Worth The Wait

People think I’m crazy. Guys think I’m crazy. Men think I’m crazy. Boys as young as my nine-year old brother think I am crazy. Men older than my dad. Grandfathers older than my Pop. Sober guys. Drunk guys. Nice guys. Awful guys. They look at me in shock disbelief when I tell them ‘No I won’t be spending Christmas with my boyfriend, because I don’t have one’.

The grandfathers warn me I’m lucky they’re not my age. Fathers show me photos and talk endlessly about their masculine sons. Guys smile and strike up conversations and crack all sorts of jokes.

So why don’t I have a boyfriend?

I’m not against it. I’m just waiting.

Waiting for the right time. Waiting for the right person. Waiting til it feels right.

Sometimes you can have the perfect recipe, but the ingredients are wrong. The stars might be shining. The Christmas lights twinkling. The moment is perfect. But the guy isn’t.

People tell me ‘Nicola, you’re just a teenager. That’s what teenagers do. They go out. Have a bit of fun. You don’t have to be so serious all of the time. You don’t have to think that you’re going to marry the guy.”

Well why not!? What is dating about? It is about getting to know someone and seeing whether or not you’re compatible, right for each other and ready to enter into a covenant, promising to share the rest of your lives with each other.

And if marriage isn’t on my mind, quite frankly I feel I am wasting my time. If I am just in it for the moment, I am only going to confuse the poor guy and hurt both of us. I’m not teenage love material.

The reason I’ve never had a boyfriend is because guys don’t look at me and go, ‘She’s easy. She looks like a bit of fun’. I hold on to the hope of a guy that admitted that I’m ‘everything he wants in a wife’.  When he said that, I thought it sounded ridiculous, but it’s not until recently that I am understanding  the weight of what he said. For an eighteen year old guy to see something different in me. To see that I’m not a once off. I’m a keeper.

So I want to wait. I’ve waited over nineteen years, purity ring in tow. I haven’t waited this long to settle for any less that what feels right. I don’t mean I’ll definitely find Mr Right first time round, but I’ll choose not to go ahead when I honestly know that someone is not Mr Right. I’m not just going ahead for the sake of it.

Yes I’m a teenager now, but I won’t always be and I’ll have to live with who I become. So I want to make the right choices now, so that one day I can look back and be proud for being strong, rather than regret giving in.

One of my favourite bands, New Empire puts it this way:

When the timing is all wrong

When its hard to see a way out

We’ll look back on this day

This war has been won

I wanna say you have been worth the wait.

& I love what Charles Stanley says about waiting.

& To my future husband. I am waiting for you, so I can say you have been worth all my waiting.

– Love a now nineteen year old Nicola.