Availability

Throughout my life a pattern has emerged that has gotten me into trouble more than once. When it comes to matters of the heart, I tend to fall for someone who is unavailable. Especially if that person is a woman. Starting in junior high school, with a crush on an elementary school teacher who was straight, then a few years later a high school senior who was also straight. In college, I developed a crush on one of the BMOC's (Big Men On Campus). Turns out he was gay. Go figure!

My military career happened prior to DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell), so ANY female would have been off limits to me. Somehow my heart failed to get that message. Two fellow enlisted (female) soldiers, two officers (both female), and a male GI who declared his love for me three days prior to my shipping out for the next duty assignment. Timing is everything! All this happened years before I came out.

After moving back to the civilian ranks, the pattern continued. I came out with a married mother of two. She was followed by a teenaged alcoholic, another married mother of two, another alcoholic, and finally a woman 8 years my senior who was emotionally unavailable for a majority of the ten years we lived together. Needless to say, I'm a slow learner.

The latest learning opportunity came when I allowed my heart to fall for a woman long distance. After ending the destructive decade, finding this woman had been cause for hope. Maybe, just maybe, I'd found the right woman. Maybe my search was over. I thought things were going swimmingly, until she told me two months ago that she'd begun seeing someone closer to home. My heart broke into a million tiny pieces. Somehow this felt worse than the other situations.

What do I need to learn? Sometimes the grass isn't as green on closer inspection as it once seemed. Red flags are visible now. Perhaps those flags had been waving all along, but I chose to ignore them.

I so want to fall in love. But I want to do so for all the right reasons, not the wrong ones.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (others), courage to change the things I can (myself and my reactions), and wisdom to know the difference.

Amen.