Plans

One night, while watching The Bachelorette, I started thinking about a comment Jen made. (Yes. The Bachelorette can provoke deep thought!) She was visiting the family of one of the guys, and in passing conversation with a family member about her age of 28, she responded, “I never imagined I would be this age and not married.”

Hmm. I think we all experience this same phenomenon. As a girl, and even into young adulthood, we plan out our lives. We create this “perfect” time frame of what we are going to do when we are going to do it – career, marriage, family. The funny thing is, most of the things we try to plan, are the things that are beyond our control. We don’t always end up where we expect, but where we expect isn’t necessarily where we need to be. Accepting this reality is manageable for some, but for a control freak like me, it can be a day to day challenge.

I think about what I never imagined my life to be at 25. Not that I necessarily planned on having a marriage at this point, but I never imagined being this age and not have had what I would classify as a meaningful relationship. I never imagined being this age and not have truly been in love. I never imagined being this age and still not knowing my career path.

But that’s the thing about life. It takes you on a journey that you can never prepare for ahead of time, but equips you with the tools to handle it one day at a time. Although you might not be where you planned, you are exactly where you need to be even if you cannot see, feel, or understand the reasons why. It is only now, years later, that I realize that the boy that did or did not call, or the job I did or did not get, was ultimately for my good and allowed me to be stronger or wiser or better off.

Truly embrace where you are in this moment, even when you are tempted to play the comparison game with someone else’s life, because you may never travel down this path again. Take time to smell the roses (i.e. savor the selfish shopping sprees, relish in your scandalous single stories, and maximize your body’s ability to stay up until dawn). Have faith in all the good that is going to enter in your life, because the best things that happen are those that are the unexpected.