I'm 28 and single. This gives me about ten years of experience in singles wards, so I know that long and many are the woes rehearsed by those in singles wards. Complaints about dating and the opposite gender are nauseatingly hashed and rehashed among those in my circles (I cannot tell a lie: I've complained about these issues myself many a time). We can't help ourselves.But may I make a plea to LDS singles everywhere and those who love them? Can we all just drop the idea that being single is a big, sad trial that one must suffer through before graduating to happiness and bliss?Perhaps I am tired of the complaints about single life because they are achingly familiar to me. I get it. I've been there. I am there. I know what it's like to bear the weight of years and years of desiring to feel settled, to belong in a strong companionship, to have children. And, then, year-after-year, moving forward through hopes raised and disappointed over and over again.
I've watched the missionaries and BYU students I've taught get married and have children (next up will be the six-year-old primary kids I taught when I was nineteen--haha, but seriously). I've had to come to grips with the fact that my dream of six kids is becoming less and less likely the older I grow. I've seen men older than me date much younger women to ensure their own possibility of having a large family. I've watched my friends have second and third children and buy houses. I've fallen in love with people only to break up with them and start all over again.
It hurts. I'll grant you that. Living life hurts. Loving people hurts. But being single is not the same as having leprosy.
I am currently in a ward with lots of "older" singles (in Mormon terms, this means older than 25). Nearly every week in my ward someone says something like, "Well, let's all admit that we never thought we'd be here at this stage of our lives." "This is not what I planned." "We all wish we weren't in this ward." I've probably even said something like this myself, although I wish I hadn't. I mean, ouch. Really? Who wants to hear that their ward members don't want to be there with them?
What's so bad about where we all are? I have a job I love, two months off in the summer, the ability to travel, an education I enjoyed, an independent life. Boy, my life is hard. I recognize I'm lucky. Not everyone in my stage of life has these blessings. I know that. I don't want to make light of the trials of people around me. I know some of my friends are suffering some really, really difficult things and I offer them my support and not my condemnation. But for those of us whose biggest trial is not being married? Perhaps we need some perspective.
We convince ourselves sometimes that we're alone, but we're not.We all need to cry sometimes. We all need to feel sad. No one's life turns out as planned or expected for long. I've watched my married friends adapt to unexpected challenges. I've watched them deal with disappointment and isolation. All of us, in one way or another or at one time or another, eventually have to face emptiness, loneliness, disease, doubt, fear.
Life is hard for all of us. Let's not make it harder by creating a trial out of a status which is not a measure of the success or fullness of our lives. Are some single people experiencing very, very hard things? Yep, absolutely. Are some single people happy and fulfilled and perhaps experiencing one of the most easygoing periods of their lives? Yep. Are some married people lonely and struggling? Oh yeah. Are some married people experiencing a brief blissful period before mortality once again rears its ugly (but necessary, part-of-the-Plan) head? I assume so, but I can't speak from experience.
Singleness itself is not a dreary wasteland/purgatory/hell where you serve your time before entering heaven. It's actually just life. Life, not singleness or marriedness per se, is hard. So hang in there and help other people hang in there. Pay attention to what's going awesome in your life because there will never really be a time in which EVERYTHING is working out for you.
And if by some miracle EVERYTHING is working out for you, I'm sad for you. I'll pray for you. It must be really hard to stay humble and learn. Hang in there. Things will get hard again eventually, and you'll be back to progressing. That's the whole point, anyway, isn't it?
**written by Meridith at http://meridithwrites.blogspot.com**
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