Another Snafu

One more thing about my writing that might garner negative attention. The main character decides on a career helping children, because she herself feels pressure not to ever have a family. This is definitely based on my own experience. With my first boyfriend Matthew, one of the areas where we felt pressured to not go through with our marriage was at church. Nowadays, churches seem to push getting married and having kids. I’m not sure if this change came about with the passage of time, or that our pastor himself was very unhappy in his own marriage and projected it onto all of us. The entire concept was not that it was wrong in and of itself to get married/have kids, but that God didn’t want what you wanted and God’s will wasn’t your will. Once I tried explaining this in therapy, years ago (not with my current therapist) and she started correcting me saying, “Actually, women are pressured TO get married and have kids.”  She literally sat there and told me my experience was wrong, because of what her own interpretation of “pressure on women” entailed. I come across this from time to time, sometimes people will say that churches pressure you TO do this, they don’t pressure you NOT to do this. BUT, “God’s will isn’t your will” can apply to literally anything. The emphasis that I want to put on the pressure we felt to go our separate ways was not the church saying that it was wrong to start a family, but that it was wrong to do what we wanted in general. It can apply to the exact opposite as well. You can want to remain single and childfree your entire life, but if God doesn’t want what you want, then that means get married and birth a basketball team. If you want to be an artist, God doesn't want that. If you want an alpaca farm, God doesn’t want that. One of my fears is that I’ll get negative reactions to the idea that a church was one of the sources from which I felt pressure to never have a family of my own. I want to make it very clear that it was a will of God thing. Here’s a copy paste from my 30K+ word document with Bible verses explaining what I mean. I thought I had more Bible verses. I know there are more that I can use, I just need to dig them up. (A hilarious side note- Grammarly was correcting and even trying to rewrite exact quotes from the Bible. Kevin said, “But I thought the Bible was perfect!”)

As far as last names for a pen name, I was remembering my first boyfriend who has now been deceased for almost 9 months. I would like to use his real last name as my pen last name in order to honor him, but it’s not a common name at all- so if anyone in his family got wind that it was me, it might be problematic. I am not claiming this to be a “memoir”, because some of my memories are shaky. It’s based on me, but it’s not me. So, since his first name was Matthew, I think a good pen last name would be Matthews. It would be the name of the character as well. In the copy paste below of the Bible verses from my main document, when I say Caleb Wills, that’s what I call him in the book (his pen name, so to speak). And for funsies, I added the AI image created of him and I with our hypothetical 7 kids we wanted. I like that pic. My commentary on the Bible verses is paraphrased. It’s not going to look like that in the book, it’s going to be worked into the actual story. 

At the same time as our engagement, the pastor of the college age ministries was preaching a sermon series on the will of God not being your will.  We in that group were all at the age where we were figuring out what to do with our lives.  We were picking majors and  working while attending college.  About half of us were paired into relationships.  One thing was for certain though, as I listened to the sermon series on the will of God- I knew that marrying Caleb and having children was “my will”.  It’s what I wanted more than anything else aside from my faith in God.  I ended my relationship with Caleb after I heard the following concepts in church:

Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but in the end it leads to death.”  (Marrying Caleb and having kids seemed right to me, did that mean it would lead to death?)

Proverbs 19:21 “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”  (My plan being to marry Caleb and have a family was something that God would have to prevail over?)

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding.”  (My own understanding was that I wanted to marry Caleb and have kids, was trusting the Lord the opposite of this?  As in, I couldn’t do both?)

I remember our pastor Jacob saying “Doing what makes you happy is so bad for Christians.  We aren’t called to do what makes us happy, we are called to glorify God.