They laughed at me. “You’re 29! No way! You look like 20, maybe younger.” One sweet Karen mom guessed I was seventeen. She didn’t see those few silver hairs and the smile lines. As we sat in the family’s makeshift house, the wrinkle lines of her hard life made her look older than she was. The Thai police came later that year and destroyed the dwelling. They were squatters. Never mind that they couldn’t go back to Karen state or the landmines just might make her a widow should her husband try to plant rice in their fields again.

According to my friends from Burma, I only had a year to find a man (or be found!) or I would soon have the label of ah-pyo-gee. It had a nice ring to it until I looked it up in the dictionary – spinster. A visible cringe spread across my face. The only image that word conjured up was of a pioneer-era schoolmarm with wire-rimmed spectacles, her hair in a bun, pursed lips, furrowed eyebrows and a book in hand. I wanted to stomp on my glasses and burn my books.

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There’s a line in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that describes the human situation well – “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired” (81). I’m in that last category. I’m tired, very tired.

The busyness of my day is filled with social work, pursuing justice for newly arrived refugees into the US. Though rewarding, it leaves me exhausted. As I open my attic apartment door dating back from the 1920’s, I almost half expect to find a dashingly handsome gentleman pining away until he can spend the evening with me. The mirage melts in the emptiness accompanied by the ticking clock. I don’t know where to find him or where to be to be found so I just pray for the ache to be removed or for saintly patience to wait out the prime of life. Some days I can’t wait for menopause.

Instead of waiting for the big Question, I search to hear a small one, “Would you like to go out for coffee?” Never mind that I don’t drink the beverage. I’ll order tea. For now, it would just be nice to be noticed. Maybe I have a fairy tale in my head that if a fellow actually pursued me, simple me, I wouldn’t be so tired. There’s a hope that sits somewhere deep in my heart that a true interest in who God made me to be would create new energy in this slight frame. And if, if I just had more energy, I could give more, serve more, love more.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

A rose is a beautiful flower but its stem shoots out atrocious thorns. My middle name is Rose. I think it’s a pretty name but I used to view it wrong because my view of myself was poisonous. Here was my thinking – a rose has thorns, therefore it causes great damage to others. But the other day I looked up at a dried rose my dad gave me last year and I saw the thing differently – a rose has thorns to protect it.

★                    ★                    ★

I’m pushing into the 30’s now. Every letter from the border includes the question – “Ye-saw she-la?” (Do you have boyfriend?). They have my reply memorized now.

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The day came and went. Others ate cheese cake and chocolates and maybe drank champagne. Who was St. Valentine anyway? A Catholic priest in Rome who helped those persecuted under Claudius II. Because he would not renounce his faith, he was beaten and beheaded on February 14th. And this is love, “that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

 ★                    ★                    ★

She doesn’t ask for much – to have shelter, clothing, food, faith, fellowship and to keep learning more English. Having left Burma, her and her husband sought a better life, or so she thought. In his wounded anger and pain, he would hurt her, hit her and abuse her. She thought it would be different once they came to the US but it started again.

“I want to make his life better. I will give my life for him.” She sees the potential leader he could be even as she looks down at her bruises. And she prays for him – his clenched fists, his hard heart, the taunt lips of rage and squinting eyes from the hangover. She even straightens up the haphazardly thrown war books on the bottom of the TV stand.

“You are lucky; you are free.”  Yes…I am lucky, blessed, protected and so tired. My God, you alone hold this world and I trust you even when I don’t understand.