It Isn't What You Would Think

There is a look some people get when they realize I am single.  It is a mixture of curiosity and pity. They want to ask about my life, about what it is like, about what I feel. It isn't really their fault. Even outside of LDS culture I'm becoming a social outlier. 

From comments I have heard and questions that have been asked, it seems like a lot of people assume I am lonely. That can't be farther from the truth. If I want social interaction, I can find it. I am probably a lot less lonely than a stay-at-home mom whose children determine their daily schedules and don't allow for a lot of social interaction. Loneliness isn't the issue. 

Additionally, I don't suffer from a longing ache for a husband or children. I wish they were part of my life, but I know from experience that I can live a happy, fulfilled life without it. It won't be the same as if I were married when most of my peers were, but it won't be filled with despair and bitterness like some people assume. I do, occasionally, dream of being swept off my feet by a tall, lanky, British man, not from loneliness or despair but because everyone needs a bit of romance in their life. Even if it is fantasy-based.

The secret that people don't grasp, or don't want to grasp, is that while I am not lonely or despairing or bitter, there is an emotional darkside to my continuing singleton status. Envy. A particular sort of envy. I don't sit around staring covetously at women with babies in church and I don't envy individuals their particular spouses or children. It is more to do with envying situations and blessings that I haven't got and then getting very angry at how unfair it seems to be.

I look at people I encounter at work or out shopping or on Facebook and get cranky. I see parents who don't treat their children as they ought in that snapshot of a moment at the checkout line and think "Why do they get to be parents? They are rubbish at it! I would be a much better parent." I watch friends and acquaintances who have regularly flouted the Law of Chastity for years get engaged and married and procreate (not necessarily in that order) and I get jealous and petty and angry that I have to sit on the sidelines, seemingly punished despite following the rules. I look at people from high school, who weren't very nice to me and were downright vicious to some of my friends, now living seeming picture-perfect lives and I'm livid at the injustice of it.

I don't like feeling this way. I try extremely hard not to feel that way. To be charitable instead of critical. To be happy at another's happiness. To forgive and forget and be glad that high school doesn't define us for life. Most of the time I am successful. Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I'm stuck in the moment, mistaking the fleeting second of transient mortality for the finality of eternity. My battle is not against loneliness or despair or bitterness. Maintaining a clear vision, recognizing the difference between the mortal transience of becoming and the eternal finality of being is my battle. 

I think it might be everyone's battle, regardless of the challenge, trial, or tribulation. Everyone struggles with perspective when it seems like it will never end, when it feels like a permanent state. Very few things are permanent in this life, good or bad. We just have to remember to remember that.

I Had to Give Another Tallk

Only this time, instead of the coziness of speaking in a ward Sacrament meeting, I was asked to speak at the evening session of stake conference last night. Also, I got a stake calling.* It was a fairly nerve-wracking week, to be honest. Several people mentioned they would like a copy of the talk, so I am posting it here. 

            I started planning my life at a very young age. By grade school I had sketched out a rough plan as to how my life would go. I would be living in a bustling metropolis, New York, Boston, D.C., London, it changed depending on my mood, working in some fascinating occupation, which also changed depending on my mood. I would live a sophisticated life far removed from rural Eastern Washington, see the world, amass a spectacular shoe collection, and finally settle down at the age of 28 by marry an interesting, sophisticated man four years my senior and buying the perfect home. That was the narrative I crafted year in and year out as I slowly made my way from grade school to junior high to high school and on to university. Not to spoil the story, but that isn’t exactly how it turned out. In fact, very little of it has gone according to plan. Aside from amassing a fairly large shoe collection. 

            How far has reality diverged from my life plan? Well, I currently pay the bills by working in property management while trying to find a full-time teaching position. I am still single and home-ownership is a distant, improbable dream. However, I do know, despite the drastic difference in youthful daydreams and adult reality, that I am where the Lord wants me to be. His plan is vastly different than mine. By the world’s measurements of success and achievement it may look like something has gone wrong, but in His merciful wisdom the Lord has led me along a path infinitely better. 

            Being laid off from my administrative job in Salt Lake City six and a half years ago and having to move home a few months later felt, at the time, like a colossal failure. However, it meant being able to spend every day with my mother for the last four months of her life. It meant being called to teach Mia Maids and realizing a) I really like teaching and b) I really like teaching middle schoolers. It meant regaining my Washington residency and being able to attend Western Washington University to obtain a teaching certificate and a Master’s degree. It meant ending up 70 minutes away from my brother’s family and being able to spend every major event in my nieces’ and nephew’s lives with them. In hindsight, losing my job and moving home was the kindest, most merciful thing the Lord could do for me. 

            I am, unfortunately, slow to learn. I came to Bellingham with a plan. I was going to attend graduate school, get a part-time job while in school, and then start a grand new adventure as a first-year teacher in some previously undiscovered part of the country. That was my plan. It will probably not surprise you to hear that it was not the Lord’s plan. A month after I moved here and started school, I was called to serve as a counselor in the YSA ward’s Relief Society presidency. A few short months later, following the weddings of both the other counselor and the president, I was called to serve as the YSA Relief Society president. This was really NOT part of my plan. But it was part of the Lord’s plan. I didn’t end up getting that part-time job, but I received a very specific promise from the Lord that if I magnified my calling, that He would take care of me. This promise didn’t come when I was set apart, rather in His infinite mercy, it came a month before I received the calling, while sitting in this very room during Stake conference four years ago. The Lord knew what I needed and when I would need it. 

            That property management job I am not particularly fond of started as a temporary summer position the week after I graduated from Western and miraculously transformed into a permanent, full-time position that pays all my bills and includes a boss who allows me to take days off to substitute teach and I recently started an online teaching job to add experience to my resume. The Lord has taken care of me. 

            I came to Bellingham to pursue a degree in education. I also received an education in submitting to and waiting upon the Lord. 

            Submitting and waiting are not things that I am particularly good at. However, I have learned a few things about it. First, submitting is not throwing one’s hands in the air and giving up. It is not dejectedly moping in the corner like Eyeore. It is actively pursuing to your fullest extent the righteous desires of your heart and looking forward with hope to the fulfillment of the Lord’s promises. It is following the promptings of the Holy Ghost while working as hard as you can to progress in your life. Submitting to the will of the Lord is understanding that when difficulties arise, when all your righteous efforts seem to fall to dust, that the Lord is not punishing you nor has He forgotten you. Rather, He is leading you to something infinitely better. 

            Waiting upon the Lord is not sitting in our metaphorical or literal recliners waiting for the Lord to deliver. A friend of mine, who is currently serving a mission, and I have been discussing what it means to wait upon the Lord. The conclusion we came to, with help from Elder Perrell’s mission president, suggests there are two aspects of waiting upon the Lord. In the grand tradition of the wonderful and frustrating English language, wait has multiple meanings. The first meaning denotes patiently enduring the passage of time while looking forward to something. The second meaning of wait involves active service to something or someone. Both are inherent in the idea of waiting upon the Lord and integral in our becoming perfected beings. To truly be waiting upon the Lord, we must follow His timeline while serving Him by serving His children. 

            Brothers and sisters, the Lord has not forsaken us as we go through the trials and tribulations that are common to all human experience. If we cheerfully submit and wait upon the Lord, as difficult and impossible as that may seem at times, He will bless us. In Doctrine & Covenants 123:17, amid the horror and persecution of Missouri, Joseph Smith gave this instruction to the early Saints from Liberty jail : 

 “Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.” 

This promise also applies to us now. Submitting and waiting are not meant to be easy. They comprise our covenanted sacrifice to the Lord. They are our paths to following the example of Jesus Christ and they are a key to sanctification and salvation. Despite the trials, the difficulties, and the sorrow that is part of my continuing education in submitting to and waiting upon the Lord, I am grateful for the goodness, mercy, and love I have already seen and felt in the Lord’s plan for me. I know that by following the Lord’s plan, submitting in obedience, and waiting upon the Lord, I will continue to be blessed. I know that as we all continue in the path of submitting to and waiting upon the Lord we will be worthy to receive all His promised blessings and that “All that is unfair in life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.” As we each prayerfully seek Him out and grow in our use and application of His Atonement, we can find joy and consolation in submitting to and waiting upon the Lord. He is the Balm of Gilead to take away the pain, sorrow, and discouragement of our hardships. Depend on Him and He will take care of you.

*For the curious, I was called to serve as the first counselor in the stake Relief Society. 

Alternative Programming

Obviously, I am about a month behind with this post, but then, I'm about a month behind in life generally. My Christmas card list is now my Martin Luther King, Jr. Day card list. That, however, is beside the point. The point actually being that I disagree with pretty much all of People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive 2012 issue. 

I have a long history with People Magazine's annual Sexiest Man Alive issue. My mom and I would laugh over it, it always came out just in time for the trip home at Thanksgiving, it was the perfect length to take up that hour and ten minutes it took to fly from Utah to Washington, and it was extra handy when my college roommates and I were building The Shrine to David Duchovny and subsequent iterations of the Man Wall. However, the tide has been changing.

Perhaps it is that I am getting older, perhaps I'm getting more cynical, or perhaps less tolerant of the opinions of others. Who knows. However, I do know that People Magazine declaring Channing Tatum the Sexiest Man Alive is the last straw. I didn't complain when they chose Ryan Reynolds, because he is funny and plays his smarminess to great effectiveness. I know that People Magazine needs to appeal to a multitude of tastes. I understand that there are intricate calculations involving sales volume, a foundation of popularity, who needs to be promoting what, etc. However, when Colin "Mr. Darcy" Firth, is relegated to a thumbnail photo in a one-page section about men going grey under a title referring to one of the most unpalatable fiction series in recent history, I have to say something. I cannot stand by silently while scads of my TV boyfriends, long running members of the Fantasy Boyfriend League, are left out in the cold for an ever growing number generic boy-bandesque beefcakes.

So, as an alternative, here, in no particular order, are 13 gentleman who, in the world according to Scully, should have a shot at the cover of 2013's People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive.

Either I Am Becoming More Of An Anglophile Or My Attention Span Is Shrinking

My addiction to television is well documented on this blog (here, here, and here, for instance). I have been busy, so lots of shows I used to watch obsessively have fallen to the wayside (or the Netflix queue in anticipation of the next bout of death flu). It would seem that I am unable to dedicate my life to 22-24 episodes a year. The shows I stick with are either comedies that only take 20-24 minutes to watch, which I can do while painting my toenails or folding laundry, etc. or dramas that have a handful of episodes followed by a small hiatus and then another handful of episodes. This is a very British sort of airing schedule and I like it. It requires less of me and less of my time. Also, there is less time to become annoyed with plot lines or characters I don't like. It isn't that I'm not still addicted to television, I just watch it differently. I find I like starting at the beginning of shows that are in their last season now. It makes it easier to watch the rest, knowing there is an end date. Perhaps I have commitment issues, perhaps I have been burned too many times by shows sticking around long past their expiration date. It could just be my attention span for anything is shortened, due to not having enough time to go around. Whatever it is, the list of shows I watch religiously is much, much shorter than it used to be. 

For The Record

I would give up all the perfect comforters in the universe if it meant that my loved ones didn't have to suffer. 

My poor little niece Bug, who already endured an open heart surgery last year (and a small surgical procedure a few months before that), had some massive migraines after her heart surgery. They went away shortly thereafter, but not before her doctor scheduled a MRI to be on the safe side. The MRI found what is called a Chiari Malformation I. Basically it means her skull is too small for her brain and that her brain is being squeezed through the foramen at the bottom of her skull. It wasn't putting any pressure on her spine, so they just scheduled an MRI in a year to keep an eye on it. 

The second MRI was Friday and the results came in today. It is now putting pressure on her spine and causing some other issues. So, another MRI is scheduled in a year and in the meantime her parents have to be on the lookout for any symptoms (dizziness, motor-function issues, headaches, etc) in case it gets worse before the next check-up. This all means that there are higher-than-average odds that Bug will need to have brain surgery in the next year.

NOT. A. FAN.