Frozen Scared

Sorry.  This may not be very organized and coherent, but I'm just going to get it all out.

I am 22.  And everyone around me is getting married.  Okay, maybe not everyone, but it takes more than two hands for me to count the number of friends who've gotten married since college, and even more since high school.  Everyone is falling in love and saying "I do" and making babies.

But one friend just got divorced.  And she's just a little older than me.  I feel bad for not knowing about all this sooner, but we haven't kept in touch since Whitworth.  So I found out today.  And it really scared me.

I think coming from such a small school where everything seems safe and warm and full of possibility can be dangerous.  Do we trust too much?  Do we make too many concessions for the sake of "showing grace?"  Do we really even know ourselves as well as we think?  We are funny, complex, maddening creations, and I'm afraid we only start to figure that out after college.  But so many of us marry young.

All of these ideas have been stirring around in my head the last few weeks.  I've missed a few weddings, but thanks to Facebook, at least I get to see the pictures and hear the stories.  So now I have more married friends.  And then I saw Eat Pray Love which--despite some of the predictability of the story--got me thinking.  When is divorce good?  Did she just bolt?  Was it anyone's fault?  And then, of course, there are the times when I freak myself out by thinking, Oh my gosh.  What if I'm one of the divorce stories in five or ten years?  It terrifies me to think like that, and yet I do.

I think divorce is a very good thing in dangerous, unhealthy relationships.  Most of the women in my family have been in abusive, smothering relationships, and all of them were brave enough and smart enough to get out.  But being surrounded by all of the hurt makes me worry that somehow, I'll say yes to the wrong man, and we'll end up hurting each other in irreversible ways...

I think I'm a strong, capable person, but I also know how easily I can break.  I learned that the hard way my junior year at Whitworth.  I also try to trust God and know that He'll guide me in the direction I'm supposed to go.  But what if I miss the directions?  What if I'm just too happy or busy or independent or scared or hard-of-hearing?

And why do I always have more questions than answers?

Most of the time, I'm optimistic about finding the man of my dreams and making a beautiful life.  But other times, I'm just frozen scared.