Sat, Mar. 12
... Choose life, so that you and your children may live
I've had some intersting conversations lately--particularly with
Becky and
Kat--that have made me realize just how perfectly I am where I'm supposed to be for the moment.
The more I grow up, the more I spend time with friends whose lives have branched in different directions, the more I realize that I'm thankful to be where I am. Kat, Vanessa, and I went out for dessert earlier this week (I hadn't seen Ness since... last Christmas, I think), and we are each in a very different place. Our lives have branched in three very different directions, despite the fact that four years ago, we were at almost the same place, and yet we still had a great time hanging out and catching up.
I want to start a business, and I couldn't keep the schedule I do now if I had a family. I have the freedom at this point in my life to work all day and be at rehearsal until 11 p.m., and it doesn't really affect anyone but me. If I was married, or even more, had kids, I wouldn't be able to do that. And for right now, that's an important thing for me to be able to do. Not forever, but for now, it's big.
I'm at peace with my life. God has put me here, as a single woman, right now, and that's okay. That's something that I am thankful for, because it affords me the opportunity to build things that are important to me.
I am still completely unapologetic--despite the flak that I get from various people--about the fact that marriage and a family are a number-one priority for me in the long term, but I don't have to be there now. If God calls me to be single for the rest of my life... well, I still have a ways to go to be completely at peace with that, but right now? Yeah, I'm there.
While I'm on the topic, though, there's something that I don't understand. Why is it okay for women to pursue any other career, and yet marriage and family is selling out? We are encouraged to fight for a career, and to fight against anything that may stand in the way, and that's a good thing, but why do the goals have to stop there? Why is it somehow preferable to pursue a career instead of a marriage and motherhood? Why is it that if a young woman abandons a different career path to get married and have kids, she's berated by society for it, but if she gives up the idea of marriage for a career, that's applauded?
Anyways. Not that I want to be "just" a mom, but having a family is such a huge part of who I am that I can't abandon that in favor of "just" a career.
But coming back from that little tangent...
I am growing to love the person I'm becoming more and more, but I know I'm not finished yet. God's not finished with me; I'm only here for a season. I'm not going to work at Quiznos for the rest of my life. I'm not going to do theatre on the side for the rest of my life. I'm not going to live with roommates and cats for the rest of my life. They are all transitory states of being, but for now, they are my states of being, and for that, I have to love them.
infinite || abyss
posted at 3:22 p.m.
