as fast as I can

I live with two other girls. One of them got engaged this past February 4th. The other one got engaged this past March 6th. After No. 2 came home with a ring, I made the joke that - in order to keep the pattern going - I would have to get engaged on April 8.

This was an unlikely task. I don't have a long-term boyfriend nor am I dating anyone. To start a relationship and get engaged within six weeks is possible, sure, but improbable. Well, ladies and gentlemen, April 8th was this past Friday and I am still ringless.

At my church, Pastor Noah talks  a lot about people getting married. Like, just about every Sunday. He talks about all the married people in the church and how they should love each other well and go make lots of babies. Then he talks about the single people and how they should get married so they can love each other well and make lots of babies. And I agree with him that it is God's plan for many of us single folk to get married and love each other well (and have lots of babies). Tonight when he talked about men loving their wives enough to buy them back massages, I thought "heck yeah! I want to be married so my husband can buy be a back massage!"

But that's just it, isn't it? There are some days that I am lonely and miss having a boyfriend and want to be dating someone attractive and smart and funny and nice (not too nice yet not a liar) but there are many more days that I think of marriage in terms of the financial benefits that would be open to me if I had a husband with a "real job." In those moments of indulgence, I know that I should want to be married to share my life with someone, not because I could travel on his dime. In those moments, I am thankful that I'm not married. If I were married right now, I wouldn't necessarily be able to do half the stuff I do. I wouldn't necessarily be able to jet off to Haiti for a month to live in and serve an orphanage. I wouldn't necessarily be able to think about getting a second Master's or even a PhD because, well, why not? I might be able to drop my entire life in Virginia and move to Missouri but I definitely wouldn't be able to spend the entire month of July and half of August lounging by the pool of my brother's apartment complex, recuperating from grad school and the stuff life threw at me.

As my friend Emily once said, it's a different type of adventure. Some people choose to stay put and get married. Some people move to Scotland and trek around Europe making the rest of us get crazy wanderlust. It's just a different type of adventure. So right now I am having this St. Louis adventure, and I think probably I'll get married sometime in the future, and that will be a different kind of adventure. If it happens that I start dating someone tomorrow and get married in a year, hey, that's cool, I'll just start that new adventure pretty soon.

 

On the days I am super frustrated about not being married now, I often think of a specific episode of How I Met Your Mother. I thought of it in church tonight and when I got home, it just happened to be on TV. It's that one in which Tony breaks up with Stella and she appeals to Ted to talk Tony back into marrying her (he was the one who talked Tony out of it, after all). Stella and Ted are sitting in the car after getting Barney out of jail and Ted, in a moment of vulnerability, spills to Stella that he wants what she and Tony (and Marshall and Lily) have. And Stella tells Ted that somewhere out there is a girl who will be that person for him, who will give Ted what Stella and Tony have. Stella reassures Ted that that girl is getting there as fast as she can.

I'm getting there as fast as I can.