When I was younger, I thought I’d get married at the age of 21 because that’s what my mother did. I didn’t really have much else planned out as it related to my career and I definitely didn’t intend to be a writer, nor did I ever consider it at the time, but the marriage thing I just knew I would have down pat. In case it wasn’t obvious, I am not married and I’m now 22. Now if I defined myself by expectations I created as a child without a true grasp of how life and God worked, I’d feel very destitute and frankly, very much like a failure. Don’t get me wrong, for a long time I was fixated on getting married and really, just having someone because I thought it defined me. I thought my single status was indicative of dysfunction within me when in reality, my single status is indicative that there are plans God needs me to fulfill. It is not a punishment, but a special assignment actually. Of course, I still would love to get married someday, but I’ve learned to forget the timetable, to throw away the shoulds and the standards society heaps on people to be in relationships, to have a special someone, and more importantly, to have it all done by a certain age. However, as I’ve written in many ways and forms, our plans and expectations, regardless of how meticulously we believe we’ve planned them, will always yield to God’s will. But let me start at the beginning and provide context for where all this is stemming from and how I got here.
Naturally, this started with a conversation about life, family, and love with my father. Amidst the conversation, I asked him if he ever thought I’d get married, not necessarily because I don’t think I will but more out of curiosity of how he’d respond. And he asked, why wouldn’t you? But he also said when something is out of our grasp or we, by our own standards, are lacking something, it always feels that much further away. That can honestly be true of anything – a job, a home, and really, anything we desire and long for and especially, of love, and social media certainly doesn’t help. It is easy to feel like we’re missing something or that we are bereft of something everyone seems to have.
He told me this goal of mine to be married by a certain age is really insane, and he wasn’t referring to my desire to get married, but more so, the fixation of mine to have it done at a certain time or by a certain age. He also noted how insane it was that he married my mother at 23 – both insane and unheard and yet, God’s plan for them. The very experiences he had in his life cultivated a maturity in him very early on, which made marriage at such a young age only natural for him, emphasis on for him. This entire conversation was enlightening to me, frankly, but what resonated with me immensely was one of my father’s final points. Now, for me, my single status may feel eternal because I am a witness to my parents’ flourishing love every day, but that’s just it. He illuminated, and I’m paraphrasing, that while this time of me being single has felt continuous, it is not in vain. In other words, as I said earlier, my single status is anything but a punishment. It means there are plans for me to fulfill, but it has also been an opportunity to witness firsthand what love is as God intended it to be.
What has felt like an eternity to me has been an opportunity to see love in action by way of my parents. I grew up witnessing a love that I have yet to see duplicated, but as a child, I thought that was everyone’s reality. But as I grew, I realized just how rare my parents’ love is. As my father put it, as a result of being their child, of seeing their love blossom over the years, I know what I’m worth, how I deserve to be treated, what love is, how it behaves, what it means to give and receive love – all things I might’ve not discovered had I not been born to my parents. Now, I reiterate my main point from the beginning – forget the timetable. Forget the expectations you have held since childhood about how life should go, about where you should be by this time in your life, and what you should be doing. My conversation opened my eyes to the fact that I have no idea how my life will go and I definitely don’t know when I’ll be getting married, but because of my parents’ love, I can be ready for it when it arrives, whenever that is.
The point of all of this is that very rarely does life go the way we expect and if we do it the right way, if we do it God’s way, it goes exceedingly better than we could’ve anticipated. There are so many things we plan and aim for as children and adults, frankly, and even when we think we’ve planned everything right down to the last detail, that plan is incomplete if God is not in it. We bemoan the places we are in our lives but never consider that the moment we’re in is preparing us for what is next, and we assume it is meant to make us suffer or that God is forsaking us when in reality, the place we are in is because God has placed us there. The timetable and the belief that things have to get done at a certain age and in a certain time frame is a misconception that frankly, we all need to stop living by. Allow life to unfold in its own time instead of trying to predict its outcome. God is the author of our faith and our very lives and is the only authority on when things will happen, so trust His timing and His will. The rest is just noise.
