Particularities

There's nothing quite like significant life milestones or periods of extreme stress to shake out all sorts of things you never knew about yourself, or at least all those things you suspected but never wanted to admit to. Being the over-achiever that I am, I decided to roll at least of three of these events into a period of a few short months, and the result has been an avalanche of uninvited self-discovery. (A note to anyone tempted to try writing a thesis, getting married, moving apartments, and graduating all around the same time: It will unleash insanity. Be forewarned.)

Probably the most uninvited of these discoveries: I am a very particular person. 

I think I've suspected this, but I like to masquerade as the happy-go-lucky, go-with-the-flow, laid-back type. Do whatever you want-- I don't care... Oh, that can go anywhere. Routines? Oh, I don't have those. There's nothing like combining your life with another person's to quickly shatter that illusion.

It drives me nuts when people squeeze from the middle of the toothpaste tube instead of the end of it. I really do want the furniture to match. I need at least one hour a day, preferably in the morning, to sit quietly, read, or do something by myself without interruption to preserve my sanity. Dirty dishes need to be in the sink, in the dishwasher, or washed immediately (none of this countertop-lolly-gagging). 

This sort of particularity is actually normal, okay, and even good. Everyone has their own personal quirks that create unique little particularities that make clutter on the coffee table odious or form a tolerance for squash only when it's baked with butter and maple syrup. In fact, if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that most of those happy-go-lucky, laid-back types out there are probably closet people-pleasers like myself. It's not that we don't have particularities, we'd just rather hide them than risk offending others. Of course, such facades can only last so long, and they can crumble in quite ugly ways. Rather, it is best to put away the pretenses and expose one's idiosyncrasies with grace. Some will have to be put away for the time- the dishes may always find their way to the countertop, but better than the kitchen table; the toothpaste tube may always be slightly squished around its waist, but such things will not matter for more than a few moments. Other particularities can be accommodated with ease-- so be it. 

Most of all, I've learned that one must release that false hope that everything will one day be "just so." Right now the house is filled with boxes-- hopefully in a week it will no longer be, but it may never be completely spotless. Lived-in houses rarely are for more than a day or so. Best instead to focus on pursuing the reasonable: a comfortable, inviting place to host friends and family or to simply enjoy now being two together from formerly-autonomous ones. With that I think I can be content.  

Image: Merrily Merrily Home by Ashley G, available on Etsy

Wedding Planning and Life Skills Acquisition

**Case in point: Hexagonal Wedding Cake. Also, must one wear shoes at one's own wedding?

Confession: I hate wedding planning. 

After the last few weeks, I can confidently say that weddings are not my cup of tea. This came as a little bit of a surprise, though it probably should have been expected. After all, event planning has never been something I particularly enjoyed. But given my creative bent and love of DIY projects, I thought I would have much more fun with wedding-related details than I am currently having. I've instead realized that I would much more enjoy planning someone else's wedding- a situation in which I could happily do my creative projects without worrying about everything else* that goes along with planning one's own wedding. The creative projects (like designing invitations) are fun. It's the everything else that gets me. 

*What the Everything Else includes:*

1. Being the center of attention.
For some reason, my introverted self didn't realize that having a wedding meant becoming the center of lots of attention until she got engaged. Then she panicked. 

2. Having opinion on all sorts of things one normally never considers in the course of one's life.
Are hexagonal cakes preferable to circular cakes?** Is white or off-white a more flattering shade? Do you like green-teal dresses, blue-teal dresses, dark-teal dresses, lighter teal-dresses, stormy ocean-teal dresses, pleasant weather ocean-teal dresses, muted-teal dresses, or hey-everybody-look-over-here-i'm-bright-teal dresses? (I swear there are actually this many different shades of teal.) 

3. Spending lots of money. Lots of money. On one day.
I know it's an important day, and we aren't spending extravagant amounts of money, especially in the realm of weddings. But this is going to do be the most expensive day of my life so far, except for perhaps the day I was born (babies are expensive- thanks Mom and Dad!). And while our families are incredibly generous and pitching in lots, it's still hard for me to accept spending this much money, no matter whose it is.  

4. Talking to strangers.
I was a very shy child, and I never outgrew my fear of talking to strangers on the phone. Or even emailing them. It's still slightly terrifying. (And so I procrastinate until Nate finally makes me get over it and email people. I know it's good for me, but still...not fun.) 

5. Talking about wedding details. All the time.
This really threw me off right after we got engaged. All of a sudden all sorts of people wanted to see my hand and talk about dates and locations and colors and other wedding-related things. I was a bit miffed ("I'm doing research! I'm going to Texas! I'm writing a thesis! I have a life besides getting married!"). After a little while, I got accustomed to it and began to realize that people were aware that my wedding was not my life. Rather, weddings are big, happy occasions that people like to celebrate and talk about. They're just happy for me- not trying to ignore everything else going on. But there are still days when the last thing I want to do is talk about the merits of one-shouldered vs. halter dresses or anything else wedding-related.
(On the other hand, I'm terrified that on certain days I might become that girl-who-won't-shut-up-about-her-wedding. Please don't let me do that) 

6. The Unknown.
Believe it or not, I've never planned a wedding before. And so much of this whole process feels like: "I think we need to do this now. Okay, how do we do this? Maybe like this? I don't know what I'm doing..."And weddings come with expectations (I think)- expectations of traditions and activities and invitations and other things. The last thing I want to do is hurt anyone, especially those many people we love and care about. So it's been tricky to figure out what things are really important and what things we can let go, how to be considerate of all our loved ones while doing what works for us, and when to ask for help and when to do things alone... Basically, it's a learning process.   

7. Life doesn't stop.
Weddings, unfortunately, don't come with a "pause life" button. There's still coursework to do, entrance exams to take, graduate schools to apply to, and a thesis to write. Bills still need to be paid, grocery shopping done, and dishes washed. And having pressing deadlines for applications and thesis components while keeping track of all the time-sensitive wedding-things can be a wee bit stressful.

Really, in all of this though, I can't complain because our community has been amazing in pitching in. Nate's mom, my future mother-in-law, is a wedding planning wizard and has been figuring out so many of the details for our wedding and reception in Hawaii, which has been a giant blessing. (And she's wonderfully creative too!) Many, many friends and family members are contributing little pieces of what we need. Nate has taken on certain aspects as his "stuff" and we're doing a lot of this together. (I really don't understand why it seems that the girl is expected to manage everything with minimal help from the guy. Things are so much easier when you work as a team.) And  Hannah is willing to put up with my (hopefully infrequent) wedding-related ranting.

And weddings, as frustrating as they might seem, are important. No, it's not going to be the "best day of my life." (I sure hope not- that means everything is downhill from here.) It's not really even "my day." Rather, having a wedding gives Nate and I the chance to make our commitment in front of our community who loves and supports us and to celebrate with them. Our wedding is not a show and hopefully we won't entirely be the center of attention. And all those things I hate about wedding planning? Well, maybe they'll help me learn something:

1. You can't be a wallflower all the time.
Some things require being in the spotlight, at least just a little bit. And it's important to learn how to manage those situations with grace. 

2. Figure out what's really important.
Some things really do matter. Other things are just the icing on the (hexagonal/circular/dodecagonal) cake. And it's more than okay to delegate. But learning to be decisive is an important skill. This is a good chance to practice. 

3. You can't save all the money all the time.
Saving money is important. And we're going to try our best to do this in a cost-efficient manner. But some things are important and require spending some money, possibly even more money than your very-practical-and-useful car is worth. Weddings are probably one of them. And that's okay. 

4. Overcoming fear.
Lots of things in life require talking to strangers, so you need to get over this fear. This is your opportunity.
5. Let people celebrate with you. And set boundaries.
People like to talk about happy, pretty things, and it's fun to indulge them. But at the same time, it's more than okay (and probably healthy) to declare some days wedding-free zones.  

6. Life is unknown.
Better get used to it. 

7. Life never stops.
See #6. But never hesitate to ask for help.

So maybe planning a wedding teaches important life skills-- I'll get back to you on that. In the meantime, I need to start writing some emails to strangers. Wish me luck.

Musing: All In

Just over a week ago, my favorite blog, A Practical Wedding (note: way more than just a wedding blog)  had a post about the dreaded question: how do you know? As in, how do you really really know if you're ready to get married? And it was open for discussion. As you know from the frequency of my writing on the topic, answering that question has been a bit of a struggle for me. I worry that I'm too young to be making this sort of a decision. I worry that getting married isn't compatible with my career goals. I worry that getting married is letting down my little feminist self that knows her strengths and wants to do big things and who shudders at the thought of being stuck in a house all day (that never turns out well, even with my introverted-ness). And the morning that I read that post, I was incredibly stressed on my second day of a three-day twenty-seven hour work binge to get a crucial but tedious part of my project done, and I was rather upset with Nate due to something he'd said during a phone call that morning. So as I was brooding and trying drum up the willpower to get back to work, I wasn't feeling all that confident in my "knowing-ness." 

The impatient moments of waiting for the plane to finally get moving and get off the ground at the beginning of every commercial flight are always marked by the safety presentation, in which a flight attendant smashes words together in order to speak as quickly as possible while her fellow crew members pantomime uses of seatbelts and oxygen masks with tired gravity. When they reach the part about emergency evacuations, three thoughts generally cross my mind. First, what are the odds that this plane is sufficiently intact following a crash to actually use the fancy doors and slides and such? Second, even if all the doors and slides work, what are the chances that we passengers will be calm and coherent enough to follow all these instructions? Will I actually remember to wait to inflate my life vest until I'm outside the plane? Where are these red pouches you speak of? Third, I know you say to leave everything, but is there anyway that I can grap my laptop? It's kinda my life...

But sitting on a plane bound for Texas on Friday night, when the hyper-speed safety briefing reached the evacuation portion, that third thought suddenly changed. Can I grab my laptop? Who cares-- I've gotta get home.

I'm not saying that being in a relationship or deciding to get married has made my life worth living-- far from it. I was a very happy, fulfilled, adventurous single person, and I'm pretty sure I could have stayed that way for a while had circumstances been a bit different. But this process of moving toward marriage has changed my priorities quite a bit, as it should. After all, in marriage two become one, which means I have more to consider than just my opinion when making even hypothetical decisions such as this.

But let me back up-- there's a very long, difficult week between the moody-wedding-post-reading episode and the laptop-dilemma realization mentioned above. At the end of my too-long, TMJ-inducing, stress-filled weekend, I found out that Nate was in the ER in Tucson due to a Crohn's flare-up. And for the first-time since I've known him, I couldn't be there. It was hard, but I knew that our wonderful friends were taking good care of him, and he seemed better the next morning. Then he ended up back in the ER for a second night in a row, and I started looking up flights and waking up in the middle of the night with somewhat-irrational fears that he could die. I felt guilty for not being there with him and for putting such a burden on our friends who have full-time jobs. But in the morning he said he was feeling better and I felt that finally, things were looking up. At three p.m. on Tuesday a friend called to let me know that Nate had been admitted to UMC because an obstruction had shown up on the CT scan. I sent off a flurry of emails and phone calls and booked the first one-way flight to Tucson the next morning. I worked most of the night before, unable to sleep and trying to get as much done as possible before I left. Deadlines were approaching in a week, but most of my work could be done remotely. But, honestly at that point, it didn't really matter to me that much what my work situation was like. I needed to get home and to that hospital.

The first time I think I ever really came close to "knowing" with Nate was actually on a trip to the ER. It was so frustrating to sit there helplessly holding his hand when he was in such incredible pain, waiting and hoping that a room opened up quickly, but I knew that I never wanted to be anywhere else but right there when something like that happened.I wanted to be there to fight through the incredibly hard, painful parts of life with him. (And he's been there through the difficult, painful parts of life for me thus far.)

And this time, again, being there in the hospital, some questions were cleared up for me. That nagging career v. marriage question? I would choose Nate over my career in a heartbeat. Fortunately, I don't have to: he's very supportive of my career aspirations, and he knows my strengths and wants me to use them. Am I young to be getting married? Yes, according to national averages. But I'm also graduating college at younger age than average, and no one fusses about that. And it makes sense to get married at this age, especially for practical reasons such as health decisions. "Fiancee" is an improvement over "girlfriend" in the hospital, but "wife" will carry much more weight. And regarding my feminist self...APW has some wonderful posts about that. Maybe in time my feelings towards "housewife" will change a bit; maybe that won't. (For the record, I do enjoy cooking and keeping a relatively tidy house because I enjoy having a well-working house and hosting people in my home. I just don't really want to be a full-time housewife.) Either way, feminism is struggle to achieve equal rights for women, part of which includes the right to choose how we will live our lives. So no, getting married does not equal failing or selling out as a feminist. And if getting married isn't selling out or career suicide or a young-stupid-kid mistake, then what arguments do I have left?

A little after twenty-four hours after I arrived at the hospital, we were homebound. The obstruction had kindly resolved itself with the help of some drugs to reduce inflammation and an Ng tube. We spent the last twenty-four hours together quietly while trying to get a few practical things done (wedding planning and apartment hunting). That persistent small fear that this all could happen again the moment I left made it a bit difficult to let him out of my sight (a technological mishap precipitated a walk to his house because I was terrified that something had happened and I couldn't get ahold of him because his phone was dead). As expected, this week's events did not do wonders for my anxiety disorder. And as much as he's promised to not get sick when I'm two states away, life, and especially life with Crohn's, is very uncertain.

In the end, I think I can say that I "know." I know not in the way that says things are going to work out the way I want them too or this is the 100% best possible choice I could be making right now. Love and marriage are inherently risky. There's no guarantees concerning what will happen in our lives. And there's always the possibility of loss. There's no knowing that our lives will turn out just the way we want them too. That's where trust and faith come in. And we are both inherently selfish people who will try our best to get beyond our own self-interest, but many times we will fail. That's where grace and mercy come in. But I do know that, from this point on, I'm all in. The laptop has been demoted. I am choosing to commit the rest of my life to learning to love Nate well, and together we're going to be a pretty awesome team. And I know that I am ready as I'll ever be to make that choice. 

And just to clarify, Crohn's by no means defines our relationship. It's been an unfortunate (but thankfully infrequent) interruption that has sparked some moments of introspection and realization. But most of our time together is happily healthy and mundane- evenings spent working together or lazy weekend afternoons, ventures out to explore a new part of the city or a nights spent in cooking and cleaning afterwards (a regular part of life sans dishwasher). I hope that most of our married life will just be the mundane stuff and the fun adventures. But it's good to know that we can get through the hard times too.

Monday's Musings: "The Most Important Decision in Your Lives"

I saw this movie Saturday night with a friend in Dallas, and I absolutely loved it. It might possibly be my new all-time favorite movie. (Go see it!)

Anyways, this scene in particular struck me because it feels so true. Getting married is likely "the most important decision I'll make in my life." (At least up to this point.) And unlike these two kids, I'm not in a hurry. I'm not so certain. I've thought about this a lot, and I'm terrified. I need a bit more time by the trampoline to talk this over.

See, I'm quite a bit older than Sam and Susy. I know myself a little bit better. I know a bit more about the world and how it works and the challenges that will probably come. (Or at least I think I do.) I can't just jump into this with wild abandon and child-like certainty. Commitment is hard. I'm a pretty selfish person, and both of us are far from perfect. What if something happens? What if we hate it? What if we drive each other crazy? What if we fight all the time? What if we both get into grad school/med school but in different cities? What if I don't have the career I think I want and I resent him? What if one of us someday regrets this? What if we're broke? What if our health fails? What if he dies? What if I accidentally get pregnant before we want to have kids? What if our plans don't work out?

I'm very talented at seeing worst case scenarios.

The last two weeks have been an interesting time for me and all these thoughts. The first week terrified me because, honestly, I didn't miss him. I dove right into the research work here and loved it. I was meeting new people and talking about theory and conflict and reading all day. If this is what grad school is like, I was sold. I was having so much fun. And suddenly, I worried that maybe I was making the wrong decision. If I could move to a new city and adjust this quickly and enjoy it so much, maybe I should be focused more on grad school. Maybe I want that more. And at the same time, I hesitated to tell the others on my program that I was engaged. In my field, twenty is a very young age at which to get married. And somehow I felt that telling people I was heading in that direction seemed the same as telling everyone that I was rushing into things and that I wasn't serious about my work and my future. (Not that that's in any way true.)

I went home the weekend after the first week for a lovely wedding and cried a lot. I spilled all my fears and doubts with Nate and talked about the mounting pressure I was feeling and this nagging fear that I'm not ready for this. (At the worst point, I confessed that I somewhat envied my friends that could just move in together without the commitment.) I told him about the negative stereotypes in my head associate with young brides and my fear that marriage meant I was chucking all my other plans and goals and identities out the window. It was hard. But I realized how much we already are a team and how much I lean on him.

This second week has been quite a bit different. While I'm still loving what I'm up to, I've seen the holes in my current life. I don't have someone to tell me to put down the books and rest and eat food (Nate usually does that). I miss having him around, talking with him, being with him. (I think a big part of the not-missing-him during the first week was due to the fact I knew I would see him that weekend.) Marriage is still terrifying, but I've met a few people who disprove the notion in my head that being married means you can't have a career and that you have to be a stay-at-home mom or something along those lines. My engagement came up in conversation, and no one looked at me as a "dumb kid" or someone who's not serious about my work. Turns out that stigma was just something I'd made up in my own head. (I do that quite a bit.)

I still want to go to grad school, and I want to marry Nate. And he wants to go to med school, and I want him to go. And I'm not sure how that's going to work. But we'll figure that out.

I'm still afraid sometimes that I'm too young to get married. I hear people talking about how they didn't "know themselves" at my age, and I think, "What if that's me? Do I 'know myself'? What does that even mean?" But I know that Nate and I are a good team, and we've been putting quite a bit of thought into this. (So many marriage books and marriage blogs and marriage articles and long discussions and questions and talks with mentors and talks with friends and talks with people who probably had no interest in my commitment fears and just couldn't figure out how to gracefully extricate themselves from the conversation...)

Those "what if's" are still rattling around in my head. And they probably will be for quite a while because I don't know the future and what it will bring. But I do trust that God would not intentionally guide me into a trap or something that will cause unnecessary misery.

I think that at some point, you just have to go for it. Not that one should rush into things, but there comes a point after prayer and planning and thought and counsel that you just have to jump. Because knowing myself, I'll never be 100% ready for this. I'm usually never 100% certain on these sorts of things. Driving away from the house after my first visit home from college, on the plane on the way to Russia, after hitting submit for the application to this program, I've had moments of panic, thinking "What on earth am I doing?!" I'm pretty sure I will have at least a couple of those moments even after I get married. Moments when I wonder why I ever though this was a good idea, moments when I question my judgement and worry about the mess I've gotten myself into. (At least this is what I've heard from some of the more experienced married couples I know.) But those will just be moments, and I think we've prepared enough to not experience those sorts of issues all the time. And we'll keep preparing.

Before we got engaged, I had been talking with one of my mentors quite a bit about marriage and my fears and uncertainties. And she finally told me that she thought I was ready to go for it because I'm "the kind of person who could always read one more book and talk to one more person, who could still be at the 90% sure mark three years from now." (Decisiveness is not my strong suit.)

We still haven't set a date yet. With so much keeping me busy here, long-distance wedding planning is not something I want to attempt to add to my plate. And at the moment I need a little bit more time to work through some of these nagging fears. (I promise we're still talking about it though. Hopefully there will be one set soon.) But I think engagement is slowly becoming something a bit more joyful and a bit less scary. I wouldn't say I love being engaged quite yet-- it's a bit too anxiety-inducing for my taste. (Wedding planning=terrifying. I'm not the party-planning type.) But I'm slowly figuring it out.

And who knows, maybe I'll get to the point where I can stand in front of someone, casually chewing bubblegum, and say that, yes, I've thought about this and I'm ready to get married, and I'm kinda in a hurry.

Mondays Musings: Why Marriage Scares the $%#& out of Me

It's a feeling somewhat akin to looking over the edge of the Grand Canyon and imagining jumping off

I do apologize for the slight vulgarity. But, honestly, that's my general sentiment when I think about marriage. It's absolutely terrifying. I know it's wonderful and incredibly rewarding and worth it and all of those things. But thinking about it often ignites this feeling in the pit of my stomach that just feels like pure terror. I've had issues with marriage for a while actually. My solution to my problems with marriage, though, was to simply put it off and declare that I wasn't getting married till I was 26 or so and had my life figured out. Realization: I don't think there will ever be a point when I have my life figured out. So it's time to get to the bottom of this: Why does marriage feel so utterly terrifying?

First, I love being single. I love the freedom it provides to be spontaneous and do crazy things. I can make plans without consulting anyone. I'm not really tied down to anything. I can travel wherever and whenever I want (within reason). My prospects after college are wide open: grad school, work, moving overseas... I don't need to know where I'm going. And if things don't go well, I'm the only one I have to worry about. There's much less responsibility, less risk, and more flexibility. I have control over my own life, and no one has to pay for my choices but me. Control is a big part of it actually. I have a generalized anxiety disorder, and I cope with that by controlling my surroundings and managing risk. My mantra when making decisions is "it's not permanent." If I move somewhere and hate it, I can move again. If I start studying something and find it's not that interesting, I can change fields. If I don't like my school, I can transfer. If I hate my job, I can find a new one. Now all of the things do take some time and coordination. I might be stuck with something I don't like for a few years. But overall, it's not permanent.

But marriage is permanent, at least for me. Divorce isn't an option. I'm choosing to commit to someone for the rest of my life. For better or for worse, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer. And it's a commitment I take very seriously and that I'm not going to back down on. I am committing to love and care for and support my partner to the best of my abilities for as long as we both live. And that is very very scary. (Honestly, if I didn't find that slightly terrifying, I might be worried I wasn't taking this seriously enough.)

Marriage is also terrifying because of the expectations that come with it, expectations that I'm not sure I can meet, or don't really want to meet. I've talked about my fear of disappointing people before, and on the topic of marriage, this fear gets amplified to the nth degree. I'm afraid that my boyfriend secretly has expectations of his future wife that he hasn't told me, or maybe doesn't even realize himself, that won't come out until we tie the knot, and then we'll be in trouble. I'm afraid of expectations concerning marriage in my circles of faith. Does being married mean that I have to give up on all my career plans? Do I have to stay home and clean the house and raise children? Do I have to give up on my intellectual pursuits?

One of the reasons why I planned to be single for a while in the first place was because of my career choices. I've felt called to a career in research and political analysis, particularly regarding Chechnya. I've found what I love in writing my thesis and studying and writing policy papers. And I want to keep doing this, to pursue a career in this. But there's something in me that fears that in this culture, I can't do this as a married woman. Single women are the ones who can be independent and a little crazy and pursue big goals and dreams and careers. If I get married now, I can't do that any more. Getting married, especially as a woman, means that I am going to be at the mercy of my husband's decisions and that I can say goodbye to my independent life where I can choose to do things that I want to do and pursue my dreams. Getting married means giving up all these things that I hold so dear, it means sacrificing all of my goals and plans and dreams, it means giving up the opportunities to use the gifts and talents I've been given. 

Marriage feels a little bit like the death of who I am and what I love about my life and my identity. It also feels a bit like a betrayal. I've run in rather feminist circles with female friends who are all for women being successful, strong, and independent. We're going to have careers and go places and change the world. We're smart and talented: we can take care of ourselves. Does getting married mean I'm a sell-out?

All of these fears have been rushing around in my head for the last weeks and months. And they are completely justified. Marriage is terrifying, and it should be terrifying. It is an enormous decision, and not one to be rushed into lightly. Though at first I feared I was over-exaggerating in some of my fears, as I've reflected further, I think I'm spot on in a lot of my analyses.  Marriage is like death. It's the death of my single, selfish self, my self that is not accountable to another. When I commit to marrying someone, I am committing to love them. And love is not self-seeking. Love is self-sacrificing. It means sacrificing my desires daily. Not in the martyr/doormat way, but in a conscious, every day seeking of my partner's best. If I decide to get married, I am going to have to make hard decisions.

One of my most frequent "what if" scenarios has concerned our future plans. What if he gets into a medical school on the West Coast and I get into my dream school on the East Coast? What would we choose?  But I realized when considering this, that if I really love him, the choice wouldn't actually be that hard. Medicine is such a huge and defining passion for him that denying him that opportunity would crush him and so much of what I love about him. Why would I want to take away what he is most passionate about? Loving him means accepting this and being willing to sacrifice.  This doesn't mean that I have to give up on any aspirations and goals that I have. He knows what I am passionate about and what makes me tick, and love works both ways. We will figure out a way to make it work. It may require some delays, some postponing, some finagling of schedules. But if we're both trying to seek the other's best, I would hope we could figure something out.

A week or so ago, I was talking this over with a friend, and she helped me see it this way: if this dilemma between marriage and career is as binary as I first made it out to be, then by choosing one option, I am choosing to give up the other. I don't want to get married because I don't want to give up my career opportunities. But this relationship I'm in has to go somewhere, so if I choose the career track (in the binary option world), I am forfeiting this relationship I have. And honestly, I don't want that either, even though at times it seems much more socially acceptable. When did we decide that career success is more valuable than a healthy, supportive relationship?

I'm hoping for a middle road. There should be some way that I can get married and still research and write and analyze conflicts. I will probably have to give up some of my ambitions, but I'm okay with that. I don't think my pipedream ambitions are worth the cost of losing this awesome relationship I have. And from what I've heard and seen, marriage can even be a boost to some of those pipedreams. It isn't all loss and sacrifice- I'd be gaining a partner too. 

All in all, I still have a ways to go before I'm ready to get married. My boyfriend and I have things to work out and address. There are a lot of things to take into account before jumping into this. As much as love is self-sacrificing, whenever I do get married, my partner and I are going to have a lot of selfish moments when we are quite self-seeking and not loving. And that needs to be worked on and some contingency plans for handling that probably need to be put into place. And I'm sure there's other issues I haven't even though of yet. Like I said before, marriage is an enormous decision and not one to be taken lightly.  But at the end of this long post, here's where I'm at. I think I'm slightly more okay with marriage and the thought of getting married. I still have a ways to go, but that's why they have things like counseling and wise older people to consult with. I'm definitely not getting married tomorrow. But I don't have to wait till I'm 26 or so and have my life figured out. (Because again, there's no way I'm going to have my life figured out by then.) So...we'll see where things go and pray lots. Whatever happens, I do know this: I have a God who loves me perfectly and seeks my best always. So I think I'll be okay. 


Photo taken by Kara Haberstock, March 2009, all rights reserved