The questions start early, and they never really stop.
“When’s your turn?”
“Haven’t you found someone yet?”
“I’m praying for your future husband.”
As if I had an expiry date stamped across my forehead. As if love were something to be scheduled, arranged, predicted—like a train running neatly on its tracks, pulling into the station on time.
As if I hadn’t already lost a love I would have died for.
But no one asks if you’re still grieving. They ask when you’ll be ready to move on. They ask if you’ve tried dating apps, if you’re “putting yourself out there,” if you’ve considered lowering your standards—because apparently, at some point, that’s the logical next step. They ask, and you smile, nod, sip your coffee, and resist the urge to throw it in their lap. Because no one really wants to hear that some love doesn’t fade. That some shadows don’t lift. That some wounds ache even after they’ve healed.
And in Christian spaces, it is worse.
Dating isn’t just about finding someone; it’s a witness. A public display of patience and propriety, a carefully choreographed courtship where doors are left open—metaphorically and literally—so the whole community can watch your unfolding love story like a Hallmark movie they personally commissioned.
Older Christians become self-appointed matchmakers, introducing you to their sons, their nephews, the “wonderful young men” they just know you’d hit it off with. They pray over you—not for healing, not for peace, but for a husband. Because marriage is the ultimate win, and your singlehood is a problem to be solved.
And so, like a good sport, you try.
You meet the nephews. You say yes to the coffee dates. You log onto the apps.
And there are nice enough men. Kind, polite, ticking all the right boxes. But there’s no fire, no knowing. Just awkward small talk and the gnawing sense that you are performing—trying to look accomplished, interesting, credible enough to be seen as a whole person rather than just a placeholder for someone’s future wife.
You leave those dates feeling more alone than ever.
Because once, you had something real. Once, love wasn’t a transaction, a series of checklists, a strategic endeavor. Once, it was raw and deep, a connection that didn’t need explaining. But that love is gone, and now you are left to play the game.
And the rules have always been clear.
Boy likes girl. Boy asks girl’s father for permission. Father says yes. And before you’ve even caught your breath, you are engaged, because that is the natural progression of things. That is the path. That is the plan.
And if you once tried to follow it—if you once, as a barely-grown woman, found yourself betrothed because that’s just what you do—you carry that weight with you, too. The knowing. The loss. The quiet exhaustion of a life mapped out before you had time to choose it.
They say, “God will bring the right person.”
But what if He already did, and I lost him?
What if the plan didn’t unfold the way they said it would?
What if—just maybe—love is not a prize for obedience, but a fragile, fleeting thing that sometimes, no matter how tightly we hold it, still slips through our fingers?
And what if—after all the questions, all the waiting, all the tired smiles—you simply give in?
Not to love. Not to some grand divine romance.
But to the weight of time, to the unspoken deadline. To the quiet, creeping fear that you are unfinished without someone beside you and a baby in your arms. And so, with a steadying breath and a prayer that this time, it might hurt less, you take the leap. Hoping. Wishing. Wondering.
And finally, finally—at the ripe old age of middle adulthood—you are a proper grown-up.
At least, that’s what they’ll say.
Girl Kaleidoscope 