If you know me (or read this blog regularly), then it will come as no surprise that I am a planner. I always have a plan, and a backup plan, and a backup-backup plan. Yeah--I'm somewhat compulsive about it. I've always lived my life by a plan. I knew where I wanted to be five years out and what I thought I had to do to get there and I did everything I could to stick to the plan no matter what.
There was a problem with all my planning though. I didn't leave room for happiness in my master plan. I figured if I got all the trappings a perfect life is supposed to have then happiness would surely follow. So I planned for the trappings--the education, the husband, the house, the car, etc. I got it all too. And then there I was--living the "perfect" life with a perfectly fake smile on my face because the only thing I was was perfectly miserable.
Last winter I finally got a clue. I threw my plans out the window. I threw my "shoulds" and "woulds" and "ought tos" out the window too. I started listening to my heart instead of my head. I stopped planning and started living, really living. Living a life uncensored.
I left my unhappy marriage and all the trappings of the "perfect life" in the dust. And the life I found is messier than the life I had before. The life I have now is not filled with all of the material trappings of the perfectly miserable existence I had before. The life I have now doesn't follow a neat plan, and it's haphazard and a little crazy sometimes. But you know what?
This is a happy life. It's a life filled with grubby toddler fingers, time spent with best friends who are really sisters, a caring family, a smiling man, and a house that needs some paint but is filled with lots of love. This is a life brimming with opportunity. This a life overflowing with love and laughter and friendship and all of those truly priceless things that money can never buy you. This life, the life that was waiting on me, is so much better than anything I could have ever planned. I am so very blessed and so incredibly grateful for the amazing gift of my life and all of the people in it.
Throw your plans out the window. You won't regret it. My wish for every person reading this is a life uncensored, unplanned, and unpredictable.
I was just reading another blog written by a "Happily Single Girl" friend of mine and she was saying how we are in such a hurry to have this "Perfect Life" that we don't even take the time to get to know whether or not we want to marry this person or if we even know them.
ReplyDeleteI remember my girlfriends being like that and putting pressure on me because I was in my 20's and not married yet.
They just wanted that life so bad and even the older generation thought something was wrong with me because I wasn't dating someone and really not interested in dating.
Marriage scares the crap out of me in that context ..some folks are just in love with love and just don't want to be alone because others pity them.
I have never felt "completed" by another person and I have been lonely in a room of people.
I value being free and knowing the person beside me is with me because they want to share life with me not "make an honest woman" out of me. So I revel in sin, I marinate in it really HAH!
Alone I am a sinner and my life is my own. And that's freaking perfect to me!
Sarah xoxo
I'm not going to bash marriage (even though mine ended badly) or the people who want that life. It's a good life. It just wasn't a life that made me happy. It wasn't a life I needed or wanted. I think our society continues to pressure women to be married with 2.5 babies by 25-30, and perhaps for some people that is part of the problem.
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't my problem though. I didn't cave to societal pressure or pressure from friends and family. There are lots of reasons I got married, but those aren't in the mix. I simply did not get married for the right reasons and I got married at 20 (something I would never recommend to anyone).
I am in a healthy relationship now, and I am now fully convinced that when you know you know and there's no time table on that. If you don't want to get married then live happily in sin. Personally, I'd rather be happy than conventional!
Oh I am not bashing marriage (as an ideal) or your marriage , I know we do the best with the information we have/had at the time.
ReplyDeleteI just have not been moved enough by another person to get married. I would love to be married and have kids someday, I know it won't happen with Andy and that breaks my heart a little because it will crush him if I left for that reason. I struggle with it daily because I had to give up on the possibility when I promised I would try harder this time and I gave up on something else that may or may not have worked.
Andy is a sweet man with a good heart.
So alas back to my blissful indifference ;-)
Sarah xoxo
Hi Jennifer, I found your page through your above quote. I get what you are talking about here. I'm not really a planner, but I have expectations about how something in life should go, or look like, and then when it doesn't always fit into the picture the way I hoped, I have felt let down, or frustrated. So like you suggest, I am letting go of more of those expectations and just letting life happen, and listening to my heart more. Life really is better when we live it like this isn't it?! Glad to hear you are happy now! Blessings on your journey, Bella Bleue www.bellableue.com
ReplyDelete