In the months of May-August, weddings are pretty common.  And when you're in your twenties, everyone around you is at that age of getting married and then starting a family.  Well, not everyone, but it certainly seems to be everyone with how often it happens.

I have noticed that people who are my age, single, and female, tend to get emotional over weddings.  They sigh, they laugh, they cry, they watch the joy of the bride and groom, wishing that they were the ones up there.  Instead, they're alone, single, not taken.  And as much as they love the sappy romantic atmosphere of a wedding, it also reminds them how alone they feel in the world.

I am not one of these girls.

I have no desire to be married, or be in a relationship.  When I think about the things that marriage entails: companionship, intimacy, sex, sharing everything with someone else...none of these things appeal to me.  I have tried not to be outspoken about my desire to stay away from marriage, because I don't want to seem like I speak out against it so much because I actually want to be married.

It's as if people don't seem to understand that a person would actually choose to be single.  Some people long for someone to call theirs.  Others cannot fathom not being in a relationship, so they go from boyfriend to boyfriend or girlfriend to girlfriend and are incapable of discovering who they are as an individual without someone by their side.

I am saying all this because I just got home from attending a wedding of two friends.  Two people who very clearly love each other and couldn't wait to start spending the rest of their lives together.  Who will probably begin a family within their first year of marriage.

But when I go to weddings...when I was at this wedding...I was there to celebrate for them.  With them.  But I wasn't stirred up with a longing to have someone by my side.  I didn't have the desire to fall in love and find some dashing older man to call "dear."  I was reminded of how I am content to be where I am, and happy that I don't have to deal with the turmoil of emotions that accompany being infatuated with someone.

However.

I did find my emotions stirred up in another way.  I so easily and so willingly push away the desire to love and be loved by the people around me.  Not from bitterness (never from bitterness), but from the fear of getting hurt.  Of being too soft, too vulnerable, too open.

This is something I am trying to fix.  To work on, to grow in, to surrender.  But it is not easy.  In attending this wedding, and hearing the words that were spoken, seeing the looks on the faces of the people, I did feel something stirring within me.  Like Christ was there, softly speaking to my heart, trying to help push me in the right direction, showing me that love is worth it.

Because honestly, that is the one thing I struggle with most.

To know that love is worth it.

And truth be told, I know that love is worth it all.  I know that Love is the most powerful thing in the world; Love is what conquered death.  But knowing all these things in my head, is very, very different than knowing them in my heart.  Once the full knowledge of these truths penetrates my heart, that - THAT - is when things can begin to move and change.

Perhaps I am standing in the way of myself.  Deliberately refusing to let the truth sink in to where it can stir things up, begin to change them.  It seems that fear is what is often the source of my being able to let things begin, go where they need to go.

And what a complex circle.  For as it says in 1 John, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment (4.18)."  So to live a life absent of fear, I must be perfected in love.  But learning to love is something I fear, so I prevent myself from being perfected in love.

I don't know.  I am tired, exhausted from all the human interaction of the day, and I have to go to work tomorrow.  I am sure things will be more clear, less confusing, and more logical in the morning.