Off the wagon

This morning I sat and caught up on some blogs. One of those I read was A Home of Her Own on Fidelia's sisters. It resonated not just for the woes of running a home (she owns hers and mine is a parsonage, but there are woes none the less). But it also resonated because of the ways her "plan" had not been fulfilled.

Throughout the years and my plethera of hours not on dates, I have often wondered if I am called to singleness. It some respects it feels like a silly question, afterall, I have felt like I was called to be a mother since time began, but maybe I've misunderstood that calling too. And I've always assumed that being a mother would somehow also involve having a husband...silly me. When I was in junior high school I created a fantasy where I would be married at 23 and would have a size 3 body when it happened. (just for the record, the latter would have required years of anorexia...if not reconstructive surgery to change the size and shape of my bones). Nevertheless I have wondered, maybe every single clergy person has...I wonder if I couldn't fulfill my call better if I didn't have additional attachments and obligations. I wonder if maybe I'm just supposed to be in this space of singleness and to be okay with that.

I go through stages of wanting to date and stages of wanting to not. A friend of mine from seminary and I call it "getting on or off the wagon". The wagon being dating. I'm regularly off the wagon. Sometimes it feels like a parade, me sitting on the curb watching the wagons go by, and other times I have no ideas the wagons are even there because they don't even catch my eye.

For the past week or so I've been craving "us-ness", not having a significant other or even nudging my way toward marraige, but us-ness. Maybe those are one in the same, I don't know. I'm sure they're interlaced at the very least. I'm not craving a date or someone to have on my arm, but rather partnership, the interplay between two people, the sharing of responsibilities, the dialogue about decisions, relying on someone else for some things. That's what I'm wishing for these days. I want us-ness. I want to be an "us" but not for the sake of being cute, or even simply to not be alone, but I want to be an "us" so that "we" can work together, share, nurture, and comfort one another.

I suppose I do want to get on the wagon, but I think it might be a different wagon than I've always ridden before. Strangely I'm not even sure I'd know it if I saw it. And since I'm not prone to "test-driving" wagons, per se, I'm not sure I can even go with an I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it policy.

The other catch to getting on a wagon at this point is that it generally requires knowing someone so you can be invited to get on, being new in the neighborhood/church/city/community my options are limited....wait....I don't even have options at this point, what am I talking about?! So yeah, there's that...no empty (or half empty) wagons driving by...

...guess I'll just go back to dreaming of us-ness for now....