I like imaginary men…
Random thoughts on marriage….
Kim and I play a game with some of our single friends sometimes called “My Husband”. It started one silly night when Tasha, Andrea, Kim and I went out after the Rock. We stayed after chrurch and talked about life and love and singleness until everyone else was gone, and then we ate at a local diner where we laughed so hard I peed two drops. We were being shallow and silly and girly and started to invent “husbands” for each of us.
“Girls I am so glad our husbands are having a boys night so we geet to hang out”
“I know, you and your husband are perfect for eachother”
“Kim remember at your wedding how I sang that song… etc etc”
At the diner we met a whole gaggle of crazy men that tried to convince us to come back to their house for a late night party. We considered for half a second, but remembered our “husbands” wouldnt like that.
Perfect!
I am going to call Kim and see if she wants dinner. I hope her husband doesnt mind.
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Since that time I have swung the pendulem from being a serial dater (a girls gotta eat) to swearing off men all together.
Now I think I am somewhere in the middle.
I still believe in love and romance and some version of fighting for your happily ever after. But I dont need it. I would rather be single and learn how to serve and love and live then be married and be miserable just for the sake of making my imaginary husband real.
Because I want more than the wedding day and the white dress and a fairy tale.
I dont just want the happily… I want the ever after part. The messy part. The coming together because you are better and stronger and a fuller picture of Christ part.
This is the first time in my life I have no man, and no desire for one. I have no crushes. I have no one waiting in the wings… and I am content.
And its kind of an unnerving crazy feeling.
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I was talking to some girlfriends the other day about marriage and ministry, and I said I think I could be really content marrying someone who was in full time ministry and just being a wife and a mother. I would love having people over, I wouldnt mind the 2am phone calls, and I would feel like I was making a difference.
I would feel like I was helping my husband, and that we were a team.
You would have thought I shot womans lib back a hundred years… questions flew at me asking why didnt I want to do full time ministry and why couldnt I serve or make the money etc etc.
And I said I thought that serving my family and my husband and my church would be full time ministry.
And I started to doubt myself . Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am selling myself short.
But I talked to my best friends Susie and Kathy, who are both married to men in the ministry, and they seem content and happy and enjoy their roles.
My theory is life changes and we change and ministry changes with it. Right now I am a single woman. What I do and how I serve will be totally different now than when I am married. That doesnt make one way more righteous, just different.
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Tasha sent me a postcard the other day. It made me laugh really hard…
