Not Strong Enough

Was up early on a Saturday for a track meet.  Gone are the days I can just hop in the shower and head out the door!  Just a few months ago I finally figured out how to add putting on makeup back into my routine.  I was tired of hearing my 12 year old tell me how ‘tired’ I look.  Now I still appear tired, but at least my face shows it with a rosy glow and lined eyes!

As I was rolling through my fog of having to function early Saturday morning, I began to ponder over the latest action news in my normally obsolete romantic life.  Understandably, I’m really not looking to date.  I’ve always said that if God wants me to have a man in my life, He’ll literally drop him in my life.  In January a guy asked me out…in church.  Considering the atmosphere I was in, I agreed. 

Very upfront about my situation, I gently informed this guy just how many things he’d have to wrap his arms around if he became a steady pillar in my life.  I hold firm that any man has to have a very big heart, and very large arms, to wrap around my life.  It’s not just me – but one pre-teen, one infant, two cats, one old blind deaf, dog, my mom who comes over practically everyday to help, a job that is worked from home, and a house that’s constantly a revolving mess.  That’s a lot to wrap around.  He seemed to envelop this, stating he commends me for working at home so as not to utilize day care and having someone else raise my kids, and that he’d worry if my house was neat as that would mean I wasn’t focusing on my family or my job.  Unreal, I thought.  Who is this man?  I was not used to the support and it seemed his values lined up exactly with mine. 

I’ll spare you the gory, mushy details.  Two months later after a bit of a slow run, I receive a phone call stating he wasn’t coming over as planned because “the guys” were at his house for a ball game.  He quickly transitioned into a very roundabout conversation that led me to wonder what had just happened when I had hung up the phone.  There was talk about it being slow (wasn’t that what we had agreed to do?  Move slow and get to know each other?).  That it is amazing because I am one of the greatest women he’s ever dated, and he just can’t say anything negative, but that I have ‘a lot going on’ (um, I know – didn’t I tell you that?).  At one point he even stated that he was glad we talked about this lull between us and we’ll see how it goes.  Then it quickly moved into the “I’m so glad we’re friends, and you can’t have too many good people surrounding you”, at which point his friends started getting louder and he said he better get to the game.  I hung up the phone and actually had to sit and translate what had just happened.  I came to the conclusion that he had just broken it off.  Yeah, go get your friends buddy.  And here’s a hint – if you don’t want to spend your next four decades single like you’ve spent your last four, don’t break up with a girl as your friends sit in the next room watching the game.  Be respectful enough to at least do it in person and plainly communicate through it!  I watched an interview with Aretha Franklin a few Sundays ago.  The host politely asked the famous singer about her love life – or the lack of it.  Smiling in her quiet fashion, she promptly responded that none are strong enough.  I double that, sister!

As the day winds down to a close and the once applied makeup wears off, I know I am strong enough, even if someone else is not.   It can get lonely being the strong one every day, all day, but I know my shoulders are strong, my heart is big, and my arms can wrap around this house and all those in it.