Last Sunday's lesson in Relief Society was a revisiting of Elder Uchtdorf's talk in the Relief Society General Meeting about Forget-Me-Nots. I loved the premise of this talk—his first point about how we need to stop punishing ourselves for our weaknesses is something we just don't hear enough.
But then he got to his third point—a perfectly valid point of Forget Not to be Happy—and rather than illustrate his point with an anecdote about someone who did just that, he told the story of a woman who wanted a husband and family so badly that when it didn't happen, she turned into a bitter old school marm who alienated everyone around her, including her students.
I remember being upset about it when I heard him give the talk, and when the teacher started the lesson, I thought, “Surely she's not going to retell this story.” She did have someone read it, and I stewed. Do I say something? Do I just let it go?
Well, I said something. Loudly. Vehemently.
“This made me so angry when he told this story. I know dozens of women who are single and NOT like the woman in this story—why couldn't he have shared their stories instead? It just perpetuates the cultural myth in the church that to be valued, women must be married.”
And wow, did I open a can of worms.
I didn't mean to, and as someone who teaches Gospel Doctrine and occasionally has to deal with lesson-hijackers, I really try to be sensitive and NOT do that. But I just couldn't stay silent any more. I wanted those women to know that while I'd love to be married and have children, I'm STILL happy with where I am. I love my job (most days) and I'm able to really, truly affect change in my classroom and with my piano students. And I know I'm not alone! Marnie and Stella, plus at least a dozen others I know in the same situation. We aren't bitter, and we ARE doing something with our lives, and we ARE happy.
And even though I was the only single woman in the room, I was shocked at how many women agreed with me. I was sitting next to the temple matron—a woman who has known me since I was 8 years old—and she said, “It makes me angry, too, that the image we have of single women in the church is bitterness. Anne is an example to me, and a role model for me, and I'm a grandmother. It doesn't matter that she's single.”
I was going to apologize to the teacher afterwards, but then a thought came to me. Maybe it was stubbornness, maybe inspiration. But here's what I thought: Maybe Elder Uchtdorf didn't have a better story to share because we are silent. We don't talk about our careers or volunteer work or whatever it is we do, because it sounds self-aggrandizing. We don't share what makes us happy because...well, I'm not sure why. Is it because we think it's not important to the members of our ward families? Is it because deep down, we feel no matter what, it's never going to measure up to the women who get to raise families?
I don't know. But I'm done being silent about it. It's time I stopped apologizing for and complicit-ly ignoring the life I've built by not being more vocal at church about the good things I'm doing with my life.
If I get to listen to the women in Relief Society share their stories about sleepless nights with newborns, then I should share stories of my sleepless nights caused by my job. If I get to listen to stories of funny toddler sayings, I should share stories of funny work colleague sayings.
If the women in Relief Society share their family life with me, I should share my single life with them.
When I transferred from BYU to a Midwestern university, I enrolled in Institute. I was 22 at the time, and was returning to church activity after a horrific engagement to a boy who did not share my faith (and was an all-around awful person). I loved the Institute teacher, and I always felt like he “got me” in a way my religion professors at BYU did not.
Three years later, I returned from my mission, and a boy who I thought had waited for me broke my heart in rather devastating fashion. When Institute classes started, and that same teacher asked me questions about my mission and how I was adjusting, I told him about the boy and my fear that I would never get married.
My teacher said, “Maybe being single is going to be your Abrahamic trial.”
I wanted to punch him.
That was 13 years ago, and apparently, that Institute teacher was somewhat clairvoyant.
But I think of his analogy every so often, especially when I do things that I consider sacrifices. Trying online dating: an offering. Going to a single adult conference, where I am the youngest person in attendance by at least 25 years: an offering. Continual church attendance despite feeling like a complete freak: an offering.
Offering after offering on the Altar of Please-Don't-Let-Me-Die-Alone.
Last weekend, I attended one of those single adult conferences. I could only make it to parts of it, and really didn't have a chance to mingle much, but I went. And in the opening prayer of one of the speaker events, the pray-er asked that we would be blessed for our faith in attending.
I was so touched by that idea—that by going to the conference, by myself, knowing not a single soul could even be considered an act of faith.
I enjoyed the speakers (Barbara Thompson was one of them) and the one workshop I was able to attend before I had to leave for another obligation. I didn't see anyone close to my age. And yes, I know I probably shouldn't be age-ist, but I'm just not ready to date men closer to my father's age than mine.
I did not have enough faith to attend the dance.
But I laid down an offering just the same.
Why?
As children of our Heavenly Father we know that women are no more talented or gifted then men - He has blessed us all with gifts, talents, and abilities. In America it can be argued that we all have similar access to education. As members of the church we all receive the same Prophetic guidance and counsel. So what gives? Some thoughts...I wonder if this is a chicken/egg type of situation. Certainly as women we just might be the most educated and accomplished generation ever. Is that because we are career & achievement orientated or because we weren't given another choice? Certainly I believe most of us would have (and should have) pursued an education regardless but I'm quite certain I wouldn't have gone on to graduate school or have the career that I have if I had been given another option.
I decided long ago that I wanted a "good" life. I wanted to be able to care for my own needs, I wanted to be able to enjoy some of life's 'fineries' and since I didn't have a partner that landed squarely on my shoulders. For me, that meant formal education and a career. So the question I pose is: Have women surpassed men in these areas because we are these super go-getters or because we didn't have another choice?
My follow up question is to wonder if our achievements (and maybe even a get out of my way, I am woman hear me roar mentality that some of those achievements bring) have somehow pushed the men of our society into thinking that they can't, or shouldn't, or don't need to pursue their own achievements?I can't help but think that if we expect men to return to who they once were we have to in part do the same. During the October 2000 general conference Margaret Nadauld said:
"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."
I saw Moneyball with a friend today. I'm an Aaron Sorkin fangirl, and he co-wrote the screenplay, and I'm a baseball fan, so it met the litmus test for being worth the price of matinee admission.
It didn't have the typical pizazz of a Sorkin script, but near the end of the film, the statistician shares a metaphor with the General Manager, Billy Beane.
He shows Beane footage of a minor league catcher—way overweight for baseball standards with an admitted fear of going to 2nd base. He's at bat, hits a perfect pitch, and can tell from the contact that he hit it well. So he takes the leap. He approaches first and we see him round the base to head to 2nd.
And he falls down.
He belly crawls back to first, because he doesn't want to be tagged out. Head in the dirt, he clings to the base, almost hugging it, despite the first baseman and the first base coach tugging at him, motioning for him to get up. He was so focused on staying safe at first base that he didn't see he had hit a home run.
In the movie, the metaphor was intended to persuade Beane to take a lucrative contract in Boston. But the metaphor wasn't lost on its applicability in my own life. I have this great career. People with whom I work respect me. I chair a committee that can affect true change. I write in my spare time. I teach piano lessons, raising a piano army for church. And I do a million other valuable things with my time.
But sometimes, my face is in the dirt and I'm belly crawling to first base, believing that I'm not valuable if I'm not married—and I can't be bothered to see all the home runs I'm hitting.
So. The next time you trip and fall into the self-esteem spiral that often accompanies being single and LDS, look up, as Elder Cook counseled Saturday afternoon in Conference.
Look up and see what you just knocked out of the park.
For the first time in my life—and I hope not the last—I had the opportunity to read an advance reading copy of a book. “31 Dates in 31 Days” is the tale of Tamara Duricka Johnson's quest to make sense of the madness that is dating.
This is a hard review to write for two reasons. First, I felt a bit of jealousy that I didn't come up with the idea to date 31 guys in 31 days, blog about it, turn the blog into a book, and possibly sell the movie rights (it really would make a pretty decent movie, in the spirit of “Julie and Julia.”) Second, the book caused me to examine my own approach to dating and relationships—and it was somewhat uncomfortable.
I identified all too well with Johnson's admissions of relationship-killing fallacies: rushing past dating stage into full-blown relationship; compromising her interests in order to save a relationship; and the big one—believing that any relationship was better than none, and making it work was imperative, because no one else was going to come along. Luckily, Johnson doesn't disclose these admissions until half-way through the book, and by that time I was too invested in her experiment to stop reading.
I'm not going to discuss plot at all—you can check out the website for that—but I will say that as I read the book (hard to put down, by the way—took me about three hours) I was tired for her. I would not be able to keep up the frenetic schedule she did: a demanding full-time job (which I also have), plus a date every single night. And while she set a minimum time limit of 31 minutes for each date, it seemed that all of them lasted at least 2-3 hours.
If I wasn't still trying to heal from a breakup, I know I would have adored this book. And that's not to say I didn't enjoy it—I did. But some of her words hit just a tad too close to home and forced me to examine my own failed relationships through a different lens, a lens that I was simply unprepared to face.
As for Johnson's writing, it is typical of the genre—accessible, engaging, with flashes of humor. My only criticism is that many of her dates seemed to end with her extrapolating some lesson or moral to help develop her new approach to relationships. I'm not sure such epiphanies were completely integral to the story-telling aspect of her experiment. I enjoyed just reading about the dates and didn't need to read all of the lessons she learned; a handful would have sufficed.
That said, I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out how I might run a similar experiment. I wouldn't be able to do it every day, but there's really no reason why I couldn't find a way to have a date every weekend for a specified period of time. And the hallmark of any good book is if it compels the reader to act, to change behavior.
Johnson acknowledges in her book that she is Mormon, but doesn't explore how Mormon culture complicates dating and relationships. I assume part of that is so that she can reach a wider audience, and perhaps because she converted to the faith later in life and might not have been raised with some of the expectations and fears that I was.
But I'm glad she left that part out, because that's my book to write.
31 Dates in 31 Days is available at your regular book-shopping locales. According to Amazon, its official release date is September 27.
On tonight's season premiere of “How I Met Your Mother,” the ever-hopeful Ted arrives at the frightening realization that he no longer has hope. Talking to his friend Robin, Ted grapples with the reality that all of his high school friends are married and have families, and he doesn't.
He says, “I've stopped believing...not in a way I even noticed...every day I believe a little less, and a little less, and a little less, and that sucks.”
The advice Robin gives? To believe again. And not to believe in destiny, but to believe in chemistry. She says, “If you have chemistry, you only need one other thing. Timing.”
And, she continues, “But timing's a...”
Well, this is a Mormon blog, so I'm going to leave out the expletive, but you get the point.
And then I started thinking about how mopey I've been lately. Just this morning, as I once again wished for the boy to call or text, I thought, “Would he even want to be with me again, seeing me like this?”
Probably not.
I lack chemistry right now. That spark, that flirtatiousness that makes people want to be around me. Heck, I don't even want to be around me some days lately. I need that chemistry back, and I do see flickers of it a couple of times a week, so I just need to fan it and stoke it a little, until it's back completely.
And then, it's timing. Timing sucks. Timing is the sole reason why I'm dealing with a breakup in the first place. The timing was not right for us. And there's not a lot I can do about timing, other than read conference talks about patience and re-read Captain Wentworth's letter in Persuasion. Talk about timing—that letter is all about timing.
One element in my control, one element in God's hands. I'm guessing if I expect God to come through on his part, I should be a little more active in doing something about mine.
Pity party over.
I'm out to find some kindling.
5:30 AM, my alarm goes off and I pray for the feeling of sadness and dread to go away.
7 AM, sitting at my desk, buried in papers and lesson plans, I take a deep breath and forget that I woke up with sadness, put on my happy face, and I get to work.
11:30 AM, eating lunch with my friends, I take out my iPod and catch up on Twitter and my RSS feed, focusing on my digital world as an escape.
3:45 PM, working with my newspaper staff to finish our first issue, they make me laugh and they make me think, and for a couple of hours, I feel like I am actually making a difference.
7:30 PM, running on the treadmill, I realize after 17 minutes that I am hollow, going through the motions, and the TV show playing in front of me is horribly romantic and the sadness returns.
10 PM, on my knees at my bedside, I pray for my friends, for my students, for my family. I pray that I'll sleep through the night and that somehow I will wake up feeling like I did last week—normal, happy, over him. And then I pray for two men. For the one who said goodbye, I pray that the miracle he desires will happen. For the one I've yet to meet, I pray that he is well, and on his way to me soon.
Yesterday over at Segullah, a woman posted about the concept of God closing doors and opening windows, and she presents the idea that God might not work that way, rather closed doors are somehow meant to transform us. In the past six weeks, with a door slammed in my face, I have seen tiny transformations in myself. I am feeling more dependent on God now than I was on my mission or in grad school.
That is a pretty good transformation to make, right?
A long time ago, I decided I would not allow myself to be emotionally manipulated by a man. I would not let him woo me with fancy words or romantic gestures, because I didn't want to deal with the inevitable opposite.
So when I let my guard down last spring and allowed a man to woo me with fancy words and romantic gestures, I would apologize every time I'd talk to my friends, because I was gushy and gooey and downright disgusting.
They kept telling me I was human.
And when he told me he needed to move on three weeks ago, I tried to be robotic, stone-faced. One day, I was with a friend and could not stop crying. I kept apologizing to her, saying that it had been a week, and I should be over it, and I had no right to still be upset.
She told me I was human.
I saw The Philadelphia Story last night with a friend, and the men in the film really work over Tracy Lord and her superwoman approach to keeping men at bay in the name of emotional preservation. At the end of the film, she realizes her steely exterior has actually drawn in a man with whom she has zero chemistry, a man who would not challenge her, a man who expected a neat, near-robotic, tidy wife instead of a nuanced and at times emotionally messy wife. She exclaims with great joy, “I'm human! I'm human!” before walking down the aisle to remarry her ex-husband.
I've seen The Philadelphia Story several times, but it was the first time that Tracy's discovery that she was indeed human affected me. I thought of how many times in the past four months I have apologized to people for either being unable to stop smiling or unable to stop sobbing. True, one of my friends commented earlier in the summer that it was somewhat bizarre to see me so giddy, because I was always so rational and even-keeled. But she was glad to see I was capable of being “normal.” And when I was crying in her car a couple of months later, apologizing for being such horrible company, she told me to stop apologizing, told me I'd be okay, and told me I was “normal.”
Apparently, I'm human.
I am one of those kooky romantic types who thinks dreams actually speak to me and teach me something new. I remember my dreams, often in vivid detail, and can usually find symbolism or at least explanation for the dreams I have.
About five years ago, for one week, I had the exact same dream. I can still remember snippets of it now. I was being chased. I was with someone I loved—though I don't remember who. And I was carrying a bouquet of red balloons. We were making our way through a train station, and every night, we were caught, and I would wake up right as our chasers, guns drawn, found us in a baggage car.
By the sixth night of this dream, I was afraid to go to sleep. But I eventually fell asleep, and the dream started again. Same sequence. We got to the train station, and a thought came to me:
“If you want a different outcome, you must let go of the balloons.”
But the balloons apparently were important to me, because I was hesitant to let them go. I ran a few more steps, looked up at the balloons, and then let them go. My loved one and I managed to escape with ease, and I haven't had that dream since.
So why I am telling you about a five year-old dream? Because while at the time, that dream taught me something important about my professional life, I find myself thinking about it now as I am once again navigating the waters of relationships. I struggle to make different emotional choices than I've made in the past, citing all the failed relationships as reasons why I need to maintain a brick wall around my heart, or why I can't trust him.
But, as the saying goes, “if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten.”
Or something like that.
I have to let go of my bouquet of red balloons of damaged relationships, and take the chance that he isn't like the others. And sure, he could turn out to be like the others, but a certain path to that outcome is to make the same choices I always have.
It might be time to choose a different outcome.
I gave a talk in church at the end of May. The topic? Following Christ's example by submitting our will to the Father.
I stifled a chuckle when the 2nd counselor in the bishopric gave me the topic. Of all the people in the ward, I'm sure am the worst example of someone who follows Christ's example by submitting to the will of the Father. Because the truth is, I haven't so much as submitted to His will as I've been strapped into it with ropes, buckles, and duct tape, and no matter how I try to wiggle free, I can't.
I would love to be married. Everything I've been taught in church (and continue to hear in church) suggests that marriage should be part of God's will for me. I've examined this topic for the past couple of months, especially through the lens of being a single woman in a predominantly married church.
A friend once told me that she wished I just knew when—or if—I'd ever be married. If I knew, for example, that I would meet a great guy at 41 and marry at 42, she figured my life would be a little bit easier to bear. True, that some of the angst I feel often springs from flat-out not knowing if it will ever happen. But isn't that the whole point of faith? To believe and hope, despite conventional wisdom telling me not to?
Faith is so hard. I often turn to the women of the Old Testament for support. Never mind the conditions in which they lived (no Sephora or indoor plumbing!), these women were TRIED. Sarah, who with Abraham shared the promise of millions of children had to see her handmaid conceive easily. Rachel, who wanted to badly to marry Isaac but her older sister got in the way. Esther, who had to essentially save an entire nation.
Each of these women—and I'm sure others who were excised at various councils as the Biblical canon was formed—had moments where faith failed them, and moments where faith sustained them, all the while keeping their eye toward what their Father required of them.
And this is where I know I can improve. I know what God asks of me, yet I consistently fall short. I'm mostly certain that He's not withholding a spouse until I stop making mistakes, but I'm also mostly certain that as I continue to develop more faith in His will for me—which I have to believe includes marriage—I will be so much happier.
As I've mentioned before I take a great deal of joy in reading the posts that readers leave. I take encouragement and support from those who confess having similar struggles, I take a renewed sense of commitment from those who cheer me on, I shake my head at those whose judgements are well...nonsensical and ridiculous and I hurt when I read someones comments about their own pain.
Some time back someone made a post and asked that we discuss patriarchal and other Priesthood blessings. You know the ones, the kind where we have been promised certain blessings only to wait, and wait, and wait some more to have them realized. Where we are given comfort and peace only to have it disappear as the days, weeks, months, or even years continue by. This particular comment broke my heart because I could envision through her words a certain hopelessness that her promised blessings were being withheld and all of the feelings that came with it. I know that feeling well and struggle myself to make sense of the Lord's will and many times have questioned my personal revelations. I've thought about her post many times and wondered how best to go about it.
I'm not going to give you Stella's interpretation or vision of what our blessings mean - I have neither the wisdom, understanding or authority to do so BUT I will share some of the things that I have come to learn through my own trials and will reference some talks by those who do have the proper authority to have a valid opinion.
#2 - We are in the last days - the Prophets have been telling us this for quite some time. I think (?) it was President Kimball who said that (I'm paraphrasing here) only those with a DEEP and UNMOVABLE testimony about the importance of families would be able to navigate their family successfully through the last days. I interpret that to mean that only those who have this testimony will be able to keep their family together, teach their children the gospel, and successfully overcome the adversary's full on attack on anyone with any level of goodness in them.
#3 - I take this thought a little further and realize that few people appreciate things that they haven't had to work to the end of their strength to obtain. The things that I value the most are the ones that didn't come easily and that includes my desire for a husband and children. The wait has been unbearable at times and the path to get to this place (and the places still yet to be traversed) has been strewn with opportunities to forget who I am and more importantly why I am here. Now, tell me that's an accident.To our dear sister who questions the blessings that she has been given. I wish I had the perfect words to share or the right story to say that would renew your strength and bolster your faith. I'm sorry to say that I don't - but I will say this: If you are continuing to go to church, to follow the counsel of the Prophets, to do the things that you know are right, to serve and love others then YOU ARE BEING FAITHFUL! Do not, for even a moment, let a self-deprecating feeling or a thoughtless observance from someone else make you feel forgotten or lost or wrong or worthless.
Heavenly Father knows with perfect knowledge how hard this is on us. Single-hood is not His way or plan nor is our hurt His purpose. Our Savior feels our pain and I have no doubt They cry with us during those times when we feel like we just can't take one more day. He doesn't expect us to be perfect but He does expect us to try, to keep going, to fall down when we must but to not give up. He needs to know that He can trust us with His precious children because I also believe that the spirits that we are waiting for are going to be some of His most choice. They need mothers whose strength goes to the core, our future husbands need women who will not falter, and the world needs women who will fight for righteousness. If we're being successful out here on our own just imagine what we'll accomplish in the walls of our own homes with a righteous partner by our sides. While we are being prepared so is the one we will take this journey with. Maybe he's not quite ready and our time would be well spent praying for him.
I also believe that if I didn't have something truly spectacular to offer my future family satan wouldn't waste his time on me. If I wasn't going to be a fantastic wife and mother he'd go harass someone else. I believe the same is true for you. When you feel lost, forgotten, alone, lonely, hurt, afraid, hopeless, or less then please remember those feelings do not come from Heavenly Father. The plan of happiness is about 1 thing and 1 thing only. Families. If we weren't future feathers in the proverbial cap of the kingdom satan wouldn't bother. If we weren't heading in the right direction we wouldn't struggle so hard with being single. If it wasn't in the cards for us Heavenly Father would make it okay. If it's not okay, then it's not over.
One of my favorite talks that remind me that my promised blessings and personal revelations are real is by Jeffrey R. Holland: Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence: http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=795&tid=7
Your promised blessings are real. I don't know when our hopes and desires will be realized and I don't understand why they are so long in coming but I do know that they will. I believe that the endurance and strength we utilize every day living full and productive and most importantly FAITHFUL lives despite going through this particular trial that seems to so strongly affect the lense that we look at life with is no small thing and I like to think an indicator of just how special we each are.
Thirteen years ago this week, I returned from my mission. I remember feeling like I would never forget the lessons I learned, and many of them I haven't. But one very important lesson I had forgotten, until today.
Whenever God's children try to do something right and good, they might be met with opposition. As a missionary, when someone chose to be baptized, I saw this so often—suddenly she was tempted with things she didn't even know were weaknesses. It's been said that Satan knows our weaknesses and he exploits them anyway he can. And I fell victim to that today.
One of my biggest weaknesses is assuming men do not like the way I look. I come by it honestly—more than one boy has broken up with me and given my looks or my weight as the reason why.
After a particularly rough day at church, I walked to my car, and this principle came to my mind: just like Satan tries to keep people from choosing to be baptized, or go to church, or make simple right choices, he was exploiting my deep-seeded self-loathing to keep me from opening my heart to a good man.
As I reflect on the past couple of days, I can see clearly how it happened—how the thought was planted, how it grew, and how I felt strangled by it by the day's end. And when I floated my theory past my sister this afternoon—that the adversary was pitting me against myself to sabotage a potentially good thing—she said, “I had that thought last night.”
“Why didn't you tell me then?” I asked.
“Would you have listened to it?” she countered.
Good point. I may have, I may have not. But making that connection on my own was certainly more powerful than hearing it from my sister. Finding a spouse is a good thing, an important thing, a righteous thing. So of course Satan would want to thwart that any way he can.
I don't want to give him the satisfaction.
I first read Jane Austen's Persuasion after one of the roughest breakups I've ever experienced. And it gave me hope—maybe the man who left me would be my Captain Wentworth! Alas, he was not, but I reread the good Captain's letter to Anne often, as a reminder that men do have the capacity to love and ache as much as women do.
(Yes, I know a woman—Jane Austen--actually wrote that letter. It's called “willing suspension of disbelief.” I'm an English teacher.)
I used to be a serial monogamist when dating. For the past 10 years though, I've just been on a lot of first dates.
I occasionally cycle through the hell that is online dating and have made some good connections...until we meet in person...and then my self-esteem takes a beating. I don't live in Utah, California, Arizona, or Virginia, where there seem to be large pockets of LDS menfolk, so I am somewhat limited in my dating options if I want to stick to marrying someone who is LDS.
My major dysfunction in developing relationships is trust, and not making current men pay for the mistakes and hurt past men have inflicted.
I've written a couple of guest posts here, mostly when I've needed to write about the unique challenges of being single and I don't want my mom to see it (she reads my personal blog daily). I've admired the women on this blog for years, and have drawn strength from their posts, and I'm excited and honored to help keep it going!
