The Crux

I read blogs; wedding blogs, blogs by mothers who remind me of my mother, Christian blogs, blogs for the sake of their pictures, cooking blogs, blogs on womanhood. Where are the blogs about the point that I'm at in life? I have no children, my deepest friends and my family are miles away, I don't need to decorate a home for Thanksgiving company. I think, that this age - the age of leaving home and being in a serious relationship, of going to classes and praying for a direction, of finding new and strengthening community, of yearning for the people who know you best - has become the target age for dumb social advice.

 We are who Cosmopolitan targets with their offers to teach us how to make a boy love us in bed, how to do our makeup, how to make friends, what to wear for our body type, and if we still don't feel good they'll throw in others' embarrassing stories so that we'll know we, at least, don't have it as bad as they do.

I, for one, don't need to know what those editors and stylists and whomever else is behind it all advertises that they want to tell me. I don't need to know how to make love to a boy because I don't have sex. I don't need to know how to do my makeup because getting ready in the morning feels like such a time suck. I don't need to be told how to make friends because we just need to go out there and love on people. I'd rather just read about other real people doing real, lifestyle things similar to the real, lifestyle things I am doing.

My grandma's advice on boys was to move away. As soon as you find one that you fall in love with and decide to marry, leave home with him. And I did.

 

We are learning, and there are so many things to learn.

Did you know that sometime between the spin and rinse cycles, the washing machine just stops and rests? This does not mean that you need to panic. It does not mean that you broke it and need to remove the clothes from the cold water, ring them out over the machine and pile them into a laundry basket. It doesn't mean that once you've done that you should put the basket in the shower and run water on it to try to somewhat rinse it off. Once you do all that and close the lid again, it will start its rinse cycle, so you can pile all that sopping laundry back into the machine and let it do its thing.

Did you know that those antique ring holders are actually very useful? If you're in a pinch, though, you can hang your ring on a towel rack while you do the dishes. Where, then does the towel go? you ask. It's being used by your fiance to dry the dishes you're washing.

We cook together and we clean together and I go to class and do my homework and wonder what on earth I'm supposed to be majoring in, and I wonder if I'll be able to apply the classes I'm taking now to the major God ends up putting me toward. I wonder if I'll even use my major once I'm out of school.

You see, right now, in the chaos of college and church and wedding plans and being engaged and making friends and keeping in touch with old friends and all of the rest, right now is when I'm learning to not just read the Psalms but to pray them and to take them and put those words into my own life and my own needs from God.

Why does nobody write about this time of their lives? This crux that I'm sitting in.  All I know how to do is shrug these days, to tell people that I'm waiting to hear back on that, to tell it that I'm just doin' what I'm doin' until I'm told to do something else.

Taking pictures and looking and pretty things and talking to interesting people. Reveling in the place that I'm in because it is oh so much fun and so wonderful.

So, I suppose the key to this part of the story is to be looking and listening. I'll try to be better about writing about these things - the things that come at this point of a girl's life - because these times are very important, too.