You faithful few who check my blog during its droughts as well as its plenty may have noticed a gradual thinning out of posts.
You see, it all started back in September.
I’ve been a confirmed spinster since I turned 25. I had determined that age 25 was the age of no return; if I had not been wooed and won by then, I would live singly for the rest of my days holding orphans to my breast and doing all sorts of things that require going over the ocean and feeling heroic. (Yep. That’s pretty bad, I know. No need to tell me.) Regardless of all of the spiritual flaws in that determination, it was an unspoken handshake I had made with myself. Twenty-five with nary a romance in sight? Go crazy. Fly across the ocean. Be used by God for Something Important.
Problem is, I catch myself in these weak arguments pretty well. I get myself in a corner and the game’s all up. I know as well as you that contentment is not geographical, nor is it vocational. Contentment is Christ, and everything else is dust in the wind. Knowing this was different from always
feeling it, of course, but I gave myself good sermons.
July 2014 I turned 25. July 2015 I turned 26. And this July I’ll turn 27.
I was supposed to marry young, you know.
Do as my sisters did--graduate from college, teach for a year, marry, have children, make a home. It was so unsettling to find that my life didn’t match theirs, not the living by myself in an apartment, nor the teaching for going on five years now, nor the... Well, a lot of things. The roots I longed to put down stretched into earth tentatively, not sure when they’d be pulled back up, not wanting to stay where they were.
And Dad? He wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to stay indefinitely.
But things often don’t happen the way we think they should. Some of those who don’t marry wish they could, those who do find that it doesn’t fulfill all their empty spots the way they’d hoped, those who work realize that jobs don’t make good identities, and those who love realize that death is the thief of all.
God is a gentle teacher even when His lessons don’t feel gentle.
I’ve never been good at writing vulnerability down with curves and angles so others can read me. I’ve been doing it bit by bit here and there, giving space to some of the words and continuing to hold others back.
These particular words I’ve been holding back for months now--not because I was afraid to speak them, but because some words are sacred and some thoughts don’t really have shapes that words can wrestle with. Some of the most beautiful joys have the deepest uncertainties trying to choke them lifeless, and some of the most agonizing pains are imbued with a beauty which strikes one dumb. And so this paradox we live and breathe and know to be the life God has given puzzles and confounds, even as we walk forward step by step.
So, these words I’ve been holding back.
By some mystery of God’s own working, I love someone and he loves me and we are getting married this summer. I could say more, oh, so much more. And at the same time? I couldn’t. I
couldn’t say more.
Perhaps one day I shall feel ready to tell more of the story, piece by piece.
But for now I feel just a bit like Mary, treasuring up all these things and pondering them in my heart.
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