When I was 13, my best friend kissed a boy.
She was elated. I thought she shouldn't have. I was so dumbfounded as to why she would do such a thing. We knew we weren't supposed to date until we were 16. And we were definitely not supposed to do anything like that until at least 16. We both sat through those lessons together at church. So did he, for that matter. But they held hands. They told other people that they were boyfriend-girlfriend. And they kissed on the corner of her street one day after he walked her home. I thought she was weak. To me she was flighty and cared too much about what boys thought. I was so smug that I had never had done anything like that.
But I was so jealous. My own insecurities about attention from the opposite sex made me so judgmental. I had a crush on a boy and convinced myself that there was no way he could like me back and so I knew there would be no such innocent displays of affection for me. But I was also relieved to have the safety net of having to say no to boys who did ask me out or asked me to dances because I was terrified of rejection. What if no one wanted to date me after I did turn 16? What if no one ever kissed me?
Evil insecurities made me feel the need to be very self-righteous during my preteen years. I was the annoying girl who tried to use peer pressure or shame to get others to come on temple trips. I was the girl who asked my friends parents' if they thought I was being a good influence on their children. I was the one who tried to get all her friends to read the Book of Mormon in three months. The commandments were simple and obvious to me and I could see no reason that someone would deviate.
It really makes me cringe to think about how black and white I thought things were. And how good I thought I was.
2 comments:
I know Heavenly Father was preparing you for the amazing woman you are today in those pre-teen years, as much as you cringe about it now, I am so thankful for your testimony and the way it has never wavered.
Ohhhh, man. I was, shall we say, QUITE the earnest Mia Maid when I joined the church, and more than a little self-righteous. I could have written this post--except my dating-before-16 friend would have been my sister, who totally snuck around with her hundreds of middle- and high-school BFs even though my parents FORBADE us from going out with boys. I had almost no non-LDS friends by the time high school was over because of my overzealousness about the gospel. Ugh. It was awkward. I remember my first week at BYU, too--I was in that beloved old sanctuary known as the JKHB and heard a TA say "damn" over some frustration, and I was SHOCKED and HORRIFIED. How could this happen at BYU?! It took awhile to remember everyone was human--Megan included.
And I'll confess I wept when I heard the paragraph in my patriarchal blessing talking about my husband. I truly believed up until then that no one would want to marry me. Karl, in fact, was my first boyfriend--the summer I turned 21. Hooray for late bloomers!
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