Fourth Blogversary

Well, well, well. Four years of blogging almost every day. It leaves me almost speechless. In four years, I have had five blogs, although one only had 17 entries, so it doesn't really count. The ones that count are:

Seraphic Singles: Nov 4, 2006 - April 24, 2008
Still Seraphic (when I had to shut down the first blog because pushy men were figuring out who my girl friends were, and they freaked)
Seraphic Meets Bridezilla (after I got engaged)
Seraphic Goes to Scotland (after I got married)

and

Seraphic Singles (again!) because my publisher asked me to start it up again. This is all to promote my book, so I hope you have bought my book, people!

Life can change quite a lot in four years. The tone of the original Seraphic Singles, which you find in my book, the one you're going to buy if you haven't already, differs greatly from the tone of this blog because, as you know, I got married in the end. Trying to maintain Single Lady credibility when you are married is a real snore. However, I will always have been over 27 and Single for more than a decade, and now I have a Married Lady perspective on Single Life as well as having my Single Lady perspective on the topic well documented.

For a trip down memory lane, here is my first blogpost ever, coming at you from November 4, 2006, in a big cold bedroom in Brighton, Massachusetts. A version of this begins my book, Seraphic Singles (Novalis, 2010), in the USA, The Closet's All Mine (Liguori, 2010).

"Not every woman who wants to get married, gets married. This is a cold, hard fact that many of us want to run from. Similarly, not everybody who gets divorced and an annullment gets that second chance. Or we blow that second chance. Sometimes, our prince doesn't come.

There are a myriad of reasons why this prince might not arrive. Some are historical, like most of the men leaving town for work, or the anti-marriage trend of the Sexual Revolution. Some have to do with our circumstances: we work in a mostly female environment, or in a profession dominated by gay men, or in a profession dominated by celibate men, like priests and religious, or in a community where everyone else got married at 22. Some have to do with our poor choices: we dated the wrong man for a decade and have been dumped; we date only unmarriageable men; we are drinking alcoholics; we are using users; we are backstabbing bitches that no-one can stand to be around.

Some have to do with personal tragedies: we are physically scarred, maimed, or plain as a pan of milk; we are wheelchair bound; we are chronically ill; we are "old"; we have been irreparably slandered in our communities; we are big-boned, full-figured, or just heavy women, and no matter what we do, we cannot lose the weight. That is why Prince Charming has not come.

Or maybe not. Maybe some of us are just "too picky." I hear this one a lot, especially from grumpy single men. But what I, and many other chronically single women, usually want is just a nice man whose looks we find attractive, who is intelligent and funny and faithful, who goes to church, who has a job that he enjoys and is proud of, and brings in enough income so that if we lose our jobs, or have a baby, we all won't be in a financial mess. I wrote this once on a website, and a poster wrote, "Wow, you're picky!" So maybe these men don't exist anymore or were all snapped up when they were 22.

Or maybe not. Maybe it is an unplumbable mystery. Maybe, for some unscrutable reason of His own, God has decreed from eternity that many of my single friends and I will never find The Right Man. Maybe, in fact, we have been called to be Single.

I am a Roman Catholic, and for Catholics, being called by God to be Single, doesn't mean have been given divine sanction to be swinging singles, living only for ourselves and the moment. It means we have to figure out how we can serve God and neighbour as single women. Unfortunately, it also means putting up with a lot of disrespect and presuppositions from others, even other devout Catholics. Some people think that single women are selfish. Others think we are losers. What I hope to do with this website is give a lift to the thousands of single women who are gradually losing hope that they will ever get married (or married again), or who have decided to cut their losses and embrace the state of life God has placed them in."

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I hope I'm still doing that.