Growing up, I dreamed of becoming a wife and a mom.
In my young adult years, I envisioned myself changing the world alongside my husband. In my twenties, I looked for men who had leadership qualities I could support, only to find that mine were just as strong. In my thirties, I bloomed into my own leadership, and I decided that he would have to support me too. Together, we would partner in ways that would make us a power couple, each pulling our weight. As a seminary graduate and practical theologian, I collaborated with plenty of men, harnessing my lifelong tomboy energy to foster a certain kind of camaraderie and chemistry that was very collegial. What I discovered that the men who reached out to me--whether it for mentorship or partnership--often had wives at home or women in their lives who did not necessarily share their vocational passions. I was their intellectual match, their spiritual equal. But men like that still wanted to "lead" at home.
Outside of the "church," there were more options, it seemed.
There was a professor who expressed interest, a person of color and Ph.D who was a musician, therapist, and non-profit founder. On paper, and even in person, these qualifications matched my own--I was working on my doctorate, I was a board-certified music therapist, I taught music lessons, and I had extensive work experience in non-profits. The only catch was--Mr. Professor wanted to run for office someday, and I knew (especially after reading Michelle Obama's autobiography) that his career would always come first. Were it not for that, it might have worked. But I know that for politicians, their dreams are everything. There is no stopping them. Another black Ph.D had spent years in Asia, spoke and read Chinese fluently, and had a mother who was a doctor and hyphenated her last name. The long distance got to us, though, and our lack of compatibility in our habits of "self-preservation."
I have had several loves in my life. Not every love is meant to last for a lifetime.
In college, I had several conversations about marriage with men--some hypothetical, and some theoretical. After college, I continued to meet people from all sorts of backgrounds. Each relationship refined and reformed the dreams I had cooked up in my childhood and teen years. Many different personality types, romantic styles, and cultural backgrounds enriched my own sense of self and self-understanding. And yes, heartbreak hit every few years, leaving me in a "power down" position when it came to society's valuation of my worth. No matter how much education and job experience I had, what people seemed to care about most was my marital status. There was no escaping this--in my own family, at church, and at work. My friends who married in their younger years shared about their struggles--but often doled out advice as well, as if being married somehow made them more knowledgeable about relationships than I was--when I actually had more experience in that realm.
Marriage is not an accomplishment, nor is it earned. It chooses the lucky, and that's all there is to it.
So I decided to change my luck. I manifested, and I primed my vibrational energy. Like attracts like, and I focused on this law of attraction more than the futility and frustration of prayer and fasting. And then he came to me--an old flame who had always stayed in touch, and the first "I love you" I'd ever said, during my senior year of college. Circumstances had prevented us from exploring our feelings for each other when we were part of the same circle of friends, and 14 years later, he was moving away. We expressed our love and gave each other as much as we could, knowing that the move needed to happen, and that life was full of unexpected surprises. As we grew closer, we recognized that we were indeed each other's person. We wanted to have our happy ending, and we wanted to start a family together. After more than a decade of dating other people, making sacrifices for our families, and paying the price for progressive values, it took a matter of weeks to know that this was it.
When you know, you know, and no amount of community discernment can substitute for that.
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