When my prom date canceled on me
Dress? Check. Dinner reservations? Check. Date? Check. Our senior prom, the biggest dance of the year, was almost here. I couldn’t wait to go.
But just a few short weeks before the event, my date called and told me that he couldn’t be my date anymore. The cost, the timing—it just wasn’t quite right, and he didn’t want to go. I graciously told him I understood. Then I hung up the phone and burst into tears.
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Generally, I avoided school dances. Dancing wasn’t my thing, and I was often the only one in my friend group without a date. That felt awkward and lousy. Better to avoid dances altogether than have those feelings. But, here they were, rearing their ugly heads again, before the one dance that I’d been genuinely excited to attend.
Often I was the only one in my friend group without a date. That felt awkward and lousy. Better to avoid dances altogether than have those feelings.
That night, as I burrowed into the pillows on my bed and wished that the hurt would just go away, my mom came in and started talking to me about my completeness as a spiritual idea. That might sound like a bizarre response to a sobbing teenager. However, I’d grown up attending Christian Science Sunday School. In my family, prayer was the first and obvious response to being unwell in any way—physically or emotionally. I’d had lots of healings of illness and injuries, but up until that point, I don’t think I’d ever prayed about a relationship problem.
My conversation with my mom centered on the two stories of creation in the book of Genesis in the Bible. In the first account, God, Spirit, creates everything—the entirety of the universe, including man and woman—and declares it good (see chapter 1). In this account, we discover that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God—spiritual, perfect, and complete. The second chapter of Genesis presents a radically different view. It begins with a mist going up from the ground and presents a hazy, obscured view of creation. In it, a man named Adam is created from dust, and a woman, Eve, is created by God from Adam’s rib. Basically, this account depicts woman as created to complete man—to be his companion.
My mom talked about how it sometimes feels like we are living in that second chapter of Genesis—incomplete beings looking for our other half in the form of a romantic partner to give us a sense of completeness. But that feeling stems from the mistiness of believing that we were all created of matter, as part of the lineage of Adam and Eve. In reality, we are all, every individual, made in the image and likeness of God, Spirit. We are complete, spiritual ideas that reflect all the beautiful qualities of Spirit.
I’ll be honest: At the time, the comforting mother love behind her words meant more than the thoughts she shared. Within a week, though, the prom situation was resolved. Unexpectedly, a friend who was a classmate offered to be my date. We had a lot of mutual friends, and he fit right in with my friend group. It was every bit the fun, memorable night with friends that I had hoped for.
I came to see that completeness doesn’t change with our relationship status. The wholeness we yearn to feel and the love we yearn to experience come from God, divine Love.
And that concept of spiritual completeness that my mom and I had talked about? Turns out, she was on to something. In the years after high school, I came to see that completeness doesn’t change with our relationship status. The wholeness we yearn to feel and the love we yearn to experience come from God, divine Love. Love may be expressed in a variety of ways at different times in our lives, but the substance of that love never varies because our relation to divine Love is unchanging.
Realizing that joy comes from God alone and is constant was comforting and gave me hope as I navigated ending unhealthy relationships. Trusting that I was always one with God, Love, healed loneliness—more than once! And eventually, knowing that my spiritual identity is forever whole and complete gave me a solid foundation for marriage. So while prom may be a distant memory for me at this point, the spiritual lessons I learned have remained crystal clear.