Well, Valentine's Day has almost arrived. The stores are packed with cards, chocolates, and heart strewn displays designed to lure you into expressing your passionate and undying love for that special man/woman in your life and for getting small children hooked on romance and sugar highs since the Christmas candy has probably run out and the toys are now broken or boring. I know, a bit cynical. But let me continue.
When I was a child (doesn't every good rant have to have one of these?) I loved Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day was all about love of friends and teachers and more importantly love of crafts (at least that's what I thought). My mom had a special box of Valentine's Day craft supplies. It was an old pizza box and I nearly wept for joy when I saw that box come out of the cupboard. It had construction paper, heart templates, scissors, glue, old and new Valentine cards, lace, ribbons, sparkles and the piece de resistance...doilies! Just thinking about it now makes my heart feel all thumpy inside. My sister Cathleen and I went all out making cards for our friends and teachers. Some cards were justifiably fancier than others simply due to time and supplies. There's no way to make dozens of cards that all include a heart with a doily with a heart cutout in the center with my school picture peaking through the heart! We simply didn't have that many school pictures! Usually the special picture cards were saved for teachers or for Grandma, but occasionally a "lucky" friend would receive one as well. All this to say that Valentine's Day had a particular tone for me when I was young. And while the crafts are what stand out, I recognize that the day was really all about relationships. It was about recognizing all the relationships and I mean ALL (every kid in the class needed a card) the relationships in my life.
So whatever happened to that tone of Valentine's Day? For that matter, what ever happened to that tone in life? When did we switch from having been created for relationships to having been created for romance and marriage?
I am single. I am celibate. I am not in any "romantic" relationship. And there's nothing wrong with me. Nothing at all. I am not alone and I'm not lonely and I am not pining away for some man to rescue me. I'm not sure what he would rescue me from. I have a great life. I love it. I would not trade it for anything. Not on Valentine's Day, not on any day.
I have not always been this way.When I was a young woman in my late teens and early twenties,
Valentine's Day was miserable. It seemed like, for adults, Valentine's Day
couldn't be about all our relationships, it was only about romantic love. I hated it. It was a yearly
slap in the face that I was not in a romantic relationship. I was
obsessed back then with getting married. It's what society told me was
right. Everywhere I looked I was surrounded by couples, actual couples,
photos of couples, movies of couples, adds geared towards couples. I
could not escape. And this went far beyond Valentine's Day. The world I
lived in (and lets face it, it's not less like this now) emphasized that life is about
finding one's prince charming, falling madly in love, having a lavish
wedding, living in wedded bliss, having two children (one boy and one
girl), and living in a lovely house etc. etc. Almost everyone I met was
married or trying to get married. And this is not about having grown up
in a Mennonite town or having been taught that my role was to be a wife
and mother. I grew up knowing that I could get a career and be whatever I
wanted to be, but regardless of whether or not a woman has a career,
the norm is still marriage (or common law) pretty much wherever I go.
And honestly one of the absolute worst influences I had during that time
was my church library. Christian romance novels were my inspiration and
my nemesis. They gave me fantastically insipid dreams and constant
reminders that I was clearly not good enough, or praying correctly
enough. And my library is in no way unique in terms of church libraries.
Almost every single church I have walked into, regardless of
denomination has had these novels (or novellas which are even worse) on
their shelves. They are books that revolve around the lovely pure
Christian girl who is waiting for a handsome Christian man to walk
into her life. One night having read in her pink Bible that God will
give her the desires of her heart, she prays in desperation for her
deepest longing to be fulfilled. And low and behold it is! The next day
she meets the man that God has chosen just for her and in two short
weeks they have fallen hopelessly in love (imagine the scene of Ariel
and her prince slowly rotating in their boat with the frogs singing
"Kiss the Girl" here). There is usually a tiny conflict of some variety
that is quickly overcome through prayer and by the end of the book
(which covers a span of under a month) the couple is engaged to be
married. Oh, and someone has to be "saved" in there so the book, which
is really a trashy romance novel that leaves out the sex scenes, can be
called "Christian".
These books held me captive. And I know that I'm not alone in that. I have met countless women who have been and continue to be held captive to the myth that they were created to fall in love. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not about relationship, it's simply about "love" (of the Princess Ariel sort) and about being saved from whatever is going wrong in life. Poor men who need to fulfill the role of prince, that's all I can say. Stand for a few moments near a Valentine's card/candy isle and your pity meter will skyrocket. The sweaty clenched hands, the frantic eyes, the hunched over posture of the man who is frantic to make a woman happy. If he gets it right his finicky princess will be overjoyed, but if he gets it wrong, look out! You can see the same sort of thing on Mother's Day incidentally.
I give thanks for the couples, married, and planning to be married whose relationships are based on mutuality, compassion, forgiveness, shared passion, energy, friendship, understanding, perseverance etc. However, it would be incredibly helpful if the world and if not the world, at least the Christian church, could recognize that some of us have a different calling. We talk about discerning what God is calling us to do and to be a lot in the Mennonite churches that I have attended. Are we being called to ministry, to congregational ministry? Are we being called to care for the land as farmers? Are we being called to care for the poor by working for a non-profit organization? Are we being called to care for the sick in a hospital or care home setting? The list could go on and on. However, the one question I never hear asked is are we being called to be single or to be married? I have only known one person who knew one priest who asked that question. Just one. Why is that? Why do we assume that to live on this planet means we must be married (or in some type of romantic relationship)? It is a blessing to this world that there are individuals who are called to be married, that there are women called to be mothers, and men called to be fathers. But it is also a blessing that there are people called to be single.
For too long the assumption that all people are meant to be in coupled romantic relationships has been allowed to squash the souls of single people and limit our imaginations regarding relationships in general. I live in an intentional relationship. I met my friend Alicia 9 1/2 years ago. We live as a household, a family. We are friends, companions, sojourners, co-labourers. We share our home, we share a car, we share household tasks like laundry, cooking and taking out the garbage. We laugh, we cry, we argue, we apologize.
And we are not lesbians. Not at all. We get asked this all the time, or more often people ask our friends. Our imaginations have become so limited in North America that two friends of the same gender cannot live together for more than 6months before people think they must be gay (that's about how long it took before people started asking). Years ago this was not uncommon. Two single women could live together and people were simply glad that they weren't alone. Now we assume that all who live as we do are gay and we look back and assume that all those women were as well. Well, we're not. And most of them weren't either (though some were).
And the reason I'm ranting is not because I can't stand that someone would think that I was a Lesbian. I am not going to use this blog to comment on my position regarding homosexuality. What makes me angry is that the only relationship that seems to matter anymore is the romantic one. Somehow we are not human, not whole if we aren't romantically involved, or in genital sexual relationships. And that is a problem! Some people are single by choice, others are single by circumstance and it is completely unfair for single people to be considered incomplete or for their relationships not to be fully valued because it isn't a spousal relationship.
I will never forget my Aunt telling a group of us nieces that if we get married, fine. If we don't get married that's fine too. But we are not to meander our way through life waiting for a man. Thank you Aunt Evelyn! You are my hero!
Life is to be lived. Life is to be lived in relationship. In a lot of different relationships. We can love one another as strangers, acquaintances, friends who just get together occasionally, spiritual friends, companions, soul mates, spouses, passionate lovers, mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and everything in between.
I know on Valentine's Day some people (who don't really know me, but know that I am single) look at me with pity because I don't have a man. But I'm not the one worrying whether or not my laugh lines look like wrinkles, or if I've put on a few pounds and look fat in my negligee. I'm not the one standing sweaty palmed in front of a card isle trying to make magic happen. I'm not the one who just had an incredibly embarrassing gorillagram delivered to my office. I'm home, kicking back my feet and hanging out with my best friend who thanks me EVERY day for making her supper, who never complains about what I cook, who does the laundry and cleans the apartment, who laughs hysterically at the Rick Mercer Report, who never takes the remote from me even when I'm watching the 6th crime show of the day, who listens to me when I feel upset, who encourages me when I feel confused and who knows me so well she would NEVER send me a gorillagram at work!
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