Today’s Guest Post is by Kaki Olsen. Kaki Olsen grew up as a Boston Mormon and still holds her faith in the Red Sox as sacred as her regular religion. She has held many callings, ranging from Ward Chorister to full-time missionary in San Fernando, CA. She currently works at a group that helps applicants for disability, but is also a novelist, essayist and part-time writing mentor. Her first novel, Swan and Shadow, will be released in March, 2016.

Mother’s Day is a perennial challenge for some people. There are widows whose children have lost touch, women struggling with infertility, women who have had miscarriages, women who struggle to feel like good mothers… The list could go on for pages.

This past Mother’s Day in my family ward, I started crying mid-rest hymn and couldn’t stop. It was so bad that I had to go home for Sunday School and come back when I had pulled myself together.

I am what I call a Re-Single Adult. Twelve years ago, I reconnected with a friend from BYU and we married in the Salt Lake temple eleven years ago. Ten years ago, a judge granted me an annulment on the grounds that my my in-laws’ withholding his history of violence was fraudulent. I have not been able to find love since.

I was told many things before marriage about preparing myself for the sealing ordinance. Since 2005, when I moved into a dorm at BYU and started going to singles wards again, I have heard even more statements, such as these verbatim examples:
“This ward has a low marriage rate because you do not understand the importance of the plan of salvation. If you did, you would marry.” ~Stake President
“You dishonor the priesthood by choosing to be single.” ~Home teacher
“The Lord sends eternal companions to those who have improved themselves enough to merit them.” ~Fireside speaker

Don’t mistake me; I have a good life. I’m gainfully employed, professionally published, religiously active and surrounded by friends who support me. I speak two languages, play six instruments and travel worldwide on my own dime. The response to this last thing, however, illustrates a point I’ll be addressing: I’ve been told that I travel to fill the hubby-and-baby-shaped hole inside of me. I am full of the light of Christ, but as a single, I am apparently empty inside.

Proverbs 31:28: “Her children arise up, and call her blessed.” You may think that my tears were a result of having left my temple marriage without children. The person who told me recently that my baby-hungriness could have been fixed if I had just stayed with my ex certainly thought so. It is not that simple. I cried because it has been years since anyone called me blessed.

I went looking for instances in which people arise up and call singles blessed. Robert D. Hales in this last General Conference had wonderful words of counsel for the unmarried adults of the church, but it was a talk full of cautions about our single habits. I had to reach back to 1997 to find an address that saw single adults in the same glowing light as mothers. (If you would like to read that, it’s “A Conversation with Single Adults” by President Hinckley.) Women who are on a first-name basis with the maternity ward staff are lauded in every conference; those singles who are still subjected to perennial lectures on extra-marital sex are not.

My intention in this post is not to whine about the injustice of being single. My intention is to address my fellow single sisters and assure you that someone arises and calls you blessed.

To the single women of the church, I see you and so does the Lord. In Proverbs, it describes you as someone who opens her mouth in wisdom and kindness. People are trying to constantly fix you so you can be marriage-worthy, but you are virtuous women and your price is above that of rubies. This virtue is not dependent on whether or not you are in the repentance process; it means that you are working out your salvation. You are not afraid to ask the priesthood for help and to offer it to them. You often serve as the family to those who have none. You bear with patience the affliction of people who well-meaningly tell you that Captain Moroni is saving himself for you in the next life. You serve inside and outside the temple. You serve and strive and are constantly improving yourself, not because it will let you “merit” a husband, but because it is your habit. You are obedient to counsel and hearken unto the word of the Lord. You have an ear attuned to personal revelation.

I exhort you as the prophets would to hold fast to your faith. This is not because you are single, but because you are a prized and beloved child of God. You honor your Heavenly Father’s plan with your life. Whatever the future holds, I look to it with the hope of recognizing how I have been rewarded for my faithfulness. This is something I anticipate regardless of whether mortals appreciate it.

It has been 18 years since President Hinckley had “A Conversation With Single Adults,” but let me close with his words: “Please be assured of our love… respect…[and] our confidence in you…I bless you that if you will walk in faith and righteousness you will know much of happiness…and you will experience the love of the Redeemer of the world.”