The Missionary's Girl

Because this feels like the story of my life...here is a poem for everyone. Those going through it will relate and then everyone else will laugh...but hey, it's my life and lot's of others too! So here it is, a poem about the girl the missionary left behind for two years: 

                The Missionary's Girl:

Somewhere between the whirl of teen-age dates and the responsibility of matrimony, we find a lone creature called the Missionary's Girl.

They come in two varieties... engaged and hopefuls. They come in assorted sizes, weights, and colors, blue being the most common.

The missionary's girl is found at home, missing parties (Just the parties that have overzealous RM's), staying away from dances (too depressing without ??? there), paying her own way to the movies, and buying stationary by the gross.

Missionaries love them, young girls look up to them, parents tolerate them, postmen hate them, and weekly letters support them.

A missionary's girl is a composite. She has the appetite of a hormonally unstable 18-year-old girl, the enthusiasm of a wet noodle, the patience of Job, the persistence of a stainless steel salesman and the imagination of Scherazade.

She likes letters from the mission field, invitations to his home, long distance telephone calls, items for his scrapbook, pictures of him, and other girls who are waiting (I LOVE my MGs!).

She isn't much for Saturday nights out on the town ; people who say, "Two years is a long time"; or  “Don’t waste your time” or the classic “ so much can happen in two years” , new clothes with no one to wear them for; sad movies and music; movies with love scenes; knitting; wedding receptions; little sisters who date; calenders; and "Dear Janes."

A missionary's girl is an odd object: She can get lonesome, discouraged, and temporarily lose faith in the whole missionary system. No one else can write such cheerful letters in such a rotten mood. No one else can get such a thrill at the end of the day by the words, "Why yes, there is a letter for you." Nobody else is so early to bed and so early to rise.(More like....Nobody else is capable of writing such competent, lengthy, and entertaining letters in the wee hours of the morning.)

A missionary's girl is virtue with no chance to be otherwise, faith with twenty-four months to wait, prudence with 69 cents in her savings account, and beauty with no one to give a darn.

Yes, she is all this, but it will all be forgotten the day he receives his letter of release and, upon his arrival home she will probably utter the words she once considered trite, "It hasn't seemed like any time at all!"

~ Dan Valentine

You are welcome.

Until Next Time