and by countless other women in our society. I wanted my life to follow a script that was comprehensible to the outside world.

Generally, the outside world does not seek to comprehend single people. I emailed a mentor of mine, telling her that I longed for another narrative rather than the one I feel assigned to me by the larger culture: that I am pathetic and uninteresting because I am 33 and unattached. She wrote back, “I have to say that the words ‘pathetic and uninteresting’ are so far from my experience of you as to be laughable. I know you know it is a lie of Satan, but I just want to call it out as such. When I think of you, I think of adjectives such as fascinating, deep, fun-loving, gracious; someone whose inquiring mind and embracing heart uniquely equips them in ministry and in life.” I so needed to hear these words of affirmation. Yes, it was a laughable narrative, and yet it was essential for her to point it out to me. I sometimes take myself too seriously and I don’t always take God’s grace as seriously.

You see, it’s God’s grace that has brought me this far by faith. It is a grace that I am single instead of married to any of the people I have dated (or have wanted to date) in the past. It’s God’s grace that I get to serve Christ and his church, to pastor and to preach and to administer the sacraments. It’s God’s grace that I have mentors who have walked this path before me and single colleagues who are walking with me still. It’s God’s grace that I come from a particular place and belong to a particular people. It’s God’s grace that there are multiple narratives from which I can choose my story rather than conform to the one that I previously thought was prescribed to me.

I am wondering what it would look like for me to flourish when I continue to lack a common narrative as a mother or as a wife that other women have. What I have concluded is that coveting my neighbor’s narrative is not good. Yet conforming to the narrative I thought had to be mine is not good either.

To the limiting trap of the question, “So …you don’t have a family?” I have some options. I can say, “Not yet.” I can say, “It is my desire to have a family, but it hasn’t been in the cards for me.” Or I can say, “Let me tell you about my family: my parents live in Seattle; my nieces and nephew live in Kenya…” But I do not need to say, “No, I don’t have a family,” while internally saying, “Yes, you may dismiss me and define me.” I do not need to take their assessment of me and internalize it, making it my ultimate narrative truth.

I hope that the story I will tell about myself honors the truth that my mentor saw in me: that I am fascinating, deep, fun-loving, and gracious. I am comprehensible. I belong. I am a recipient of God’s amazing grace.