Marriage on my Mind

I remember once, after explaining how a fried of mine wasn't going to be my roommate, my mom said, "She probably thinks she's going to get married." Now, this friend had never been my roommate. We hadn't talked about being roommates. And, our budgets for housing were different so we really didn't even look at the same apartments. That friend of mine didn't get married that year. We kind of lost touch and I'm not sure if marriage even crossed her mind when deciding where to live.

But. That concept has stuck with me. How often do LDS young single adults make decisions based on the chances of getting married? And so, from then on out, I started paying attention to the decisions I was making and my motives behind them.

It was just a few months later when I started to feel like I shouldn't go on a mission. I waited a while before sharing this with anyone, I didn't want them to think it was because I thought I was going to get married. I was following the Spirit, doing what I felt the Lord wanted me to do. Marriage had nothing to do with it.

However, when I finally made the official decision to stay home and had the guts to tell people, almost every one of them brought up marriage. "Heavenly Father wants you to stay home so you can meet your husband." "I bet you'll be married within a year!" "My cousin did the same thing and ended up meeting her husband the day after she made the decision. That's going to happen to you, too." I started to believe them. Why else would Heavenly Father want me to stay home from sharing the gospel?

A year later, still not married and with absolutely no dating prospects (this was the year when I went on one awful blind date that inspired this post). I decided to go back to school and move out of my parent's house. It was a great plan! My best friend was coming with me, we'd be roommates again, and I'd have a social life. But, once again, those comments started rolling in. When I found the perfect apartment: "Your future husband is going to be the guy who lives next door." When I decided on my major: "You're going to end up in all the same classes as your future husband. You'll be teachers together, how cute!" When I signed up for institute classes: "A cute RM is going to sit next to you, fall in love, and you'll be married by Christmas."

I'll be honest, I was starting to believe them again. Everything was falling into place. Of course that meant Heavenly Father was putting me on the path to find my future husband. But, suddenly the time came that I would have been coming home from a mission had I gone. And I realized that absolutely nothing happened to lead me to the perfect guy. And, with a lot of help from Heavenly Father, I realized he had other things in mind for me. Marriage wasn't the only thing I needed to do with my life.

Of course, that didn't stop me - or those around me - from thinking that THIS was going to be it. Each new decision I made had me believing I'd find that perfect man and be married. When I changed my major, when I dropped out of school, when I came back to Logan with no plans, when my best friend moved away and I stuck it out, when I was turned down for job after job after job, when I finally found a job, and so on and so on and so on...

I'll give you a hint: that's not how I met my wonderful husband.

As the time came to sign the lease for my apartment again, I started to feel like I shouldn't stay in Logan. And for the first time, marriage didn't cross my mind. I was so sure that I'd be single for at least five more years. I made the decision to leave Logan and sent job applications to about thirty different elementary schools. Heavenly Father gave me a million reasons why this was the right decision for me, and marriage/dating was not one of them. I realized that even more when the only school to contact me was in Tooele. Remember the year I spent there and only had one crappy date? Yeah. Tooele was not the place I was going to find my future husband. God has a plan for my life, and each time I thought I had it figured out, He'd change it up on me. I was so positive this time that marriage had absolutely nothing to do with why I needed to move back to Tooele.

I'll give you a hint: It had absolutely everything to do with it. The one time marriage wasn't on my mind was when Heavenly Father was actually putting me on the path to marriage.

A few months after moving into a basement apartment in Tooele, a boy stood up in testimony meeting at our tiny little singles ward. I remember nodding my head at everything he said. He was also back in Tooele, unsure why, but ready to do what the Lord asked him. As he sat down, all I could think was, "Okay, how can I get him to be my best friend?"