You should have asked me for it...

...I would have been brave
You should have asked me for it
How could I say no?
And our love could have soared
Over playgrounds and rooftops
Now every park bench screams your name
I kept your tie
I'd have gone wherever you wanted
(Bloc Party)

I am back home. Back in Bowie. I haven't even begun to unpack. It feels good to be back, but it doesn't quite feel right yet, you know? That will take a while. It is just the absolute strangest feeling to be in a place that helped grow you up, in a place that is that familiar, but yet everything feels different. You expect it to always be the same place as when you were 10 or 12 or 16. But things change. Roads get wider. Friends get married. Friends even get separated.

One of my oldest and most loyal friends has taken the first step towards divorce and the scary thing is I know she is making the right decision. Is it ok for me to say that when I want to be a minister? Well, I want my friend to live a fulfilling life more.

That situation makes me think so many divergent thoughts.
On the one hand, maybe people (not my friend specifically, just the whole world or rather our whole country) really do need to think harder before entering into such a HUGE committment. What is the divorce rate now, 60%?? It seems like people who love each other don't have a fighting chance! There are more reasons to break apart than stay together. Marriage is a big deal, and I wonder how many people enter into it really REALLY meaning that they love this person enough to see them every day, to watch them get fat, to give things up for them, maybe even to one day perhaps have to wipe their ass if they get a terminal illness. I think about these things and they span a whole lifetime, but then I even look at my friend and her year and a half with her spouse and I think....man, only a year and a half and they still faced some seriously hard stuff that maybe I never gave enough thought. Maybe people who are freaked out by relationships are onto something....maybe the fear is also a reverence for what is so big.

But then, on the other hand, I also feel like this proves to me that there are no guarantees. What do our promises and vows to each other really mean? They are more than just proclamations of strong feelings but each person has to say their vows for themselves, and we can only make our promises for ourselves. We cannot guarantee the keeping of any other promises. So maybe when we do end up getting married, we need to make the vows to ourselves, not just to the other person. Maybe we need to promise ourselves that we are in this. We are really in this with both feet.

And maybe when things beyond our control happen, as they inevitably will, we can know that we were in it with all our hearts. At least we will be able to keep that promise to ourselves.