Pea in a pod

Next year I'll be 52. I have never been married and have no children. I have never been pregnant, and at this stage of my life, I don't think I'd want a baby anyhow - even if I had any good eggs left, which is doubtful.

But I would like to be married. I'd like to be with a man who is like a pea in a pod with me. Not that we wouldn't have our different likes of various things but that at the core, we were buddies and just cut from the same cloth who delighted in each other's company and shared an abiding, deeply rooted faith in Christ.

If this man were appoximately my age, I would suspect he had been married and divorced at least once (because statistically it wouldn't be likely for him to have never married), and if he had children, they would likely be grown or at least in their teens. If by chance he had no children, then I could be very content to just make a life with him and have it be about the two of us. If he wanted to drive a motorcycle across the USA or Europe, I'd happily sit right behind him the whole way. I have a friend who is married to a film director, and they are both a few years older than I am. They have been married at least 30 years and have never had children, and they are completely delighted to be with each other at a moments notice, even all over the world. They have no children or pets to tie them to a location, although they do have a home here in Los Angeles. They are two peas in a pod.

So where is my mysterious pea in a pod? Sometimes God gives one person of a future twosome a revelation, but the other person doesn't receive the revelation. In the Bible, Mary knew long before Joseph did that she would be the mother of Jesus. It wasn't revealed to Joseph for months later. Why? I suspect because Satan was on the prowl and the timing was wrong.

So, I believe it is also with me. The timing is wrong even though I have the revelation, and despite what I believe, it is not a shared belief. God has shown me that I have issues to work on as well... my own issues of being a woman and finding the femininity of my heart and soul again.

One of my issues is my weight, but not for any assumed reasons, because I wasn't an overweight child, teen or even into my early twenties. In fact, I was so thin I used to wear long sleeves all the time because I was embarrassed at how skinny my arms were, how my elbows stuck out. I was just long and lanky, no particular curves in the waist or hips, just sort of straight. Guys made passes at me all the time. All the time. They weren't interested in the inside of me, just the outside package. I thought for a while of buying an inexpensive wedding band set just to try to get some of it to stop. I was disgusted by the cheap way it made me feel to be advanced on all the time. One time I was walking to work and a guy yelled out the window, "Do you put out?" Now, I didn't know what he meant because I'd never heard that term before, and I said, "Put out what?" When he told me, I laughed him off and said "no!" but inside I wasn't laughing. I didn't dress provocatively then and don't to this day.

It wasn't long after that that the weight started coming on. It was very gradual at first, and over the years it just sort of kept adding up until I am where I am today - at about 263 and steady. Guys don't make those unwanted advances to me anymore, that's for sure, but neither do they also try to get to know me as just a person.

So if I lose the weight, and my future someone suddenly finds me attractive, then I will find that shallow of him and unattractive to me, and even now I am a little ticked off just thinking about it. I think with any weight loss, there is residual, inherent anger on the other end... People who will say, "You look great, you look fantastic, etc.," well, that's going to be very painful... because I look great now. If they can't see and love the person I am now, then they won't see it then either. It's all shallow and vain, and it turns my stomach and brings tears to my eyes.

Regardless, God has gently nudged my heart that I don't need the protection of weight anymore to keep away the unwanted advances because I am at a completely different place and level of maturity than I was 25 years ago when it all began.

I am loveable and worthy of being loved right where I am, just as I am.