Torch, Winter 1983

Single: Not Half But Whole. by Pat Landers Dixon I have difficulty trying to identify with the single person. Most people experience a single physical birth; I shared mine with a twin sister . For eighteen years, I shared everything with my "wombmate": compli– ments, presents, clothes, bedroom, a bicycle . Friends who knew the Landers twins rarely looked upon us as single individuals . Their comments usually were: "Oh, the twins are .... " "You're a twin?" "Here come the two twins!" (The redundancy in that statement always amused me .) Many books about the single person line the bookstore shelves: For Singles Only, Janet Fix; Great Leaps in a Single Bound, Kaaren Witte; Free to Be Single, Elva McAllaster; Your Half of the Apple, Gini Andrews; Wide My World Narrow My Bed, Luci Swindoll, and One is More Than Un, Debbie S . Baker. These titles are only a small sample . Why are women writing many of these books? Since there are over 16. 5 million single women over 25 and since most of today's married women will experience a single state in widowhood someday, who else could write more effectively? As I read the various books about the single person and his/her problems, potentiality, and capacity for wholeness and normalcy, several questions came to my mind . Why do we call these people single? Should there be just these two captioned divisions of humans: married or single? Is a Christian man or woman truly ever a "single"? When you think of a person's being single, what synonym comes to your mind: alone, unmarried, half, unfulfilled, abnormal? From now on, I am going to think of that single person as whole (Psalm 139: 13- 15) . One . This word houses a tender poignancy Because the world is primarily divisible by Two . One . This word is, for some , synonymous with haunting isolation, Profound inadequacy, and the unquenchable longing to be Two. One. This word often prompts frantic philanthropic activity and Intellectual pursuits aimed to fill the void of not being Two. One. This word, with the help of the Ultimate One, Can represent pliability, possibility, fulfillment, existence as a Whole . Copyright 1982 Diane Noel De Nicola 1978 Graduate, Cedarville College 7