The Sunday before last the speakers were a young (very young) couple who had recently moved into the congregation. It was immediately apparent how young they really were (before they even revealed their ages - further highlighting how very young they are - no one else reveals how old they actually are!) when they began using exclusively stories from high school to illustrate the doctrinal points they were trying to make.
I feel terrible - I don't exactly remember what doctrinal points those were because Himself leaned over at some point and said, "Do you realize she was born AFTER I graduated from high school?!" To which I responded, "But you're OLD!"
It was then I realized that she was 7 when I graduated from high school. That made ME feel old.
And then, one of them (can't remember which one) revealed that the wife is pregnant.
For some reason, that made me just want to leap up and hug her and cry and say, "I'm so sorry," which is an utterly ridiculous sentiment to have because a) she's an adult b) she's married and c) the birth (or pending birth) of a child should ALWAYS be a celebration.
It's hard to see the world through someone else's lens. All I could do was see her life - only 2 years out of high school, no college, young, newlywed, pregnant, and her husband in much the same position (minus the pregnancy, obviously!) - through my lens.
I turned 20 days before I set off on the grandest adventure of my life - a year-long stint in Washington, D.C., which radically altered the course of my life in more ways than one. When I married, I was a college graduate (and had been for a couple of years)and lived in my own apartment 2,500+ miles from home. When I had my first baby, I was well out of the honeymoon stage of married life.
So looking at her life through my lens made me want to cry, because there is no way I would trade what I did and who I became in the nearly 11.5 years between graduating from high school and giving birth to Woodstock. I needed that time to develop who I was, become stronger in some areas and less insistent in others. I needed to develop a sense of self, needed to experience certain things.
That doesn't mean everyone needs to, I keep reminding myself. And yet, it also made me compose a mental list of things I want my girls to want for themselves - an education beyond high school, time on their own as their own people, opportunities to know themselves and their spouses, enough income to cover the basics.
It doesn't have to take 11.5 years beyond high school. In fact, I wouldn't even recommend it (though it worked for me). I just hope it takes more than 2.
4 comments:
They'll be alright, Sara. I turned 20 one month after giving birth to my first child. Which just happened to be 9 months and 3 days after getting married. But it's worked out fine so far. I even got my degree! So don't worry. They'll be alright.
Which is so funny, because I look at you and think "I so want to be just like her!"
Just goes to show you - there is no universal "best option". My sister is the same way - married at 19 - got her degree, has a child - loves life.
And yet, had I done that - I would have been the world's biggest mess.
I have met so many young people here having kids and I keep thinking to myself "Thank goodness I waited" but sometimes- sometimes!- I think that they are really great parents because they figure out who they are BECAUSE of their kids :)
I'm with you Sara. 9 years after high school we had Ryan. I sometimes envy those who had children earlier, but looking back, I'm glad for the extra time I had as a woman without kids. Although looking at Ryan now, I can;t really remember life before him . . . no matter when we have kids, it all works out exactly as it was meant to be.
Post a Comment