What is THE S word, you ask? It’s a word that plagues every LDS member once they turn 16 years old. It’s a word that automatically categorizes a person before knowing any other facts about them. It’s a word that no one ever wants to be. Single.
Two weeks out of being broken up with who, I thought, was the love of my life, (and no, it wasn’t my ex-fiancé), I was trying to get a grip on the direction that my life was now headed. I felt lost and confused and stumped at the situation that I found myself in. So, I put on my big girl panties and decided to do something about it. I remembered the old adage that states, “When losing yourself in the service of others, you will find yourself”. Okay. Well, obviously I was “lost.” And as backwards as it seemed, I decided to lose even more in hopes of finding myself. It was 7:19a.m. on a Friday morning at the beginning of November. I stood in the laundry room at the Rexburg Temple (which I didn’t know was so massive!). This was my first day of being a volunteer in the temple, even though all my friends thought I was crazy for waking up 3 extra hours early once a week. This was my meager attempt at creating accountability to myself for serving others. A very nice, and I am sure, well-meaning, elderly temple worker walks into the laundry room. He announces his presences and proceeds to talk with every volunteer in the room personally. In the few short moments of watching him interact with individuals, I gained a lot of respect for him as he made each person comfortable. As I iron some clothing, minding my own business, this temple worker approached me. He asked me the usual questions like, what’s your name, where are you from, what are you doing here in Rexburg? As I answered that final question, I responded proudly, “I teach at BYU-Idaho. I just returned from graduate school in Ohio, where I finished my master’s degree.” Knowing that’s not a usual answer you hear every day from a 25-year-old, I was sure he was going to react like most people. I mean, most people are usually impressed with my credentials (and I’m not saying this to make me seem super great, just that it is fact). Most people usually respond with, “Oh wow! You don’t look old enough for a master’s degree!” or “You are so accomplished!”. But apparently he wasn’t like Most People. “Oh that’s just great!”, he said. “But I see that you’re not married,” referring to my ring-less finger. “You better start working on that!” … What. I crumbled on the inside. What was this man saying? Well, okay. I KNEW what he was saying… but why? Why was he reminding me to get married? Oh sir, thanks for reminding me. For exactly 3 minutes, I forgot that I am supposed to get married! Ha. Silly me… He was ruining everything. I came here to lose myself and my problems to find myself! But what he was doing, was the exact opposite! He was reminding me that I was single. That the man I thought I was going to marry had just dumped me. No. No. No. My eyes started to become blurred with tears; that familiar pain of heartbreak was coming to the surface again. I tried to hide my face by turning away and saying, “Thanks, I’m working on it.” Little did he know, that I had been working at getting married. That year alone, I had gotten engaged, then disengaged, had one short-lived summer romance, and then found the man of my dreams, or so I thought, who turned me down because he was looking for “someone who was meaner to him”. (My 25th year was one for the books. That’s a story for another day). But I. Was. Working. I worked hard at trying to get married. But that wasn’t the only important thing about me! Didn’t he hear that I was 25 with my master’s degree? Didn’t he hear that I was teaching at a university? Didn’t he see that I was a human being?? Okay, I am sometimes just a little dramatic, but whatever. I mean, I do have two degrees in Theatre, so it’s bound to happen. I guess he didn’t see anything like that. The rest of that day, that weekend, and most likely that month, I was bitter towards him for the way he viewed me. It bothered me that the only way he could quantify me was by dismissing all my accomplishments for one qualification. And a qualification that I had no control over. All I was to him was single. Single. In a 1989 broadcast President Hinckley said, “Somehow we have put a badge on a very important group in the Church. It reads ‘Singles.’ I wish we would not do that.” (See footnote 1) I echo what the prophet has said, and stand with him in declaring, “I WISH WE WOULDN’T DO IT EITHER!” (Just imagine my declaration as Elf in the middle of Griffols, singing loud for all to hear. Well, minus the green tights and hat). So here I lay, in the middle of my sister’s living room on an air mattress, on the first day of my summer break writing this narrative instead of singing it aloud for all to hear in a made-up toy store (Well, you could say this website is my toy store…). These thoughts have been accumulating over months of trial and error, learning and growing. My intent for this blog is not to be a bitter single 26-year-old woman complaining ambiguously on the internet, but my intent is a call to challenge the way that “Singles” in the LDS Church are perceived. I ultimately want to change the way we perceive quote/unquote singles. “You are individuals, men and women, sons and daughters of God, not a mass of ‘look-alikes’ or ‘do-alikes.’ Because you do not happen to be married does not make you essentially different from others. All of us are very much alike in appearance and emotional responses, in our capacity to think, to reason, to be miserable, to be happy, to love and be loved.” (President Hinckley) Being single or married does not make you or I any less of a person. We are all complete. We are whole and complete, in our own way. Caveat: I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love being a member of the LDS Church. This is in no way a reflection of how every member of the Church treats those that are single people. This is a compilation of examples and interactions that I have had with some of the culture in our religion. Footnotes:
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single.The Ability to Be Whole and Complete on My Own Archives
April 2017
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