I thought it a long time before I said it.
I was sitting outside a restaurant with two other single friends in their late 20s. Like me, they had dated, tried, and tried again. We were laughing over the silly reasons we’d broken up with guys, and the serious problems we’d overlooked for too long in order to stay. We talked about the shame we felt as women who were unchosen, even if we knew that was false.
We talked about loving our lives, even if they weren’t what we had expected.
It feels good to have people around you who get it: Other people who have heard the messages that if you were faithful to God, you would achieve marriage, and had found those messages lacking. Other people who knew Ring By Spring as a cruel joke instead of a clever saying. Other people who had felt the long, slow slight of being a Christian woman who would never be taken seriously without a man. Other people who found the Church telling them to be small and patient, when they felt bold and powerful.