I had almost this exact same thought the other day about friendship. You can be friendly, you can go out and meet people and talk to them and listen to them and even serve them, but real friendship is something that you fall into. You find someone who just *gets* you and you get them, and you become devoted to each other without much difficulty at all. It just happens. You can’t make it happen. These kinds of close relationships, where people are truly invested in each other, are rare and precious. They really are miracles.

Emily U’s comment about being unworthy recipients and rain falling on the just and unjust is spot on.

I think this is a little bit of a matter of semantics. You are lucky to have found yourself a husband. Yes. And kudos to you! I’m so happy for you to have gotten “lucky”!

I’m a user of the word lucky. But I think it’s important to note this “luck” is in fact a blessing. I would bet you would call your husband something good in your life. Well we know all good things come from God. So really we just call it a blessing too. That doesn’t have to mean you “worked” hard in the righteous arena to get that blessing. People who aren’t “righteous” get married all the time.

But let’s be honest, sometimes working hard in the righteous arena does in fact translate to blessings. If you keep my commandments you will prosper in the land. Same thing, different language. It’s just important to remember that you can’t tie a blessing to a certain “righteous” act. But I know 100% that if I try to live a more righteous life I will be blessed. It just may not be in the way I expected. It’s very possible that I study my butt off in school (yep again) and in the scriptures (you know, for the righteous aspect) but still totally fail the test. But I know for a fact a blessing will have come soBlessings come in all shapes and forms.

I also don’t think calling your marriage a blessing needs to take away from the idea that you won the roulette game. …which is often how dating can feel – Is this guy going to be a winner or make me lose all my sanity.

And I don’t think the fact that you have a marriage and that it can be called a blessing needs to lessen any of the blessings I’ve received as a single woman.

But also, thanks for not wearing an “I’m engaged and you’re not” shirt in church. That is super thoughtful. But please still celebrate. We’re still happy for you! Like Rachel from Friends I’m 90% happy and 10% not….well more like 80 and 20!

I’m an avid tennis player and I would contend that your tennis comparison is entirely about choice. You choose to hit the ball at a certain angle and with a certain degree of force. This, admittedly along with other factors, such as how tightly wound the net is, weather conditions, etc, will determine how the ball lands and if it falls on your side of the net or on the other. It’s not luck.

Now, I’m not stating that all of the choices are under your control (who wound the net? who scheduled the match? what spin did your opponent put on the ball?). But that’s life. You make choices and deal with the consequences, intended or otherwise. You won’t always get your desired result, though. Everything that happens has a cause, whether or not we are aware of it.

Up until about a year ago, we had a counselor in our YSA branch presidency who was convinced that most of us in the branch were single because we secretly didn’t want to get married, we were proud of having held out. He would stand up in Sunday School and call us all to repentance for not having strong enough testimonies of marriage, not trying hard enough to get married, not being humble enough to get married, etc. etc.; and then he’d promise us that God had someone special picked out for each of us. Maybe God does; I don’t know, but I do know that listening to this tripe — from someone who’d gotten married less than a year off his mission and had never had to really live as a single adult in the church — was helpful to no one. It was clear that he believed he’d succeeded in getting married — and that was definitely, in his ledger, a success — because of his own righteousness and industriousness; thus we must all be single because of our poor choices. (Also, he was a year younger than me, and insisted on calling us all “kids,” lest we forget that “single adult” is actually an oxymoron in the church.)

Yvonne, I’m happy to take what you say even further; I think that if women want to date, they should ask guys on dates — there’s no reason to leave all the work to the men. But that’s not really what this is about, is it? It’s not just about my being willing to put myself out there and ask guys out and flirt and whatever — it’s about whether there’s anyone I can put myself out there for; whether the happenstance or providence of my life puts people in my way that I can date or marry. So much depends on things I have no control over, long before my personal interactions with guys even enters the picture.

But, being tongue tied and too shy to speak does not help. There might not be one thing a person can to do make things happen, but there are things women do to let men know they are interested an available. It can’t hurt to practice doing them and help lady luck out a bit.