The new "Date Night"

During my college years it was Friday nights that I found the hardest to be single. For most people Friday night meant "Date Night", but for me Friday night meant "Where-can-I-go-tonight-where-I'll-run-into-the-least-amount-of-people-on-dates night". After time, I got used to that, and as I moved out of Provo, UT that feeling/stress about being alone on another Friday night dissipated. 

These days, Friday night is a time for celebration. "Hooray, I made it through another week of work! Time to grab dinner on my way home from the office, put on sweats the second I walk in the front door, and decide what series I'm going to watch in it's entirety tonight!" Oh how I love Friday nights these days. 

But the "single struggle" hasn't disappeared - it just moved back a few days and brought a whole new swarm of worries. 

I don't know what it is about Sunday, but as an "older", single, active LDS female I've found that Sundays really made me more emotional about the fact I'm still single. I still love Sundays and am grateful for the spirit I can feel when I attend church, but in some ways it has become the new "date night" in my life.

I love that the LDS Church has such a huge emphasis on marriage and families. I long for those blessings in my life. And in no way do I think the importance of these two goals should be minimized. But from my experience, there is a loneliness that Sunday brings nowadays that I hadn't experienced previously. I sit in Sacrament Meeting and see these cute young family's trying to wrestle their young children, or the parents with teenagers who can now actually sit by each other again, or the cute older couples who have spent a lifetime together and are still cuddling on the pew. (I'm aware there are those in the congregation that don't fall into any of these categories, but in our times of struggle we tend to only see the things we want but don't have yet.) 

The other thing that affects me most on Sundays is when the comments are made about those who don't marry or have kids in this life will have those opportunities in the next life. While I am so grateful for that knowledge and those promised blessings, that understanding does little to take away the pains and lonelinesses of today. All those comments make me think of is the next 50+ years of my life I may spend alone. Sure I have awesome family and friends I can visit and spend time with, but at the end of the day I come home to an empty house. I worry that the years will pass and my spare bedrooms will never be converted into the kid bedrooms I imagine them becoming. I worry my backyard will never have a soccer net/baseball gear/or tumbling passes scattered across it. I worry about who will take care of me when I'm old and can longer take care if myself. The promised blessings in the next life do little to subside the sadness that comes from the worries of today. 

Sorry for the sad post today. I know I have a very blessed life, and am so grateful for it, but it's Sunday and these are my thoughts.