do you ever feel like you're missing out on something?
like...everyone else gets to go on adventures and do grand things, but you're just...lonely and stuck and waiting for your life to change, but nothing's changing, and everything you do just seems to sink you further into hopelessness?
well, for me, that was the majority of my teenage years.
feeling like i was missing out on all the exciting things that my friends were doing.
...namely: dating.
see, when i was a kid, i looked forward to being a teenager. to going on adventures and having lots of friends and then getting married by 18. to have stories to tell my kids of my teenage years. to feel like i was living life. to be pretty and perfect and popular and stay out late with friends and go to prom and all the stereotypical teenager things.
to take artsy pictures and wear sexy dresses and be a size zero and kiss in the rain and decorate my bedroom with pictures and lights and go camping under the stars and be wild and crazy and whatever i wanted to be.
so.... basically everything tumblr and teen flicks.
needless to say, my life didn't turn out quite how I had imagined it. between overprotective parents and a pretty bad heartbreak and the fact that - let's face it - I wasn't allowed to date and my mom and I fought almost every day about my clothing choices.... my teenage years consisted of feeling like I was looking out a window, watching bright colored lives flash by, while mine felt a lot like...well...Rapunzel in Tangled.
I kept hearing stories of my friends falling in love and having perfect kisses and learning to drive and getting jobs and sneaking out for midnight rendezvous' with their significant other, and copious pictures with their best friends, and honestly?
i was jealous. really, really jealous.
and not in a...I wish they didn't have that....but in a wistful, longing, why can't I have that? what is so wrong with me that my life is like this, and theirs is...perfect?
i thought that my teen years would be laughing till it hurt, falling in love with someone wonderful, growing up and becoming a woman, getting my first kiss, prom dates and summer love, having a bevy of friends, and being self-confident.
instead, the majority of my teenage memories consist of spiraling into an eating disorder, battling severe depression (and honestly, often losing), crying myself to sleep night after night at 3am, losing almost all of my friends, abusive relationships, hiding my self-harm addiction, and then, eventually, trying to recover.
so...by the time Fall of my 18th year rolled around, I had pretty much given up on the whole 'teenager' thing. I had come to terms with the realization that while others' lives might work like that...well...it just wasn't meant to be. Not for me, at least. i was fairly content to be single, and figured that, whatever happened, i could make it work.
i had finally stopped looking for a relationship.
{note: don't you just love how God wrecks our plans, the moment we give up on what we want and want to know what He wants for us?}
and wouldn't you know it... not two months later, i was in a relationship with a man who is everything I could ever have hoped.
he's absolutely wonderful.
and, in retrospect, it's ironic that the things I thought i had missed out on -and spent most of my teen years pining for - i finally get to do.
but. instead of all those experiences and memories and firsts happening with boys scared silly of commitment - who left as soon as the going got rough, and mistook lust and raging hormones for love...
i get to do them with the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.
first dates. staying up under starry skies talking till midnight. dancing in the rain and fighting and making up and going on adventures and cute things and happy things and planning-for-our-future things.
and honestly? looking back, I'm glad. I'm really really super glad that God didn't give me what I wanted when I wanted it. I'm glad He waited for His timing, and while I still maintain that my guardian angel had a hell of a hard time with me and probably begged God for reassignment more times than I can count..
I didn't miss a thing.
i just get to do everything most people do - in their early teens with people they won't end up with - in my late teens, instead, with the man i want to marry.
and yeah. i wouldn't trade this for anything.
it's special and it's perfect, and while it isn't always easy, nothing in life is free from difficulty, and I would rather work through things with my one and only, as opposed to flitting from one relationship to the other.
it brings us closer, and, if i'm honest, I've needed this reminder lately that God knows best and His timing is always perfect.
He didn't give me what I wanted when I wanted it. He gave it to me when I was ready to receive it....when I had finally given up on my own ideas for my life.
and, honestly? his timing is a million times better than I could have dreamed.
see... if God could take the things I thought I had missed out on, and give them to me in His timing, so much more marvelous than they would have been had I grabbed them in mine... He is capable of doing that in every area of my life.
which is really hard for me to accept, impatient person that I am, and the waiting is never easy when you still feel stuck, but...
the words of an old memory verse come to mind, as the snow blizzard-swirls outside my window.
"He has made everything beautiful in his time..." (Eccl. 3:11).. He'll take the mess and the miserable waiting, and someday He will make it all beautiful, and He'll do it in His time.
not mine.
never mine.
but that's okay.
because I am seeing the difference between His timing and mine, and His is worlds better.
and so, I am learning how to be patient.
I am learning how to wait.
