Try

Today's post is painful. It's uncomfortable and it's raw and more than anything it's vulnerable. It is the story of loss and of heartache and of a broken young woman. So if you're not up for that kind of thing right now, kindly move on. It took a bit of courage to pound this out. More than a bit. 

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A friend of mine posted a picture of a 'vintage' wedding dress on facebook today. It was beautiful. When I saw it I immediately thought, "I want that. Omygoodness I want that." But so did several other young women who saw the ad before I did. 

In an attempt to not look ridiculous and desperate I sent my friend a personal message rather than posting a comment. 

"Rachel. Don't sell that vintage wedding dress. I want it. One day, I'll wear it."

One day I'll wear it???

I don't know that. 

I don't know that one day I will wear it. I don't know that one day I will wear a wedding dress. Recently I've come to realize that not only will I not be married by age 30, I may not be married until age 40. Surprisingly, not only was I okay with this idea, I was actually excited about it. In a way, it was a bit freeing to finally accept that the race to the altar shouldn't be a race at all. Regardless of what I had allowed myself to believe for 29 years, I am not, in fact, on a pre-arranged timeline that specifies marriage by age 30. 

The fact is, I am more effective as a single young woman than I am when in a relationship. I think I always have been. Something happens when I attempt to combine my life with someone else's. My identity is lost. My purpose. My self-esteem. My confidence. My independence. The list goes on. . . 

 I have learned as of late this is not only a common struggle for all women it is actually a gauranteed struggle for all women. Maybe some worse than others. 

That being said, along with this new singleness came the enlightening realization that not only does God have big plans for my life, He could have big plans for the next ten years that does not include marriage. This gave me a quite unexpected sense of newfound freedom.

I could move anywhere in the world. 

I could change my career. 

I could start a career. 

I could do anything I want. . . because I have ten years. 

The truth is, I have more than ten years. Somewhere along the line of birth to childhood to teenagehood to young womanhood I got it in my head that marriage is gauranteed. Period. Some people have to wait longer than others. Some people get divorced. Some spouses die. Some people go through zero bad relationships and others go through zillions. 

But everyone gets to get married--eventually. 

Right?

Wrong. Not everyone does. A lot of people don't. I am not entitled to a marriage. And I am not entitled to children. I am not entitled to my dream job. I am not entitled to working arms and legs and lungs. 

I just think I am. 

For 29 years I thought I was. I thought because I'm female and I'm witty and although perhaps not 'easy' on the eyes not hard on the eyes either. . . I thought these things meant I get to get married. By age 25. 

By age 30. . . 

By age 40?

We have choices in life. We have choices that determine the course of many things. But there are many things that we don't have a choice in. We don't choose what family we are born into. We don't choose our parents and we don't choose how they will act toward us and raise us. We don't choose our health. We can make healthy choices, but we cannot determine our health and well-being and future on our own. Life does that for us. 

I am 29 years old. If you would have asked me ten years ago where I would be in ten years, do know what what I would have said?

"Hopefully I will be on a farm. In the country, just on the edge of town. In a house with a wrap-around porch. With ten children. Five from my husband and I and five adopted. And a dairy cow and a couple horses and a tire swing in the front yard. I will have published a New York Times Best Seller."

I live in the suburbs. In my parents house. In St. Louis. There is no wrap around porch. There are no children. There is a cat, and a dog, and a talking parrot. There is no husband. There is no cow. And I have not published a New York Times Best Seller. 

I don't get to assume. Not anymore. I don't get to assume that Life will give me a husband by a certain age. I don't get to assume I will get married at all. I don't get to assume I will live on the edge of town one day on acres of beautiful land with a house full of children and the royalites of my book to live on. I don't get to assume because the fact is I am not entitled. 

No one is. 

I get to try. I get to try to change the world, one life at a time. I get to write because I know I can, regardless of whether or not anything ever hits the best seller's list. I get to try to find a job that makes me feel alive. I get to try and touch everyone I come into contact with. I get to try and I get to hope I make a difference. 

And as I sit here more broken than I ever knew I could be, I try. As I struggle to crawl out of bed every single morning because it hurts to breathe, I try. As I sit here aching, desperately pleading the clock to please go faster that I may heal--I try. 

I try and I hope, because that is all I am truly entitled to do. 

 

Comfort

I just got off the phone with a dear friend whom is currently living in a camper in a church parking lot in Colorado. The beautiful thing is that we laughed about it. There was no remorse there. No empathy. No sorrow.

"You live in a camper and I live at my parents house in the suburbs. We're both unemployed. And we're going to change the world."

We are going to change the world, you know. We already have. She did so in Thailand. In Bolivar, Missouri. In Colorado. I did so in Korea. In Africa. In Mount Vernon, Missouri.

Changing the world doesn't mean becoming the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerhoweveryouspellhisname or Mother Theresa. The world is made of inviduals, you see. So when we change one life, when we reach out to one single person, we are changing a part of the whole.  A part of the whole world.

We are changing the world.

But change can't  happen when we remain comfortable. That is what we decided tonight. That is what I decided in Africa. And in Korea. And have yet to figure out how to live out here in constantly comfort-seeking America.

Comfortable is just a nice synonym for complacent.

And I strongly dislike complacent. I despise it, in fact.

When we become fully comfortable we become fully complacent. We look around us and say, "This is good" but we don't mean just that moment--we mean forever. We mean that this is where we want to be and how we want to feel and what we want to do forever. We mean that we have come to a place in life where we feel good. Where alll things seem certain. We mean that we have fulfilled our life plan or dream or goal and now we can stop and rest easy. Now the hard part is over. Now we can just be.

I hope I never remain comfortable. If I do I will be entirely disappointed in myself.

I wasn't comfortable at the Children's Home as a live-in staff on the nights I went into my room and fell to my knees sobbing after hearing my residents' stories of incest and rape. I wasn't comfortable in New Orleans in the humidity and heat and constant cloud of bloodsucking mosquitoes. I wasn't comfortable in Uganda when I saw the muddy, disease-infested pit the kids' called 'water.' I wasn't comfortable in Moore, Oklahoma when I watched an 82 year old man pick through a pile of rubble that was once his home.

 The uncomfortable parts of life forced me to act. They forced me to feel, to change, to advocate. They forced me to live. 

I was comfortable in Korea. Not at first, but eventually. And traveling southeast Asia, for the most part, was comfortable. It was vacation. It was seeing the world. It was being a tourist. It was living my hard-earned reward after teaching a year abroad. But I was not living then. Not really.

I was going through the motions of a world-traveler all the while thinking, "This is it? This is good. This is a dream. This can't be hapenning. This is real. This is heaven. But. . .this is it?"

Do you know the most beautiful thing I saw in all my travels?

It was the faces of the slum children in Farridahbad, India.

I spent less than an hour with those children and it was enough to wreck my world. I had got it all wrong. The Taj was no comparison to their faces. To their touch. Nor was the Ganges. The Himalayas.
I was uncomfortable there, in their arms. In the slums.

And I felt alive.