Scattered Pearls – لُؤْلُؤًا مَّنْثُورًا

I know a 16 year old who is: married, has a three month old baby, is drop dead BEAUTIFUL, has memorized the entire Quran, is extremely sweet… and well yeah, all at the mere age of sixteen-almost-seventeen.

The first time I met her, I didn’t want to really talk to her because, I don’t know, it just seemed so weird. I’m about the same age as her. I felt like a child compared to her. My first reaction after hearing about how she was already married (and pregnant at the time) was that of… perhaps pity or “Ew! What on earth!? How did she do it?” At the time, I had the typical American mentality. I took “education” and college and career to be more important and if marriage was ever mentions, my initial reaction was “no way, not until I’m twenty something”. I didn’t want to be “friends” because I felt like we didn’t connect. I am, well, American and she was from Bangladesh and barely spoke any English. She spoke just a bit of Urdu so we’d try to converse in extremely awful broken Urdu…

But time passed… And my thoughts changed. I go through drastic changes in opinions almost every month. I learn from every event that takes place in my life. So almost nine months later, I met her again. She had the baby with her who is obviously just as beautiful as her mama . But this time, I didn’t feel like it was so wrong that she was 17 and had a baby to take care of or that she had gotten married so early. I didn’t feel like she was missing out on life. I actually felt like she was LIVING life.

Who has their entire lives set out at that age? I mean, normal kids our age are too busy stressing about school and college and tests and by the time they’re finally done stressing out, they’re almost 25 years old.  Ah well, the whole system is just retarded. Most guys want to have a career so they can support their to be families, and you can’t have that set out until you’re into your twenties. They make it so hard for you… just because they’re okay with having relationships out of marriage and we’re not. I really wonder if there’s a solution…

Oh, that reminds me of something I watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq_YMzx3M10&feature=related. A fifteen year old and an eighteen year old that want to get married because they think they’re “ready” and mature enough for it. Heck, the kid didn’t even know how much he earned in a year! I swear I’m a hell lot more mature! I know how to file tax returns and write checks and pay bills :) and cook and do the laundry and clean and blah blah. But alas, I’m still mama’s baby.