Why I Didn't Wait

A friend on facebook, posted a link to a blog post that struck me deeply and personally. The blog is called "Grace for the Road" and the post was about the turmoil of waiting for the husband every girl was promised as a young woman.

I want to pull a few quotes and comment:

"It’s a graveyard of hearts, this place where single church girls crash into their late 20s and early 30s. Churches see the symptoms. They scramble to reach out to the ever-growing young adult singles crowd who feels alienated by family-oriented services."

   Church used to be a safe place to be. Its where I was able to visit family, impress the older members with all the exciting accomplishment in my life, and hangout with friends with whom i would make exciting plans for the next week. It was a safe place with relevant lesson topics for my life.
   Then in college, I was in student wards comprised completely of single people all in my age bracket and on the same life course I was. And if the emphasis of the activities was a bit heavy on the concept of "find a mate and get married" oh well. The boys were cute and fun to flirt with anyway.
   But as soon as I graduated and moved home, church became a very different place. Suddenly the older ladies seemed less interested in my life and more nosy. Their questions about what I was doing with my life, and was I dating anyone became painful. Gradually as the years passed the questions faded and have become replaced by looks of pity and stilted suggestions on where, how, when to meet single LDS guys, or worse, for ways to fill all that free time I have since I don't have a husband and children to take care of.
    Meetings are long, painful, inapplicable repetitions on being a good mother, a supportive wife, on preparing your home, attending the temple, etc. It's hard to be a good wife when you don't even know any single men, let alone one who would have you. And the crop of local, attractive, single LDS guys who are old enough for this 25yr old in my area is barren.

"There are a lot of girls out there who don’t know who God is anymore – the God of their youth group years just isn’t working out. Back then, that God said to wait for sex until they are married, until He brings the right man along for a husband. They signed a card and put it on the altar and pledged to wait. And wait they did....And waited and waited and waited.
   Some of them have prayed their whole lives for a husband, and he hasn’t shown up. They’ve heard the advice to “be the woman God made you to be, focus on that, and then the husband will come.” They’ve read “Lady in Waiting,” gotten super involved in church and honed their domestic skills.
   And still they wait.

   More than a decade ago, a youth leader handed them a photocopied poem in Sunday School written to them from “God” that said, “The reason you don’t have anyone yet is because you’re not fully satisfied in Me. You have to be satisfied with Me and then when you least expect it, I’ll bring you the person I meant for you.”"

 But many of them – if they’re honest – will tell you that time has passed, and it’s wrecking their view of God. If this is who God’s supposed to be, then He’s tragically late. So some decide to chuck “Lady in Waiting” out the window … and possibly their virginity with it. Church goes next. God might go next, too. If He doesn’t answer these prayers after they’ve held up their end of the bargain, why would He answer any others?"

 This has been the battle I've waged over the past 4 years. I never consciously diagnosed what went wrong or when it happened. But somewhere along the way I became disheartened, disenchanted, and disillusioned. I quit going to church, I began making choices that robbed me of spiritual sensitivity

Quotes taken from http://gracefortheroad.com/2012/02/03/idontwait/

My Secret Dream Lover who Hates Me

It is now less then 22 days until I move to Hawaii-for those of you who are not aware (most of you) I am relocating to the small town where I went to college just after the new year. When asked why I have been giving a sufficiently vague reply along the lines of "I've been in a rut and need to shake some things up". And that is true. But the real truth, the latent reason is that I just plain can't shake the heartbreak.
      It's now been 5 and 1/2 months since my ex and I separated. almost 1/3 of the total time we were together. And yet, not a day passes I don't feel the ache of his loss. Just this week I dreamed of him twice, and those dreams are so much worse then the ones I had before. At first in the dreams we got back together and were incandescently in love, but in the dreams I have had of him in the past month or so he is either completely indifferent to me or portrays a repulsion toward me. Dreams aren't real, in the material sense, but never let anyone tell you they have no substance. Because after something has ended, dreams are the only continuing memory you have of the situation. For example the memories I have of K.N., first loving me, then gently letting me go are now tainted by memories of him hating me and expressing disgust for the love I now only express to him in dreams.
      K.N., the man the real life human being is still living his life, growing, feeling joy, and doesn't hate me. But that K.N. is no longer an element in my life. I will never know this new and developing man. I am left with the cruel apparitions of my imagination, that is my ultimate reality. And this new K.N., lets call him K.D. is an enemy, a stalker, a malevolent demon whose one objective is to hurt me and undermine my healing.
      So needless to say, K.N. is never far from my thoughts. Pride alone is what has kept me from contacting him. But over the last two weeks I have indulged in a dark and destructive fantasy. In this fantasy I call him up, ask him to meet me for a drink, I give him a gift, seduce him, for what? In each version I have a different motivation. In one carnation I do this to get him out of my system before I move. In another we realize we are still in love with one another and I stay in Michigan and live happily ever after. And in yet another I hook him, cause him to feel, then drop him flat leaving the as the victorious and oh-so desirable heartbreaker.
  
  But.....lezbi-honest.

     I am the one who loved before. I am the one who was hurt. And I am the one who would be hurt again.
     I find no shame in admitting I wish I could crush his heart. Now that my relationship with K.D. has twisted my love into this sick, deformed power struggle, I seek to hurt the poor imperfect man who made some honest mistakes and shattered my heart. The ultimate irony, he has no clue the time and effort I put into thoughts of him. While he has forgotten that I ever existed. And all because he never had the emotional strength and maturity to understand this quote from C.S. Lewis