Dear Hilary, Love, Hilary: The Raw, Real You

This week I'm linking up with the wonderful Joy over at Joy in this Journey. We write life, unmasked to share the raw and real about our lives. We write to tell the stories of the mess and the beauty. Won't you come share your stories, too?

(photo, mandie sodoma)

Dear Hilary,

I read your blog sometimes, and I noticed that you talk a lot about contentment, being single, all of that. I have a question. How do you long for something like a boyfriend, or a relationship, without becoming consumed by it? How do you stop yourself from measuring who you are, your worth, your sexiness, your intelligence or beauty or goodness, by whether someone wants to date you? I so often feel like I want a boyfriend not because of the guy, but because of what he could affirm for me, what he could reassure me about. I think this is probably not good, and ultimately, not how a whole person lives. What advice do you have for me?

Love,
Trying to Be Content, but Not Really There

Dear TTBCBNRT,

It's a tough thing to live in bodies. They're visible. We can only imagine so much about them. They're pulled in different directions by gravity, and they're blown around by wind. Hair gets messy when it's wet, and when we're tired we get these puffy circles under our eyes like small dark half moons. We can't really help it - our bodies are our bodies are our bodies. They are the home we have been given. They are the home of our hearts, those trembling and strong and fierce things, and of our minds.

I used to think I would look at my body differently if a guy told me it was beautiful. I really did. I begged on my insides for compliments. I craved hearing, "You look great today," in that off-handed way that people say it on their way to Calculus or French. I would lie in my bed staring up at the ceiling and wonder if a boy would dance with my at the Valentine's dance, or if I would spend it in a circle of girlfriends shouting the lyrics to "Yeah" by Usher while wishing a boy would dance with me.

I sang a lot of Usher in high school, love. And I spent a lot of time measuring. How many boys had a crush on her, I asked myself. How many times had she been told she was funny and smart and cool? How many people wanted to be her lab partner in chemistry or play opposite her in the play? I noticed way too much in high school about that. I took these small lies into myself, that there was only so much admiration to go around, and if they didn't say it to me, it couldn't be true for me.

You're right: this isn't how a whole person lives. I'm already glad that you know this, that you write to me because you realize that you want to live differently, and you aren't sure how. When I was in high school I didn't realize there was a different way. When I was a freshman, sophomore, or junior in college I was just realizing that it could be different. I'm still at the very beginning, with you. 


My advice is to take the tiny step forward of saying out loud to your mirror, "This is me." I want you to look at yourself, standing there, smiling or winking or yawning, and say it. This is me. Not that girl with the long brown hair, not that girl with the straight A's and a dictionary in her head. Not that girl who plays soccer, field hockey and lacrosse. This is you: raw and real, pulled around by wind and gravity, with your passionate beating heart and your laugh and your love.

You write worried that a guy doesn't see it, but I think the real problem is YOU don't see it. You can't look in that mirror and find the you that lives in you. So you get anxious - what if she's not there - and you start asking other people to find her. You say, "Am I beautiful?" a thousand times next to the mailboxes on the way to calculus class. You say, "Am I worthy?" to the smiling stranger on the Metro who doesn't even realize that his yawn and looking at his newspaper has potentially crushed your heart.

But the raw, real you is yours to find, not theirs. 

You have the task of believing that you are raw, and real, and sexy and worthy, with no one else on the planet telling you it is true. Don't ask others to do your work for you, sweetheart. I can tell you a thousand times that you are. But it's not my work. My work is to fill you up with love and strength. My work is to tell you to get in front of that mirror. My work is to laugh with you about the way that I danced by myself in a corner eating potato chips at high school dances.

Your work is to find that raw, real you. Your work is to love her. Your work is to believe.  


Love,
Hilary

It was always each other (I search for a love story)

There hasn't been a real dose of sunshine in days - it's grey skies and English temperatures as far as the eye can see. I stretch in the early morning and look out my smudged, 18th century windows with their chipped frames. I see the grass sprinkled with frost, the old pile of rocks next to the pine tree where we used to play pirate ship. I see the outline of our property and the line we used to walk right up to, where the milkweed burst forth in summer and I would open the pouches and trace my fingers down the silk spines of the seeds, and then toss them, handful by handful, towards the sky. Those summers it rained white seeds.


This morning I remember my grandparents.

They got married in what we would call a rush - meeting like they did in November, no engagement to speak of, married in March in two smart conservative suits and off into the world. I'd say they got married in a fever.

But my grandparents weren't really like that. It was March, 1948, after the war and before the children. It was a small sapphire tucked between two diamonds on her finger and the plain gold band on his, the bright smiles and the damp English weather. They knew, my dad tells me. It was always each other. They entered married simply, quietly even, and for the next fifty years their love grew through stone houses and out-of-tune pianos and labradors and muddy boots and two boys who loved fields and farms and lambing.

It grew through all the smallness I forget about: the thin china cups at their feet and the perpetual smell of fire and damp moss, how they could sit in a silence more loving than all my fancy adjectives and long speeches about love. And through all my twenty years of knowing them, I never heard them tell their story. Granddad smoked his pipe, and Granny knitted her tea cozy, and I sat on the stool by their feet with my black Mary Janes poking out at awkward angles, my tongue between my teeth and my eyes fixed on Almanzo Wilder and Laura Ingalls. I read about a great love story while I sat in the midst of one.

I remember finding old black and white pictures of them, marveling that once they were young, once Dad had been a little boy in overalls clutching a sheep to his knees. I remember coughing from the dust in their abandoned bedroom two years ago and crying, suddenly and violently, for the story I had never thought to ask them. For the story of their love, their beginning.

So this cold English morning, the windows rattle and shiver, the fire burns. I trace my finger over her engagement ring in its original 1947 box, that my dad brought home last year after her funeral. It's too big for me now, but I slip it on and I slip into their love story. I imagine asking them the hundred questions I forgot to ask. I imagine watching their eyes wrinkle in remembrance, their smiles widen, the teacups clattering against the cold stone of the floor. I imagine the house again, and the hundreds of pages of love hidden inside it.

This year, somehow, I promise to search for their love story. This year, somehow, I promise to write it. 

Love,
Hilary

What babies teach us about gifts

I have known her since before she was born - felt her squirm inside her mom over Family Night Dinners on 8th St, NE, and talked long over Starbucks lattes about the joys of being a daughter, and having one, to a woman who had only had boys before this.

But I just met her, over Subway sandwiches and haircuts, as she slept in the back of our rented car as we drove to the Relevant blogging conference, and her mom and I told stories about writing, and feeling anonymous, and boys (many stories about boys), and the desires that our hearts hold unfulfilled. I kept sneaking glances at her, this seven month old girl, and thinking about what it would be like to have one, what it would be like to become a mother myself, years and seasons ahead of the time I'm in.

And as the days wore on and I got to know her deep blue eyes and the way you can tell she is about to laugh by the way she crinkles the corners of her eyelids, as I rocked her to "Winter Song" on repeat and the weight of her sank into my bones and into my heart... I began to clamor and complain to God. "Why don't I have this, already?" I asked him staring at the ceiling while she slept. "Why don't I have this kind of joy, this particular gift, this calling, this identity?"

The questions flash flooded into my brain, along with their twins: what if.. I never have this, I never get married, I never have children, what if I am not really a blogger, what if I'm not a writer, what if, what if...


Then she stirred, and opened her eyes, and looked at me. And there was the answer: be where you are.

(photo: jessica fairchild)

Babies teach us the hard lesson of simplicity. They only want a few things, and their joy at finding them bubbles over into their squeals of delight. This baby, and her happy sounds, rocking in her stroller completely in love with a plastic water cup, knows how to be where she is. She does not live in fear of what if. She does not complain that she does not have things she sees others having.

So I spent time with this baby this week and her handprints cover my face, and her laughter at my Glee music rings in my ears. Be where you are. 


Be where you are. Let the longings be longings, and hold them in your hands and ponder them. Let the questions be questions, and ask them. Let the laughter be laughter, and the love be the most blessed beautiful love.

Her name means life and grace - and she taught me the way to live them.

"We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you." (Psalm 33.20-22)

All my love,
Hilary

Making Out Isn't a Date (a guest post for the Good Women Project)

Somehow, in this small corner of the blogging world, between posts about singleness and posts about beauty, between hoping beyond hope that I can reach my wonderful readers, and tell you the joy and wonder and brightness and extraordinariness that you are... I found the Good Women Project. 


And sometimes I get to blog for them! This month, the topic was "Dating Mistakes I Made." And I thought, well, I've never dated... but I have a few mistakes to talk about, too. 


You can head over to read the post here, and check out the Project here (and while you're at it, check out Lauren Dubinsky's wonderful blog, too!). 


Making Out Isn't a Date


Of course it is! I told at my reflection in the mirror after returning from a hours-long, super-romantic, sitting-on-the-beach-where-the-stars-feel-aligned night in early August before college. It has to be!

I told my friends I was dating that guy. The one with the hair that flopped on his forehead, who met me at Starbucks three times, who made out with me more than that, who whispered in my ear that he thought I was sexy {and who doesn’t swoon over that?}. I told myself that it was just growing into a relationship, that the making out, the suggestive text messaging, the thrill of the unknown… it was on its way to dating. It was basically there. Isn’t kissing someone in your car essentially asking them out? Wasn’t his desire to lock lips just another way of saying, “I think you are beautiful and smart and interesting and funny. Can I take you on a date”?

My dating mistake? Calling a lot of things with guys dates that aren’t.

To keep reading, click on over here.

Love,
Hilary

How things change (an old, and a new, post)

This time last year, I lurked in the bookshelves of a large church in DC, reading titles about being single and how not to screw up your next relationship (yes, indeed, they exist).

I wrote in a flurry of words sitting at my kitchen table, with the smell of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and fresh clean air, and wind, and sunshine wafting through the apartment. A year ago, I wrote...

Oh yeah. A book that you can buy from amazon.com for a whopping $3.99. That's right folks, for a measly $3.99 you can solve your screwy relationship or find untold intimacies in the goldfish bowl of your single life.

I have to laugh when I hear this. Why do we say this stuff? Why do we publish books that analogize (that is not a real word, is it?) our lives to that of a cold-blooded, scaly orange sea creature with a memory of less than 30 seconds, who lives on smelly fish pellets and dies within three months' of living in your dorm room? Why do we promise that in a few short pages your intimacy will be found, your mistakes will be solved, in a word, that you will be the perfect relationship guru? If you're going to make promises, I vote you bring out the big guns. Here are some of the titles of books I'D write if I was in the business of relationship advice.

#1 From Lamezoid to Lucky: How to Manipulate Random Chance to get the Spouse of Your Dreams

#2 If Mother Teresa Was Single, Why Can't You Be?

#3 Single and Lonely? Stop Complaining! (And Other Forms of Tuff Luv)

#4 Dirty Martini, No Olive: What Your Single-Ready-To-Mingle Go-To Bar Order Says About You (and Your Dateability)

#5 Ring By the 15th of April: The REAL Timeline for Christian Dating (And When To Max Out Your Credit Card for the Ring She Doesn't Think You Know She Wants)

#6 Woe Is Me, I Got "Juliet" On A Facebook Quiz and Now I Think I'm Doomed to a Life of Young, Tragic Love (A Memoir about My Twenties, Taylor Swift, and Life in America)

#7 A 2 Page Guide to Finding Your Soulmate (You Thought You Needed to Read a BOOK?)

#8 Church Shopping When You're Single: How to Tell The Cutie from the Desperate from the 'Taken'"

#9 How (Not To) Lose a Guy in 10 Years: What You Can Learn from Sappy Teen Romance Movies About Making A Relationship Work

#10 You're How Old? The Age When You Should Start to Worry About Being Single Could Be Just Around the Corner

I think if I went to the gum chewing, cigar smoking publisher with these snappy titles, I would be a billionaire before you could say "Pat Robinson" or "Jerry Falwell!". In all seriousness, though, I want to know the purpose behind these books that seem designed SOLELY for the purpose to broadcasting to the world that you are, in fact, single. It might be easier to tattoo to your forehead - "Single. Stop Staring." Maybe we write the books because we feel like it's "not so bad" if we are addressing the problem. If we read the book and follow the steps, pray the right cycle of prayers, mingle with the right small groups and social events, make our hair wavy one day and straight the next and buy our clothes at the cute boutiques on M St. that scream, "I'm super trendy but also cute but also very sexy but also eco-friendly and caring towards the environment!" - if we do all that, the magic formula will work and we will no longer be single.

---

How much has changed, I think as I reread my words, filled with impatience and unrest and indignation. And yes, I am still often impatient and restless and indignant that I do not have a boyfriend, that being chosen and pursued by someone hasn't appeared in my life. I spill a lot of ink still wondering why we insist on keeping this wound raw, on reminding each other through our expectations and our vague comforting words.

But God has been quieting my heart about this, too. In slow, small steps, in trembling forward, I have begun to find a voice for the hope that lives in my heart. I have begun to put words to this new question, how do I hold a desire unfulfilled in my heart? 

How things change in just a year of wandering and stumbling, tripping and racing forward. How things change when we begin to hand over the small jigsaw pieces of our selves to Him. How things change when we let the loud voices of hurt and discontent and frustration go silent... and let the quiet voice of peace begin to speak.

Laugh with me, won't you? That in the landscape of a year He has taken my chaos and begun to make calm? That between a guest post here, and there, and prayers flung up to Heaven and grace rained back down, the peace has begun to make a home in me? 

All my love, from all this messy growing heart,

Hilary

They're Never Going to Like Me (a post for the Good Women Project)

I have the privilege of offering some thoughts about singleness today over at The Good Women Project. I was introduced to this blog over the summer by another blogger, and I'm excited for the chance to share in their work, and their writing. You can find them here and read the post here. 

“They’re never going to like me.” I wrote this the summer before my freshman year of college. I wrote it definitively in the strong strokes of a ballpoint pen, after a summer of chasing the dream of dating.

He had been interested for a while, it seemed. In between the haze of July and the fear of starting college in the fall, we’d had coffee once or twice. We’d kissed on a bench looking out over the ocean – right there, he had put his hands on my cheekbones and kissed me. We weren’t dating, but I was sure it would become something. That it had to become something.

He disappeared. Texts went unanswered; the facebook message thread faded, and then was deleted. The summer dissolved, and I started school with the words, “they’re never going to like me.”

And that voice was followed by this chaotic hurricane of reasons: I must not be pretty enough, skinny enough, sweet enough, funny enough. I’m too young, not young enough, too intense, too light-hearted, too poetic, and not poetic enough… I contradicted myself two or three times over while I made that list. I inked a wall around my heart.

To keep reading, click on over here. 

Love,

Hilary

(photo: mandie sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

How A Wedding Taught Me to Trust

(Photo: Jessica Fairchild)

We wake up early, and she wriggles with excitement when I hug her good morning. "It's today!" I say, and a smile escapes from her eyes and her mouth and she's grinning like crazy. Today, this beautiful woman, who I have known from days at Chop't and wandering through Old Town Alexandria, who tells me over and over that I am beautiful, that she loves me, who makes me tea lattes and walks to the WWII Memorial with me to explore our hearts and to laugh as we trip over the curb and say, "Good afternoon!" to a police officer at 8pm - she is getting married.

We eat half a bagel and the air around us feels light. It hums with some kind of excitement, some kind of energy that I haven't felt before. I look out at the light grey sky, watching as the breeze slinks between the trees and the passion fruit growing above the porch sways. She sweeps her hair over her shoulder as she gazes around her, a smile on her face. I look down at our feet, coral toes against the clean white kitchen tiles. It seems like just yesterday she was whispering into the phone all her love for this man, how it was growing, how she thought, yes, I want to marry him. And from those small words, that seemed so very unreal, so far from what might be possible, she is here, her bare feet grazing the floor, her brown eyes crinkled in laughter and I realize it: this is what it looks like to trust Him.

(Photo: Jessica Fairchild)

She disappears for a little while, to get her hair curled and braided and to put on the bronze and gold eyeshadow that makes her brown eyes glow. Her dad runs out to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to buy hazelnut lattes, and I remember how on my first visit to California we curled up in chairs and talked about our futures, and the world, and how we didn't know what was next, but we dreamed about it, about getting back to DC and laughing and seeking the truth. And she reminded me then, that He will surely do it (her favorite verse from Thessalonians), and I reminded her that we must be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord (my favorite verse from Psalm 27). And we planted seeds of our own love of Him in each other.

And as I straighten my hair, watch as its red glints catch the rising sun through the bathroom window, and hum a few bars of their song - "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane - I shake my head and think about the journey: the surprises of love, how none of us would have predicted or believed that we would be here. But we are here, and she is looking in that mirror about to walk down that aisle, and I see the trust in her delight.

I'm humbled by it. Delight comes from trust. Not from knowing the next steps, the perfect plan. Not from being certain, but from laying her life in His hands and saying yes to love, yes to hope, yes to the unlikely promises. The prayers of "what next, Lord?" the humble us and bring us to our knees. And this morning, I look into my own eyes and I sneak a peek of her in the mirror, as she gets ready to become married, and I long, suddenly, to trust Him like she does. To let that kind of pure delight wash over me, and fill me up. To let her be the example, today on this most glorious, unexpected, and beautiful day of the beauty that comes from the heart that trusts Him. 

(photo: Jessica Fairchild)

So I slip into the purple dress and slip into delight, too. And I watch this beautiful woman, full to the brim with love, get married. The bridesmaids and I marvel at her, at the sun that bursts over the courtyard just as the ceremony begins, and the slight wind that almost seems to tell us that yes, the blessing is real.

So I watch her, with all of my heart, and I speak the words of my toast to the room, about the surprises of love. And I realize that this is a surprise for us all: that in two people who get married on a Sunday in August is hidden the example of delight.

And I'm so glad that I know her, that she pours out her heart and lifts it up, and reminds me, always, to do the same.

Trust in the LORD, and do good;
         Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
  Delight yourself also in the LORD,
         And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
  Commit your way to the LORD,
         Trust also in Him,
         And He shall bring it to pass.
 He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light,
         And your justice as the noonday. 

Love, 

Hilary 

(Photo: Jessica Fairchild)

when it rains, sometimes it pours (about beauty)

This morning I woke up to rain. It presses against the glass, against tree branches, slides along the pavement and through the sand of the volleyball court outside my building. I hear it crash against the edges of the road as cars drive by, and there is a steadiness, even an insistence, about it this morning. When it rains, they say, it pours.

Yesterday the word beautiful poured into my day, across the floor at breakfast in Gloucester, followed me around shopping at the mall, crept up over my shoulder at coffee and then meandered down the tamed (but still a little bit wild) paths around Gull Pond. Everywhere I went, this question - "what do we do with 'beautiful'?" asked itself. And, young as I am, uncertain as I am - I want to run outside in the rain of this question and laugh, delightedly.

What do we do with beautiful? 

I ask this because I feel uncertain about it. Because I look in the mirror some days, and feel like there's nothing too special there. And for so long, I wore the makeup and the clothes and the headbands to hide that question - am I beautiful? - underneath all the things I thought might make me that way. And yesterday, as two beautiful friends sat across from me drinking cappuccino and walked next to me to the dock, they both wanted to know: how did you give up makeup?

I smiled. "Honestly?" I began, and they nod, looking at me from beneath shimmering eyelids and bright cheeks. "I gave it up because I was dependent on it. I didn't know my face without it. I didn't like my face without it." And I tell them about the days when I reached for my eyeshadow and when I longed to slide the black pencil under my eyelids, just for a hint of drama, just to get someone to pay a little bit more attention to me. I tell them how it made me wonder, drew me right in to ask the question of the One who made me: So, God, am I beautiful?

And His answer is a fierce and loud and forever Yes. A Yes to being beautiful even when I'm not sure of it. Even when the guys I hope will notice me don't. Even when I am full to the brim with a hundred reasons that I shouldn't think of myself that way. He says I am beautiful, and sets my heart straight again.


What do we do with beautiful?

(photo: hannah byrnes)

We live it. We wake up in the morning and stretch our bodies into the world. We marvel at the faces we meet, how eyes carry our selves, and the smile betrays the laughter, and the way they walk reveals how much joy they have. We marvel at how expressive we are, how our hands paint the air with words and ideas, how we move, how our lungs breathe and how our heart muscles beat.

And we laugh, so loudly and run through the rain that pours into our lives and hear Him say Yes, and hear His delight, and then find others, who ask the question, who worry about it, who wonder if they are beautiful - and we remind them.

Love,
Hilary

How Much Love Weighs (a post for my friends, who are getting married)

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still-
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar. - Robert Frost, "The Master Speed"

It's early still, 7am California time, and I type this with only the glow of the computer screen shedding light on the morning. Soon we will all wake up and begin, hair curling and applying bronze and gold eyeshadow, laughing while we tuck ourselves into our purple dresses and Hannah slips into the white gown hanging on the curtain rod in her parent's room. The house is still, and the refrigerator hums and clicks slightly, as if to remind us that in the midst of the surprising, the miraculous of today, is the good and heavy weight of the ordinary, too. 


I am about to watch my first close friend get married. In just a few hours they'll see each other, then she'll walk down the aisle in these sunken gardens, up the steps where we will be standing, to John, her eyes locked onto his and the weight of their love keeping her steady on her feet. 


Love weighs us down. When our hearts are emptied of love we are like birds with their hollow bones, perching on telephone wires, able to fly off at a moment's notice. Love anchors us to the earth. Love insists that we go moment by moment, that we stand still and hold hands. Love insists that we fear nothing, but embrace all, that we pour out more of ourselves than we think we can and don't ask for it back. 


This is the love I see in my friends John and Hannah. This is the love that binds two together like the seams of a book, that blossoms more each year. This weighty love, love that makes promises, love that gives again, and again, love that is the power of standing still against the hurricanes - this is the love I see in their hands and their eyes and their laughter. And this is the love that grows joy. 


Seek this love, wherever you are. Seek this if you are single, if you are married, if you are in the murky places between. Seek this love if you have children or don't, if you are asking God too many questions to count or if you sit silent in His presence without any words at all. Seek this love, and give your heart over to it, so that we might all be filled with all the gravity of love. 


And for Hannah, and John, who teach me that this love is astonishing, and beautiful, and true - I give you Robert Frost, "life is only life forevermore together wing to wing and oar to oar" - and all my love. 

Love,
Hilary

The Question You're Asking (a guest post for Guarded Hearts)

Today I'm guest posting over at Guarded Hearts, about a question we tend to ask ourselves when we wish that we were dating. Won't you join us? You can find the blog itself here and the post here. 


A little bit of what I wrote...


This was the first time I’d ever fallen close to love – and the question lingered on long after he had gone to college and I had continued at my school, and had crushes on other guys and hoped that they would ask me out. Why doesn’t he want to date me? I asked my friends at sleepovers. I asked my parents in car rides back from the mall drinking Coke from McDonald’s. I asked God sitting with my back against the soft wood of the pews at church. I would grip my hands tightly together and ask, God, tell me, what did I do wrong? Why am I not that person? Why does she have a boyfriend and I don’t? 

Six years later, I am still asking the question. It isn’t about that particular boy anymore. It was never about that particular boy, or any of the ones that have followed in the pattern of hope and uncertainty, awkwardly flirtatious conversations that always stay just this side of friendship, and hours of journaling about just why it is that they never seem to see in me what I see in them.


I have been on this quest to find the reason, the flaw, the thing about me that’s wrong, the big mistake. I tell myself that if only I knew why they didn’t choose me, I could change it. I ask because I have this desperate belief that some day one of them will have the answer, will tell me the secret to being single, the real reason that I haven’t been kissed in years and the real reason that eyes seem to skip over me.

I have guessed about a million reasons that boys don’t ask me out, or the reason they only see me as a friend when I hope for more. But none of those reasons, however much I speculate, however much I spin out stories about being unworthy or not beautiful enough or smart enough, however long I lie in bed leafing through He’s Just Not That Into You half-heartedly, are an answer. 


To keep reading, click on over here.


Love,

Hilary

The answer is yes (a post on a follow up question)

I wrote a post this week about being single. It's a tricky thing to write about because it involves head and heart, because it is about God and me and me and guys, it is messy and confusing.

But I discovered in the midst of writing the blog post, and struggling to know what else I might want to say about it, that there is a question that often accompanies the question about dating, that maybe you are wondering, too.

(Photo: Hannah Cochran)

The scene: I'm standing in front of the mirror getting dressed for dinner. It is our last night at this conference in Baltimore and we are supposed to dress in our finest - jackets and ties or the appropriate equivalent (and I don't know what that means, exactly). I turn on the music and pull my green skirt up over the grey lace top - the pieces of the DC Thanksgiving I spent with Hannah at the JCrew in Georgetown and Pentagon City Mall - and turn toward the mirror to put on some makeup.

And a question looks back at me as my hands hover between my eyelids and the sparkly green eyeshadow. Am I worth it?

I make small circles of shadow across my eyelids and feel my lashes flutter against my palm. I don't quite know why I'm putting on makeup, since I gave it up back in March, but the familiar ritual is comforting in the face of that question. I keep getting ready, pull down my lower lids to scrape an eyeliner pencil across them, blink twice, fluff my hair, and stare into the reflection.

(Mandie Sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

I might as well take a lipstick and write, "Am I beautiful?" over the whole week. I see the question in the eyes of the guys I meet, and the girls I meet, in light of the hot July sun and the cool shade of the bench by the bay. I think about it when I stare at my feet in my new Toms shoes or I catch a glimpse in the one-way mirror of the door that opens to the rooftop balcony of our hotel. And I think to myself, will my eyes ever catch up with what my heart hopes is true?

Maybe you wonder about this question, too. Whether you are single or married or dating or even somewhere you aren't sure about - maybe you get ready for a dinner party and look quizzically at yourself. And you hear the question - am I beautiful? am I worth it? from the far corner of the room.

If you are looking for the answer, if you (like me) search deep in forgotten newspaper piles and magazine covers, if you wander unkempt garden paths barefoot, if you close your eyes and exhale and peer around the corner... it's yes.

However.

It's not a "yes" because he looked at you for an extra thirty seconds over his dripping water glass or he winked at you when he passed you the butter. Not because she responded to your email in only a day and it was full of the most interesting questions. Not because another person tells you they are jealous of your... {fill in the blank}. Not because they kiss you. Not even if they grab your hand walking down the beach late one summer night and you think, this is it, or they see you from two or two thousand miles away and say they just can't stop thinking about you.

It's yes, you are beautiful because you were courageous enough to ask a question in class. Because you listened without thought to time or to-do list to a person who needed you. Because you held out your hand with a small winged prayer you didn't believe He could hear. Because you laugh. Because you hear it: the wild call to live now, to run barefoot, to eat gelato, to stare into the eyes of an icon of the Mother and Child, to write the stories inside you.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14.27)

So, if you asked this week, or on this Sunday morning, for the answer to that question, if you looked for it behind aviator sunglasses and wine and running?

Yes.

Love,
Hilary

A post about being single (after much time has gone by)

When my mentor called me in Washington, DC one night before my roommates and I went to eat barbeque ribs and beans and rice at the place down the street, she told me that she thought my posts about being single weren't from the quiet place. And that, honestly? I sounded a little obsessed about it. 

I bristled at once, and told her that I was NOT being obsessed and I was NOT thinking from a loud place or a semi-noisy place I was just writing what I wanted to write. I hung up the phone in a huff and pouted all the way through my mac n' cheese side dish at our kitchen table. But she was right. 

Those blog posts: The Last Christian Man (a myth you shouldn't believe), Single and Annoyed, Impatiently Waiting to Become Patient ... they all express something honest. They tell you a story of how I was wandering through being single and wondering about what it meant. And they're funny, and they make me laugh to remember the conversations that preceded them and my mischievous smile as I planned one great angsty metaphor and witty zinger after another. 

When I realized that my mentor was right, that the posts were honest, but not true, I took a break from writing about being single. I took a break from the snarky comments, the exasperated verbal sighs, and I talked and explored and wrote about other things. 

But I have been asked a few times this week if I'm dating anyone. And when I smile, and I shake my head, and I say, "No," and they ask, "Have you?" and I say, "No, never," the conversation moves on but I don't. Does it make any difference that my answer is "no, never"? In that small moment, when they say, "Oh, really?" and I can't tell if it's sympathy, or bewilderment, or a nonchalant remark designed to move the conversation on - what's happening in the crawl space between my head and my heart? 

I'm wondering if. I'm wondering when. I'm smiling and feeling my voice grow smaller as I silently finish the story for myself: it may never happen, and shouldn't I be content and dwell here and be pleased and love my life, just as it is? And why do I feel disappointed by my answer, when there is so much fullness everywhere I look? 

(Mandie Sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

The hard truth is that it's easier to be jealous and upset than to be trusting. It's easier to say, "I don't know that anyone is going to see me like that," than to say, "I trust God with this piece, too." Maybe it's because these questions feel tied to being beautiful, to being noticed in a way that can't be replicated by friends or family. Maybe it's about not knowing how to hold a desire unfulfilled in your hands without worrying or doubting. 

I don't have answers, and I don't have contentment (not yet, in any case). But the thought I offer to you, and to myself, in the midst of that "No, never" answer is this: 

That answer has been a part of the becoming, too. That answer that you wish you could change, that you long to sweep off the table forever, is an inextricable and beautiful part of the story of you, the questions you asked, how you heard Him say, "wait.," and everything He taught you about Himself. 

He didn't forget that your answer is, "No, never." And He didn't forget that it's a hard answer to hold, to reconcile with the dating couples and the wedding seasons and the blissful relationships you see around you. It is not lost on Him who gives all good things that you will see what He's giving others and want it for yourself. But He wants to teach us to love what we are given, and trust what is unseen, and place our hearts firmly in His hands. 

(Mandie Sodoma, sindisiwe photography)

We learn that in the deep, hard, patient, and beautiful answer of, "No, never."

Love,

Hilary

For the forever babysitters

His face is the window to the galaxy of five years and older siblings and a brown chocolate lab and babysitters and pirates in dragon-filled lagoons. And he remembers the worlds we built in his backyard last summer, in between trees and behind the house and by drawing in water with our fingers the treasure map. And he climbs up into my lap and settles there, remembering also that I am big and old and a student, and that I can read books to him and tell him stories.

When he smiles it lights the room, and I smile because he is smiling. We watch Playmobile Egypt and Victorian mansion videos. We laugh because somehow his Max & Ruby video is in French of all things, and that's just so silly! And I am floored again and again because he makes everything in my world that seems so desperately important... evaporate, and I laugh at the things that are funny, and I look serious at the serious problems, and I stare down dragons and listen close to what he whispers into my ear.

Today I had the privilege of being taught how to color. I sat across from my five year old friend, his face puckered in concentration, drawing careful racing lines, asking more than once how to spell "racer" and asking each time I got up to get post-its and a red pen where I was going. "Hil-a-wy, are you comin' back?" and each time I'd say, "Yes, I'll be right back."

And when I was told to close my eyes, because he was drawing a picture for me, I scribbled quickly these words:

This is the beauty of a forever babysitter, when you obey a child because it is time to be one again. When you say, in the presence of this small one, all I strive for and covet and envy in my green heart, it melts like August popsicles under his warm weight in my lap. And the not-realized things, the disappointments, the waiting, and all of it vanishes in the too-real moment of existing.

And when I opened my eyes he explained each picture drawn in Mom's pen like Van Gogh at his easel. "You can use the back to make your own picture, Hil-a-wy." He offered the paper like a wise man to Mary. And so I grabbed a broken crayon from the box between us and I tried to draw a hill, some flowers and maybe a tree spreading its branches to a yellow and orange sun. And he piped up in his unabashed way, "No, Hil-a-wy! You need to use a pen!"

My lines were wobbly and imprecise, and he saw it. And the solution was offered in his small hands like the simplest and most profound gift: a pen. Draw with a pen. Stick your tongue out while you press the ink into the paper, and then use your red and green and yellow and blue crayons to color in and outside your lines.

Today I was taught how to color. How to hold a pen and draw without taking it back. How to draw my lines in solid black ink and how to explain my pictures like I am Monet at his easel. And the big blue eyes looked back at me as I drew, and suddenly the things that seem heaviest evaporated, and the things we can't grasp, that we can only trace softly through the air as they pass by, those moments of gift sunk deep into the morning.

This is the beauty of a forever babysitter. That we are humbled by the children we meet, that we know as if by accident how to listen for their secret wisdom, their weight, their special kind of gravity. We are taught and retaught how to color. We learn to finger paint and eat goldfish and laugh at the jokes and tuck little arms and legs into bed and tie shoes. We peek into their imaginations and find that for a moment, our own disbelief is suspended. We become pirates and racers and queens and detectives. We are inscribed with their blessing.

And when he left this afternoon, he flung his arms around me with a hug and a big kiss, and I know that for the forever babysitter in me, this is the radical reshifting of my world at the beginning of a long week, and it is beautiful and true and I treasure it.

Love from my babysitter heart,
Hilary

All My Love (A Sojourn Into My Grandparents' Love Story)

My dearest honey.


Where have letters gone? My mother's father, my grandfather, penned those three words into every yellowing page of his love. I paged through them this afternoon, as I sat in his easy chair on Magoun Avenue, marveling at the volume of ink I held in my hands. Where have letters gone? When do we pause in the midst of our days to uncap a pen and shower some blue-black love on another person? Where have we put stationary, stamps, envelopes - these hallmarks of time and thoughtfulness? 


Now we email, we "chat" until our fingers fall off from typing, we skype and call and text. We have bound ourselves to each other by an umbilical cord of technology, and parents and children are too afraid to cut this second cord, this connectedness. We don't remember how to write letters to each other, how to hold someone up to the light and examine them, see how light catches a little corner of their heart just so when we remember how they smiled at us on the walk between 8th St and Eastern Market, arms linked... We have forgotten how to write this down in letters, and send our love in bins through postal trucks and mail bags. 


And today I discovered what we are all missing. I have fallen into love, into the warmth of my grandmother’s 1943 diary, and the letters she's carefully preserved in binders. Her careful script records weather, the rush of 20 year old mind and heart, quickening at a letter in the mailbox from Theron, despondent when he sends back all the letters she wrote him during their first few months apart. “I guess he’s quitting me,” she writes, and I am crushed with her, though I know this same boy will be her husband in five years, be her true sweetheart for the next sixty-three years until he dies. She sounds exactly like me and nothing like me, her cursive a far cry from my Arial font on this blog, the pace of her life a meander rather than my usual sprint. But our hearts wander similar paths, long for love and romance, long for adventure, for the fullness of life to arrive. And I read my own words and phrases woven within hers, words I've inherited unknowingly - "awfully" and "heart" and "long for."

I sit and breathe the dust of their love story, and I look over at my grandmother, her face crinkled in memory, with the effort of remembering the joy and marrying it to the new sorrow, to his death, his departure, and her remaining. I see tears mirroring my own as we smell together the room where life was built between them, as she pages through love letters he wrote her for years. “My dearest honey.” “All my love.” I didn’t know I got this phrase from Grandpa when I started signing my letters with “All my love, Hilary.” I thought it was original, unique, something to be cherished because I had come up with it all on my own. I give others all my love, and now I realize that I am his echo, he who gave Grammy all his love, for years and for life. He gave her all his love.

They lived between gulfs of war and the distance from Kentucky to Chicago, lived among two kids in this one story house in Indiana, among the neighbors and snowstorms and Sundays in church and Christmases at the cousins’ two streets over. They lived their love in the most extraordinarily ordinary things. His trucker caps are still kept on their pegs on the porch, her embroidery still hangs in the kitchen and the living room. I can hear their conversations about the Cubs, about the Van Til grocery store and the neighbor’s rambunctious daughters. I hear the promise of their love.

In selfish moments I envy their love story, its beginning at seventeen and how they lived it until Grandpa died. I miss him everyday, and my missing grows into funny shapes and fill places in my heart I didn’t know existed before. If there is one person who I would want to meet a boyfriend (should I ever have one), it would be Grandpa. He would know, immediately, if I was barking up the wrong tree or if this was the real thing. After all, he used to say one of his only regrets in life was not marrying his dearest honey sooner. And I believe him. And sometimes the realization that Grandpa won’t see me get married wells up inside me like a hurricane and I wonder how I can bear his absence.

But as I hide myself in my grandmother’s scribbled words, and hear of her deep love for her boyfriend, my grandfather, as I crawl into her thoughts and root around her twenty year old heart, I realize that this story is part of my lifeblood, part of my dreams of love, part of my own story. My grandparents lived the kind of great love that I hope to have someday; my grandparents who lived life’s mess and loved each other through and despite it. My grandparents are roots of love for me, and I know that as their story seeps into my skin, just as the smell of Grammy’s perfume seeps into my blue jeans, I plant myself firmly in the ground of their love story, and settle for nothing less than the ordinary miracle it is. 

All my love,

Hilary

Slamming My Face Into A Glass Wall, aka A Continued Celebration of Singleness

If any of my faithful, kind readers read the post about "Destination Marriage", you know that I am quite talented at tripping, falling flat on my face and causing the people around me to stare in frank surprise that anyone can do something THAT embarrassing, much less do something that embarrassing and still go buy herself a small French Vanilla coffee (cream and one sweet & low).

Well, the other night I had another of these wonderful embarrassing moments that must happen to me so that others can take joy in them. At least, I hope so, because if not then I am going to spend the rest of my sorry days falling, catching myself, falling again, putting my hand through a pane of glass (it happened), getting stung by a bee on my middle finger while apple-picking, falling on my behind on the ice and watching my cup of hot chocolate fly into the air... and onto my head (that is purely hypothetical... just don't fact-check it with my sophomore roommate).

So, Tuesday night. It's 5:45pm and my dad is in town! I must pause and say that my dad is one of the most trustworthy, loving, and gentle people I have ever met. My dad is my hero. Dad, if you are reading this blog post, let me tell you that seeing you this week in DC made everything seem brighter and safer and more joyful. I love you, Dad. I admire you. It was so cool to show you my world here, and be able to give you a taste of what God is doing in my life!

Okay, I seriously digress now... Tuesday night. My dad and I walk to Founding Farmers, one of my favorite restaurants in DC and sit ourselves down at this little table for two in the corner with our backs to Pennsylvania Ave. We munch on grilled cheese and turkey sandwiches, chatting all the while. Dad asks me about what the next chapter of Hilary holds (and you, readers, can probably guess that my answer was long and rambling), I ask him for news about college, our dog and home. We stand up after paying the bill, ready to head to Farragut North.

Founding Farmers, in an effort to be more sustainable or cooler or both, installed a pretty glass revolving door as the entrance to their restaurant. The revolving door is encased by a curved glass wall except for the door-shaped hole where you enter and exit the revolving door. As I am walking around said revolving door, I think my dad is in the same quadrant as I am, and I turn to tell him how much I love having an actual sense of direction in the city. When I look behind me, I realize that Dad is actual in the quadrant behind me. That's fine, I think to myself. I'll just tell him about it when we both get outside. Speaking of outside... I see the sidewalk and think that I have reached the opening of the revolving door.  I swing my body forward and plunge into what I think is cool night air and even cooler colors and noises of city life.

I plunge into the glass wall. My nose plunges into the glass wall. I bounce off the wall and stumble forward, my forehead down to my chin vibrating from the force of my collision. I get out onto the sidewalk just as a group of people are lining up to go into Founding Farmers. Great. Just great. These cool DC people are now going to sip fresh blueberry martinis and relive the hilarious story of the girl who walked headfirst into a glass wall thinking it was the doorway.

Readers, I wish I had a videocamera. But the best way to describe it is: you know those commercials for Windex when the wife (who seems to have nothing to do but clean her windows, tables and already-clean-never-been-used-because-her-life-is-not-real-and-I-bet-her-husband-doesn't-eat-at-home dishes) wipes the window down and then the bird flies into it? I was the bird.

Now you might be laughing really hard right now because you can picture this happening, or you were there (and Dad you better not read this out loud!). Or you might be laughing because you can remember the time you walked into the same glass wall at Founding Farmers! If so, thank you for your empathy. But you are also probably wondering why in the world I call this a celebration of singleness.

For the same reason that I want to sing into a hairbrush in my room! For the same reason that I want to take pictures in Lincoln Park with Mandie! For the same reason that I ate dark chocolate orange gelato last night at 10:45 and laughed about the fantastic movie Morning Glory with Rachel McAdams!

Life is a tragic comedy and a comedic tragedy. Life defies categorization by theater genre, type of sport (life is not a tennis match or a bad hockey game), or food item (it is NOT peaches and cream or a pitcher of lemonade). Life is lived on the edges, on those tattered fringes of sanity and chaos and calm. My life in this city is really a series of embarrassing, hilarious, sad, joyful, pensive, frustrated moments.

This is a celebration of singleness because I am single. But whoever you are, married or single, childless or a mother of six, fan of Taylor Swift or The Killers or T-Pain, butcher, baker or candlestick maker (or teacher, lawyer, social worker)... whoever you are, let today be a song of celebration that you are YOU, embarrassing moments and all.

I will end with a poem I wrote this morning with some girls from the Youth Service Center (the detention center for kids who are awaiting trial for some major crimes).

A Poem for Women

I carry love in my bones,
it bleeds through my veins, rushing blue.
I am woman.

I color my eyes powerful,
leak joy from tear ducts onto clean linoleum.
I see woman.

I speak anger,
lips teeth tongue flame red
for woman.

I climb joy, its thick branches
planted in my soul.
I am woman.

Enjoy the sunshine of the day.

Love,
Hilary

William Loves Mary... and they have the engagement pictures to prove it!

As my friend and I walked through the beautiful campus of the college of William & Mary a few weekends ago, the falling leaves crunching under our flats and the sun streaming through the rounded archways where we paused to take in the faint glimpse of the pure white church steeple over the tops of the trees, I stumbled into an engagement photo session.

The couple was wearing green (or maybe blue) wool sweaters and dark jeans. The girl had on boots that were tasteful but gave her an extra two inches, and the guy wore an expensive, but still tasteful, watch on his right wrist. They smiled at the camera. They smiled at each other. They looked deeply into each other's eyes, and then they both looked up at the perfectly blue sky, as if to say, "Thank you universe for radiating back our own perfection."

My little 20 year-old heart filled with envy. How could I, the awkward, single, often vocal and rebellious-against-being-in-a-relationship independent woman be filled with envy at the apparent summit of relationship bliss in front of me? I don't know this couple. The Guy and The Girl are just the everyday trendy but sweet, JCrew with REI stylin', blonde and brunette with natural highlights, Mac and PC compatible, drink water from a tin water bottle engraved with his initials, solitaire diamond ring that catches the light and most of his paycheck from about three to five years of saving, couple. I stumble across them all the time in their photo sessions in the spring at school: sitting on benches by the pond, at Tuck's Point, under the Bell, laughing at Patton Park or the field by Brooksby Farm. I run into their trendiness often. She has a tasteful but easily hidden wrist, foot or back of the shoulder blade tattoo, which blends an image with a passage of Scripture or even just a word filled with spiritual meaning. He either has a tattoo on his bicep which shows us his troubled but redeemed past or maybe he just wears funky framed glasses and a fuzzy knit hat pushed pretty far back on his head, and is educating his fiancée about the latest CD from Mumford & Sons or The Civil Wars.

All of that is just to say, why was I envious of this couple at William and Mary? Why did I want to be that girl with that guy on that bench in the middle of that photo shoot?

Other than the slightly boring answer - "I want to be loved, and cherished, and understood" - the funnier and probably truer answer is that envy is present whenever there is comparison, and even if I don't want The Girl's relationship, ring or boyfriend, I can recognize that she is not me and that immediately translates into wanting what she has (and what I do not have).

This couple is well known to those of you who troll Christian college campuses. They sit together in Chapel or in the dining hall, exclusive but welcoming to people who stop by their table. They keep their PDA to a reasonable level but for some strange reason have a tendency to stroke each other's wrists or hands while the other person is talking. And the envy in us (green-eyed and trendspotting) wishes that the next cute guy who pulls open the door would just grab us and sit us down at a table and stroke our wrist while we drink coffee, laugh at our jokes and generally grant us what we see as our "rightful" relationship.

But as I continued to stroll through William & Mary, and as I thought about the engagement pictures that would undoubtedly be carefully examined by the girl's single friends on Facebook that weekend, and the fact that whether or not the engagement ring is large, small, antique, expensive... whether the couple have known each other approximately 5 minutes or 5 years, whether they buy Macs and wear biodegradable sneakers or buy PCs and plan to go to law school at UPenn... whether they know of my existence or not, envying them accomplishes nothing, other than the sour mood and tendency to scroll through too many pages of Style Me Pretty.

It does no one any good to be envious of the choices being made by other individuals to be in relationships. After all - I have plenty of choices to keep me busy. I need to choose whether or not I come back to DC in the near future. I need to choose whether I eat Pop-tarts or waffles for breakfast. I need to choose whether I forego the cute pair of loafers I'm eyeing at jcrew.com or if I splurge on them. And infinitely more importantly, I need to choose to love my neighbors. I need to choose to do my homework. I need to choose to listen to the critique of my supervisors. I need to choose obedience. I need to choose love.

William chose Mary, Mary chose William - and the fact that their choices move them from "single" to "engaged with cute photojournalism photos to prove it" doesn't mean I have permission to envy their choices. As a single person I am often tempted to barter choices - "I'll give you mine if you give me yours", or "I'll see your troubling fights with your boyfriend and give you a lonely Saturday night reading Creation and Fall by Dietrich Bonhoeffer! I'll trade you my insecurity about my dateability for your insecurity about his intellectual maturity.

We don't get to barter our choices; we just get to make them. We don't get to live someone else's engagement photos, and we certainly don't get to have our cake and eat it too. The choices in front of us, single or engaged, second child or tenth child, sister, brother, friend, employee, student and teacher - are just that: in front of us.

So while I love William & Mary, and their Anthropologie meets 21st century Christian college style, I need to be not envious of their choices, but grateful for my own.

Love,

Hilary

Destination Marriage?! Some Reflections on a Lecture on Singleness (Which is NOT Mono)

Yesterday my program hosted a guest speaker to talk about marriage, singleness and the 21st century. A pretty hefty meat-and-potatoes speech, and definitely one I was going to carefully consider. About 10 to 15 minutes in, my pen was out and I was thinking about how to respond on this blog, because if there has been anything consistently on my mind this semester in DC, it has been the amoeba-like idea of "singleness."

Our guest speaker at one point said that the talk was going to address what happened if "singleness" was prolonged; if, that is, by the time you are 30 or 35, you are not married. My initial reaction is pretty strong. I wanted to stand up in the middle of the room in my DC power suit and shout, "IT IS NOT LIKE MONO! ME NOT DATING DOES NOT EQUAL ME BEING A CONVALESCENT RECOVERING FROM THE 14th CENTURY PLAGUE!"

When people talk about what to do if you are single longer than expected, I want to ask them what they think singleness is. It isn't a piece of lint stuck to your sweater that you can't shake off. It isn't the annoying song that won't leave your head for two months. It isn't something you "catch" from your ambitious, career-oriented single friends. And it DEFINITELY isn't something that you can take vitamins, read books, or do yoga exercises to avoid.

Our guest then went on to talk about this idea of living in autopilot, thinking that marriage and children and career and suburban home (or city apartment, or even a farm out in Arkansas) is the next stop to be called out by the conductor on the train of our life. And our guest was right - living in autopilot starts in college and doesn't end there. And it can often make us blind: blind to what God has in front of us, blind to the unexpected doors that fly open or the switching of tracks in the nighttime (this train metaphor is harder to continue than I thought).

So our guest (who I will now refer to as "Dr. X" for anonymity) cautioned us against living in autopilot. Dr. X is right. Autopilot makes us think that if we just sit quietly and bide our time, if we just walk forward, if we just follow a daily routine of Bible reading, praying, exercising, being environmentally conscious, being coy, not calling a guy back for 3 days or reading What Southern Women Know About Flirting, watch SATC and mimic Carrie or Charlotte, eating only almonds for breakfast... THEN we will get a significant other!

Woah. Wait... that phrase. "Significant other." I have a hunch that there is an inherent assumption in your mind (and in mine) that "significant other" means boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife. But does it have to? I just wrote about Meredith and Cristina and our people. Aren't THEY also significant others? Aren't our good friends, family members, mentors - significant others in our lives?! We would never say that you need to do all that crazy reading/exercising/eating almonds/TV watching to be worthy of the love of friends, relatives or mentors. We would never suggest that you are not ready to have friends, relatives or mentors if some "Checklist" had not been fulfilled. So why do we think that about dating relationships?

It isn't about worthiness. We are not at recess in elementary school being picked last for the dodgeball/kickball/soccer team. We are not in high school standing on the edge of the dance floor as the "Wonderwall" song plays and couples awkwardly put their hands on sweaty waists and shoulders. We are not sitting in the cafeteria at college alone (and you know what? Sometimes that is the most wonderful feeling in the world. Seriously). Singleness is not something we are supposed to escape out of, waiting for Superman/Batman/Spiderman/Iron Man to rescue us. It is something we live into. It is something we enjoy, enjoy the difficulties and the questions and the hardships, as well as the freedoms, joys and laughs. And trust me, when you're single, there are plenty of hilarious stories.

Dr. X said one other thing that I want to respond to. When asked by a student if people were called to be single, Dr. X replied, "Yes, but I don't think you'll know that until you are on your deathbed." First of all, I fundamentally disagree. Part of the difficulty of talking about Marriage and Dating and Relationships as a single person is that I unconsciously begin to expect those things for my life. I hear people saying, "God could bless you with other things besides marriage and children," but I then also hear, "It's never too soon to be thinking about what kind of wife and mom you want to be." My brain can't take all that paradox. Do I live into the meaning of being single as a 20 year old in the city of Washington, DC? Do I prepare my heart to be a wife and mother? If I prepare for that, and God intends to give me something else, then what was all the preparation for, if not to make me think God had withheld a promise to me? If I am on a train bound for a life of being single, what good does it do to be checking the map for "Destination Marriage"?

I fully, wholeheartedly believe that people are called to be single, and that it is a call that can be known and lived before you gasp your last dying breath. Singleness can't kill you; but the expectation that it is a passing phase, a part of life to be gotten through, a bad cold or case of mono that you need to cure... that can stop you from living fully. And so, with all due respect, I disagree with Dr. X. You can know that you are called to be single, and far from waiting to find out if you are called or not (all the while hoping you are not), I think we should be sticking our heads out the window of the train we are on, breathing the air and looking at the landscape, and being surprised and excited by the unexpected stations we pull into over the course of the journey.

I'll end with a funny story, because, after all, I am 20 years old and life is here to be lived and enjoyed in its fullness. And I love sharing it with you all... and if you have heard the story before, well, enjoy it again.

About 2 years ago I was home for the weekend and decided it would be a nice thing to go to Dunkin' Donuts and buy the family Munchkins or a dozen donuts as a "I'm home and culling favor with everyone because I really want something AWESOME for Christmas" gesture. And it is raining, pretty heavily. Sidenote: all my truest adventures happen in the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot. Once I found a $100 bill there. Not kidding. Just landed at my feet. Awesome.

So it is raining and I am crossing the road in front of the drive-through window. And there is a crack in the pavement and I see it. As I'm walking, in my converse sneakers, my sort-of waterproof jacket and my nice pair of jeans, I think, "PHEW! Glad I saw that dangerous crack in the pavement with the big puddle of water collecting right next to it. That could have been bad!" And as I triumphantly think this, and step over it with my right foot, my left foot catches in that very same crack. I faceplant into the pavement, into the puddle, in front of a Chevy Suburban getting her coffee and the entire drive-through line, Dunkin' Donuts staff included. I stand up. I am covered from my forehead to my feet in muddy water. I stand paralyzed for a few seconds and then decide that my small French vanilla coffee is worth it. I walk into the Dunkin' Donuts with my head held as high as can be expected. I order my drink and then say, in an attempt to play off the incident, "Man it's raining. I just tripped into a puddle." The guy taking my order just looked at me and said, "Yeah. I saw you."

The only happy ending to this story is that I got a free coffee - Mr. Didn't Smile But Probably Laughs to this Day and Tells This Story on His First Dates decided to pity my mud-soaked self and gave me a free coffee. This story never fails to make me laugh and I hope you laugh, too. Wherever God may be taking me, I am glad to be going, single or married, with or without children, in whatever city or whatever country - with all the opportunities for tripping and embarrassing myself that new places afford.

Love,

Hilary