Ministering Angels

Thursday, August 04, 2005

DC Follow Up: Nausea-Inducing Email

By Sarita

i thought this article TOTALLY SUCKED, and futhermore, it just instills the ideas that may or may nor pre-exist in people's minds in the lds and non-lds culture. it's messed up and stupid, get over the stereotypes and move ON already! if you're not freakin married by 33 then IT'S YOUR FAULT, PERIOD. If you didn't make eternal marriage your focus -oh well, you suffer, too bad.. blah blah... don't go swearing and winning that you are not married because nearly EVERY ONE ON EARTH COULD BE MARRIED IF THEY REALLY REALLY PURSUED IT AND CARED AND PUT FORTH A STRONG EFFORT! too many people in the NOVA and DC area focus too much on their stupid careers and collegiate accomplishments....


what did Richard G. Scott come to talk about about a year or so ago (SPECIFICALLY TARGETTED TO THE DC SINGLES)?.. Eternal Marriage needs to be your #1 focus after your mission (for the fella's) and your #1 focus alongside college (for the ladies).. ---if you heed that counsel there is no way you'll be 30 and over and not married (except for a rare few people who had huge remarkable things that excuse them from that -such as serving your country)! most ladies who are 33 and not married are doing 2 things wrong.. 1) they are completely focusing on everything BUT finding a guy, asking guys out, flirting, looking good for the fellas, whatever it takes to get a chicken boy to notice them and ask 'em out AND/OR 2) they are fat or overweight because they don't make an effort to exercise. shoot i could be 33, not married and fat VERY EASILY, but i KNOW i have to get off my butt, and when i'm not in the office or in a class, or at church activities, go running, be active, do some freakin sit-ups, keep myself healthy, NOT GIVE INTO the "cookies, cookies, brownies, browines, and oreo's oreo's, oh and ice cream ice cream" at EVERY SINGLE FLIPPLIN LDS EVENT! just say no. it'll become a habit and as you eat more healthy, cookies won't be appealing anymore... get over your bad habits, control
them, MAKE yourself pretty for men ... heck, i would rather have a guy who's fit and takes care of himself and has a testimony, then some guy who is supposedly keeping 'all' the commandments, but some how forgets the word of wisdom and is weighing in at 335. C'MON FOLKS... get real! nobody wants to marry someone who they are not physcially attracted to... (perhaps some will, but not many) .. - if you are not attractive, old, and not married CHANGE YOUR PHYSICAL APPEARANCE to become as beautiful as your INSIDE APPEARANCE... PERIOD! If my bishop of my single's ward can run in his first marathon in his 40's then there is NO EXCUSE for anyone else to not be physically active.

THERE YA GO! i'm done. that article sucked, just like the movie "single's ward" which portrays things that needa be fixed as being "cool, normal, and okay" being 33 and not married isn't even normal as a non-LDS person... i am a recruiter for my job and make calls ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY all the time and TONS of men and women around 21-26 are married (some even have kids) -and, yeah, THEY ARE NOT LDS. it is NOT so abnormal to be 22 and happily married w/ kids as mormon culture potrays it to be -in the world outside of mormon culture. -and, mormons out of ALL PEOPLE have AMPLE opportunities to find equal companions on the same page w/ the same goals to be happily married too. ROCK ON TO ALL YOU YOUNG MARRIED COUPLES, AND PROPS TO EVERYONE IN THEIR MID-LATE TWENTIES WHO ARE GETTING HAPPILY HITCHED IN THEIR MATURE PRIME.

anyways... i hope somebody woke up and got a clue from this.. no more wining from people over 30 -there is no excuse (no offense).

-M.H.

19comments

19 Comments

at 8/04/2005 11:43 PM  Anonymous said...

Is this guy married? Because he sounds like a keeper to me :-)

 

at 8/05/2005 12:55 AM  Anonymous said...

The writer is a 22 year old single female.

 

at 8/05/2005 1:26 AM  Dirk said...

What a (pardon my mormon french)"Freakin" idiot. (And I'm not talking about her inability to compose a readable email).

Someone said the author was a single 22 year old young lady? Well for her sake I hope she doesn't remain single for long, but should she find herself single and over 30 I hope somecaring person shares this with her.

Thanks for posting this. I didn't really have much to say on the original story, I agreed with the sentiments but not the delivery. But this, this drivel beats any dislike I had for the original article hands down.

I, a 33 year old single male, would love a chance to talk with this young lady. Oh but then again she tossed in an excuse for me, after all I've been serving my country for 12 years (more than half her life). So what excuse do all you other 30+ singles have? Guess none, you should all hang your heads in shame, come to think of it I still probably ought to join y'all after all, since I'm only in the National guard and was only deployed overseas for a little while.

Lets see can I express anymore sarcasm? Not really right now. Guess I'll close.

 

at 8/05/2005 2:00 AM  Anonymous said...

Complete tangent: Why doesn't this blog use paragraph separators? Every single post is one long paragraph, and for something like this particular extremely long post, makes it very hard to read.

 

at 8/05/2005 7:34 AM  Dirk said...

Actually I think that the structure of this post was intentionally left in it's difficult to read original form.

If you look at earlier posts they are seperated into neat manageable paragraphs.

 

at 8/05/2005 7:57 AM  cat said...

Oh. My.

She has some serious delusions about how great she must be in order to give us such sage advice, and about the actual, real world.

I just can't really say anything to something that ridiculous.

 

at 8/05/2005 8:37 AM  Kate said...

Hi everyone. Let me begin by saying that I am not a member of the LDS church, but I am good friends with Cat (who comments from time to time), and I am a practicing Christian. This discussion is a very timely one for me, because as a nearly 32 year old woman, who has never really had a serious boyfriend, I share the angst and concern for my own future regarding marriage that the woman featured in the DC City Paper article does. The Christian church, at large, is baffled over the issue of the "older single member." No one knows what to make of us. We're not exactly an anomaly, but still significanly more rare than those who marry witin a "reasonable timeframe."

Marriage is instant social, spiritual, and fiscal legitimacy. It is rewarded in a way that even living a life of uncompromised holiness as a single is not, even though Jesus, whom we are to imitate and value above all other human standards, because of his purpose, was not a married adult at the time of his death at the age of 33.

God's timing and providence when it comes to the issue of marriage cannot be discounted. In other words, it is entirely possible to really desire marriage, and to reasonably avail one's self to opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex, to be "doing everything right," and still not have it yield a marriage proposal. This is not a formulaic prospect. Several things are at work.

To suggest that one is not married because one has either a) not made it a priority, and/or b) is fat is both a gross oversimplification of the nature of human relationships, and supremely unfair.

Physical attractiveness is very important, and whether or not someone chooses to enhance his or her health by toning up and slimming down, there are still the issues of mental and spiritual fitness to consider.

(as a sidebar: Please note that we are given no reason to think that the 33 year old LDS member featured in the article is overweight.)

I know of physically svelte men and women my age or younger who would do well to do an overhaul of their hearts and emotions, and who should take stock of their intellectual maturity before taking the plunge... yet, there is no provision in the e-mail this young woman wrote about that.

Lastly, I would say that working that hard to scare up a marriage, any marriage, is not really the point. Marriage, for its own sake, has tremendous value, but I believe there is a mate that God has chosen and predetermined for me, specifically. If I simply wanted to get married, then yes, perhaps I could be married by now. But I want God's best for me, and that can often mean enduring the discomfort of waiting, being discriminating, and not believing that my worth, where he is concerned, is entirely predicated upon being married, even though I very much desire that...

 

at 8/05/2005 9:21 AM  Sarita said...

Kate,

Thanks for your very thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. It is good to be reminded that Mormons do not have a monopoly on struggling with singleness.

Stacer: sorry about the paragraph stuff. In my platform, Mozilla, it all looks nice. I've not very smart technically, but I'll try to fix future posts.

 

at 8/05/2005 11:35 AM  Anonymous said...

Perhaps it's because you're using Mozilla and I'm using IE, because there are absolutely no paragraph breaks in the entire blog. It's making it hard for me to want to read, because the chunks of text are so huge.

This is every post, and every comment.

I've put two paragraph breaks in this comment to see how it comes out. For me it will be one big chunk of text.

 

at 8/05/2005 12:26 PM  Sarita said...

The nerve. Yes, it is important to excercise and take care of your body. I run 3-5 miles a day, try to avoid fatty,sugary,ultra carby foods. I eat a balanced diet. I try and be social when my schedule allows it. I've forced myself to be a flirt. Despite my healthy lifestyle, I do not look llike Jessica Simpson, and due to my unwillingness to compromise my ideals, I don't act like her either. Sorry Jess. Or this 22 year old know it all. There are things about the article that I didnt agree with as I try and stay positive about my singleness, but I'm not throwing myself at the first Tom, Dick, or Harry who'll give me the time of day. I'm seriously shocked by her ignorant remarks. That's right ignorant. So, honey, stop your w-h-i-n-i-n-g. Cuz this isnt what I'd call a winning attitude.

 

at 8/05/2005 2:06 PM  Sarita said...

And subject her poor child to that?
I know I get frustrated with my parents gentle nudges to exit singledom, I can just imagine the horror that would be her meddling and overbearing involvement.
Ouch, it hurst just thinking about it. :)

 

at 8/05/2005 4:38 PM  Anonymous said...

This 22-year old seems to be projecting her fears about not being married in a "timely fashion" by lashing out at the older singles. Her e-mail reeked of pent-up anger, finally able to be unleashed on a single (s' ward) target.

This e-mail says volumes more about her, and her beliefs about needing to be married by a certain age than any supposed "content" in her missive. She's obviously extremely insecure, not very well educated, and scared to death that she, too, will end up older and single.

 

at 8/05/2005 5:15 PM  Anonymous said...

Geez, Melinda, talk about visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children!

 

at 8/05/2005 7:42 PM  Dirk said...

Note to Stacer, it is a flaw with IE (Like thats a new event.) I just looked at the blog in Mozilla, Opera and IE.

And yes in IE you get no paragraph breaks, it's probably a flaw due to IE's failure to comply with HTML standards.

About all I can reccomend is to try downloading Mozilla or Opera, both are better anyway as they are much more versatile and much, much more secure than Interweb Exploder.

 

at 8/05/2005 10:12 PM  Anonymous said...

Was it her insertion of (no offense) immediately following the words, no excuse? At least she did not start with no offense meant and then rip into it as is generally the case. No offense has the stimulus response of getting us on the edge of the seat just knowing what is coming next. I hope that she does not suffer from a common ailment known as perfectionism. If she does, there is treatment. Perhaps she is among the vast ranks of the judgmental or insensitive. Most people can learn to be more sensitive and really have it come from the inside. I hope that life is not a cruel and humbling experience for this young woman. I will not say that I was like her in my views of others. I did suffer from perfectionism at one time though. I have learned a lot over the last decade about just how imperfect I am. Well, she is young and lacking of experience.

 

at 8/07/2005 1:44 PM  Jahn said...

Yikes! That e-mail is worse than anything I read on LinkUp.

They let people like this run around loose??

 

at 8/08/2005 1:41 AM  Anonymous said...

Aren't you friends with Sherpa, Jahn? She posted it on her boards.

 

at 8/08/2005 6:20 PM  Anonymous said...

The writer of the nausea-inducing email has issued an apology:
To everyone on the listserves: All Langley Ward, Colonial Wards, and
otherwise individuals:

I want to formally apologize for the commentary I made that was hurtful and
thoughtless. If you cannot forgive me, that is okay because I understand
-that aspect is between you and God, and not you and me.

But, to all that do not like me -do not worry I will not be coming to church
and you won't ever have to see my face or come across me. I will just stay
at home and read scriptures on Sundays and stuff like that -that's fine. You
won't ever have to meet me so no worries!
And, to those who had positive responses and would like to meet me -I hope
we can meet!
Again, I am very very very sorry. I hope you all can forgive me (deep
down), but I understand if you choose not to. Take care and best wishes to
you all.

Sincerely,

-(Name Withheld)

It's amazing how easy it is to embarass yourself in front of thousands (millions?) of people on the internet. Good thing I post anonymously!

If you live in the DC area and know this girl, be nice to her!

 

at 8/22/2005 3:22 PM  Andrea said...

Something similar to this happened (on a smaller scale) in my YSA ward early this year.

Context: A great guy--pillar of the ward--sent an email inviting people to various events, including a Friday-night get-together. He said (humorously, but accurately enough) that the guys should come, since they sure weren't asking out the sisters. A well-meaning and enthusiastic second-counselor's wife responded, indignantly telling the guys to date the wonderful, beautiful girls in the ward (the kicker was, "if you can't find a woman in this ward to date, you'll never find anyone!" Ouch!). Most of us just rolled our eyes and chuckled a bit.

One overzealous guy, though, unwisely chose this opportunity to flame the listserv regarding his bitterness about the girls' responsibility, church leadership pressure, and dating in general.

BUT....the great sister who moderates the listserv froze all postings for two days, correctly divining that the thread could only degenerate from there. Bless that woman. As it was, he got plenty of angry emails.

I sent an email to him (after several revisions and tonings-down) tactfully pointing out how some people might misperceive what he said, and suggested he clarify. After some helpful conversations, he petitioned the moderator for permission to write an apology/clarification. I felt badly for him--just as I do for this 22-year old girl. I think it's like Anon2 said--she's insecure and scared, and let it erupt as anger.

 

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