I think when it comes to marriage a lot of LDS spinsters feel like they've been sideswiped. All the sudden they are celebrating their 29th, 30th, 31st birthday (and beyond) and they are wondering what happened? I thought I would be married by now, I wanted to be married, what did I do wrong? Isn't it funny that that is the first thing we may ask ourselves- what did I do wrong? Was I not righteous enough? Should I have put myself out there more? Should I have married that one dude, even though I wasn't 100% (or even 75%) sure about it? I guess it's possible that we could have made a few bad choices or passed up a few opportunities that got us to where we are, but what I think is more likely is that there is a purpose to our singleness or at least we can find purpose in it.
When I first went to my mid-single's ward sacrament I was sitting in the front row and I turned around and just saw a sea of spinsters all between the ages of 31 to 45. For the most part they looked like with-it women. At first I thought,"how sad, look at all these single women," but then the more I thought about it, I thought, "look at all these women and think about how much good they probably do for the community around them. Look at how useful they are to society. They probably all have full time jobs and are being a good influence on the people they work with and for and are accomplishing neccessary, even great things. They probably spend a good amount of time serving the people around them as well." Yes, the Lord needs good mothers, but he also needs these single women serving wherever they are.
It was an uplifting thought and one that I'm glad to share. It's very likely many of these women will marry one day, later then they thought they would, but everyone in life is on a different timetable and we have different things to accomplish in this life and different places we are needed. How do we know our life isn't going just as it should? Maybe we really are on-course, at least that is the way I like to think about it, what do you think?
4 comments:
I like this thought a lot. A LOT. And I think it works for any lofty goal we set, be it marriage or children or a career or finishing school or anything. Certainly it is easier to look back and realize that times that felt like failure were indeed part of a greater plan. The greater challenge is to see the potential of today's circumstances. :)
I've been thinking about this post for a long time, and even though I have lots of ideas, I'm at a loss as to how to boil them down into a coherent comment.
Sarah-thanks for commenting. It's good to see you on here.
Jenn-Thanks for you comment, since you can't boil your ideas down to a small comment how about you do a guest post? Would you be up to it? It's not like you're busy or anything. ;)
Or if you like you can just comment-agree or disagree.
I might be up to that. When I get a minute I'll send something along.
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