part 31

Things that keep Melissa alive


Part 31: Hope


I don’t often get preachy on here but I’ve been studying hope lately and it has made me re-evaluate what it is that I hope for.

It’s important that “we overcome the temptation to lose hope,” as Elder Uchdorf said in his talk, The Infinite Power of Hope. So here’s my question: Why would we be tempted to lose hope?  It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, I understand why Satan would want us to be miserable, but why would we be tempted to be miserable? That’s just crazy. But yet, sometimes I actually am tempted to lose hope. And every time I do I think:  how stupid am I?!

My whole life, I’ve thought that there was no need to panic about marriage until I reach the 31 and beyond years.  So I didn’t.  I always reassured myself with things like: “It’s ok that I’m not dating anyone... I’m not 31 yet.”.  or “My older brother is still not married, the pressure is off!”.

But now that I’m actually 32, I realized that I’m supposed to start panicking. So I do - at really random moments.  This led to actually studying what it means to have hope.  And now that my hope of marriage before 31 has trundled on by, I realize that was probably not the best hope to have.  But I have still tried to replace it with other reasons why not getting married is totally fine right now:

• I want to marry someone young, so that means I have to be older when I marry, right?  But, the older I get makes me wonder: HOW young is my husband going to be?!
• I want to be financially established before I get married, anyway, so this is good....  but, what does that mean and is it ever going to happen?!
• I like to be able to travel the world anyway, so I’ll get lots of that in while I wait...Phoenix, here I come!  (Also, Lubbock and Cancun - I am a world traveler, afterall)

Sometimes I like to pretend that my husband is actually traveling with me. This is the two of us posing for silhouette pictures in south africa

• The longer I wait, the older and richer my relatives become who will be buying me wedding presents. I think this one explains its self.
• The longer I wait, the more accepting my mom will be of whoever I marry.  When she once said “Melissa, don’t marry an artist”, she now will say “he never graduated high school? Well, that’s totally fine these days!” 

I know these are not the best uses of hope in my situation, but these will hopefully keep me going until I develop true hope.