I don’t know if anyone other than missionaries uses this term, but “trunky” was sometimes used to describe missionaries getting close to the end of their service who were losing their focus—they already had their trunks packed.
When I said I was first called to emergency preparedness eight years ago, I know because I know how old I was. Tanasbourne is a young singles ward, being for ages 18-30. In some places where they have enough people there are units for older singles too, but not around here.
One month after I graduated from high school they started a new singles ward in the area and I started going. It was great. It wasn’t a big ward, but there were really awesome people in it, and we were a pretty tight-knit group. It was amazing. I left at times to go off to college, and then to go on my mission, and they changed the building where we met a couple of times and the name of the ward once, but basically I had been in that ward for twelve years, and then I turned thirty without having gotten married.
Now, no one kicks you out. Some people do linger, and then eventually take themselves off to the regular wards after a while on their own, but it was time for me to start thinking about it. I realized that I had been teaching Sunday school for three years, and it was on a four-year cycle, so I decided that I would stay for one more year, and I would complete the Sunday school cycle about the time I turned 31, and that would be the perfect time to move on (I’m a sucker for completeness). Then I got called to emergency preparedness.
Well, that kind of changed my plans, and I no longer had an idea in mind for when I would go out. I have thought about it at different times, and then I kept feeling like I was needed here, and this was where I belonged. The last time the bishopric changed, they brought in the Duncombe’s whom we have known for ages, and loved, and I went right in and told him “I’m old, but I feel like I’m needed here,” and he told me that I should do what I think is right. He told my sisters that they were there for as long as he and his wife were, but at least at the time he said I had a choice.
Well, time kept passing, and all three of us keep getting older, and yet still we feel needed here. At some point (it’s been over a year but I don’t remember exactly when we started), we started praying for people, going on the assumption that if there were people in the ward who needed us, then we could work harder on getting their needs met and on getting people out of the ward. Then we could get on with our own lives.
There were two parts to this plan. One was that we would really try and keep our eyes out for people’s needs, and be helpful, so we would pray for charity and inspiration together. Also, though, we were going to pick three guys who were pretty close to being ready to get married—maybe they just needed a little nudge—and pray for them every night, and then as they got married we could rotate in other people.
So far only one of them has gotten married (though many other people we have not prayed for have gotten married), but it just kept expanding, to where we are praying for nineteen people now (another one did get engaged, so that’s something). Maybe it is not working as intended, but it probably makes us better people, and more loving, which we need.
The point of this is that last year, I started feeling close to done. When they release the bishoprics they usually do it in December, and in October I started thinking that maybe this would be it, and I would be done, and yes, I had my trunks packed. Then, they didn’t get released, and I turned thirty-eight, and I started to see the error of my ways, but I couldn’t quite let go of the idea.
I was visiting with the bishop, and he was talking about all of the good I do, and his gratitude for that, and I started feeling about ten inches tall, and I knew I had been wrong, but I told him what I had been thinking anyway, and I got a little bit of a smackdown there.
I realized that a lot of my thinking had been pride-driven. At the best of times it does not feel great being 38 and single, but in a single’s ward, where there are people who were not born when I graduated from high school (not many, but still), at some point it starts to feel unseemly, but that was my ego.
Talking it over with my sisters, they pointed out that the unseemly part would be if I were chasing guys, which I am not. We have had some friends marry younger guys, and that can be okay, but everyone pretty much feels like younger siblings. (Well, actually there are two men who kind of are age-appropriate, but I can’t stand the one, and the other, well, it would be surprising if things went in that direction.)
Don’t get me wrong. There are other things that are hard about the ward. It is bigger than that original group, and I feel like there are more issues with cliquishness, and shallowness, and ego. There are a lot more people that frustrate me, where years ago I only remember there being one or two. (I know, different kind of pride.)
At the same time, that’s why we are needed. Our faith is strong—like our personalities—and we are committed to service. Julie and Maria are brilliant at helping girls who feel like they don’t fit in, and there are a lot of those. We are good at helping the other people who try and serve and get exhausted by their efforts. So yes, I know I am needed here.
I do still sometimes wonder if I’ll be done by the time I’m 40—surely I won’t have to still be in the young singles’ ward when I’m 40—but I really don’t know. All I can do is work with what I have got right now, here where I belong.
37 minutes walking outside
Push ups
Luke 17 – Luke 24
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