I’m now 32 years old.
I was just looking back over my early posts and found great appreciation for my humor. And the blunt declarations of my passions. Those passions still exist but how they have mellowed…not for lack of desire but in my being far more comfortable in talking about sex and masturbation and porn and singleness. I’ve always wanted these things talked about freely which is why I started writing, but that isn’t to say it was always easy. Now shame over it is broken and I feel free to share with people openly about it even face-to-face.
I also think that the all-consuming longing for a spouse has lost its all-consumingness as I have grown as a person and my life has expanded. The longing still exists but patience and gratitude have tempered the sharp hunger-pangs.
I am so thankful that I am able to address and work through childhood wounds and unhealthy beliefs in counseling, and thankful that I’ve learned what I know now about emotional health before my next relationship. I think that all these years without Husband will mark our marriage with a gratitude that could not be earned otherwise. Not only gratitude of having one another at last but gratitude that he gets this version of me.
As time has passed I’ve had to grieve the losses. I will not be a young bride with a young body. I will have wrinkles and he will not know me without them. I will never know what it was to fall for a boy and experience young love. I won’t have the 20’s level of stamina for adventures together. I will have spent a good third of my potential life having never been kissed. I will not be the ingenue I dreamt of being in my youth. Such things hurt even still.
But.
I see now that on the other side of the pain of those losses, on the other side of years dealing with loneliness and struggling with shame and identity and making mistakes and changing friendships and attending weddings and horniness of body and soul and raging at God and delighting in Him and surrendering and surrendering and surrendering yet again and earning wrinkles by living life…on the other side of that is a woman who holds the beauty of wisdom instead of the mere beauty of innocence. I’m grateful that my husband gets to look at this version of me and see a deep understanding in my eyes that hold greater compassion and kindness due to the loss that I’ve endured. He gets to experience my positivity born out of resilience instead of naïveté. He will hold in his arms a me that is more me than ever before instead of someone who looked to find herself in everyone else and didn’t even realize it.
The wrinkles are worth the maturity that accompanies them. As they deepen so does my understanding of who I am and what matters and what doesn’t. I’m thankful he gets this version of Ace because I am far healthier and more capable of living and loving fully than I was before. Loving and knowing myself better is 100% better and more desirable than any of the things I’ve “lost.” The wrinkles are worth it.
Confessions of a Horny Christian Single Girl 