To The Girls Who Have It All Figured Out

I used to be you.

I had extremely high hopes for my future and I had it planned out to the smallest detail.

At age fourteen I already had my mind made up as to who I was going to marry. I had day dreamt over and over again every detail of my future wedding. I knew how many kids I wanted and had already picked out their names. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, where I wanted to go to college, and even the location in which I wanted to purchase my first home.

I was young, I was a dreamer, I wanted the fairytale life, but instead I paved the way for many let downs.

Out of the many previously mentioned desires, only one of them actually went as planned − I married my high school sweetheart. I never got my dream wedding − I actually didn’t have a wedding at all. I started off at my dream school, but ended up transferring after a year, graduating in two and a half years, and completely missed out on “the college experience.” Seeing my lifeless cats lying in the driveway after being mauled by the neighbor’s dogs caused me to decide against becoming a veterinarian. My first home was purchased in a town roughly three and a half hours from where I wanted it to be. I haven’t had children yet, so there may still be hope for that.

Although I did marry the person I wanted, it doesn’t mean it worked out.

We both held on too long to the feelings we experienced when we first met. I’ll admit, it was magical, but it was also short-lived.

We dragged out the relationship, hoping that those feelings would return − they never did. Holding on to those expectations only made us worse in the long run. We continued to see each other the way we did in the beginning, not allowing room for growth and change, rather despising it.

My purpose in telling you all of this isn’t to depress you or to make you lose hope; I just want to assure you that it is okay to not have a plan. Planning unintentionally sets expectations and when things don’t go according to that plan, hearts get wounded. Planning unintentionally causes you to force things and I think we have all learned by now that that doesn’t work.

Sometimes allowing things to transpire on their own can be the best thing possible.

One day I decided to stop forcing my life to go as planned and that’s when I found happiness − I let go of trying to get my marriage back to the way it was when we first started dating, I moved back in with my parents, and I became a “yes” woman. I used to be the girl that wouldn’t accept spur of the moment plans, but now I’m learning to say “yes” more often than not.

In reality, no matter how much you try to stick to your plan, God’s plan for you is much greater. One of my favorite quotes goes, “God will wreck your plans when he sees that your plans are about to wreck you.”

So set goals, not expectations. Stop planning, start praying.