what now?

As frum from birth girls we are raised to serve a better purpose. Everything we do is for the ultimate purpose of serving God. We learn this as children and know that as adults we will do so by supporting our husbands and sons in their learning and help raise the next generation of righteous jews. Yet as we reached our twenties and then thirties for many of us this future never evolved into the present. No husband to send out to his chavrusa, no children to say modeh ani with. Initially we found other ways to serve our creator- chesed and tefila became our methods and we convinced ourselves that this was our role. Yet years into this we find that it is not enough. Sure we are still living as torah Jews but feel there must be more. God could not have sent us here just to wait it out. We are supposed to pass it on, leave a legacy. And more and more single girls seem to be questioning… what now?

expectations

One of the things that frustrates me most about the frum people is their expectation of how life will turn out. Though we claim everything is up to Hashem, we still expect He will do what makes sense to us. Walking with 2 women on shabbos one exclaimed to the other "you’ll probably make a chassunah soon". Yes, there is a good chance that this 19 year old beauty in discussion will be indeed be married within months. But there is always the hopefully slim chance that she will not be. This also comes up when working with a wedding party. Many times comments are made concerning who’s next, in reference to those still years away from dating. They take age order into account and if a brother is only a couple of years older than the girl it is assumed she will go before him, but possibly the same year. When these comments are made I pray that they not have to learn the hard way that life does not always turn out the way we assume it will.