September 1st, 2018

It’s the first day of September. Sometimes it’s amazing to me just how fast life moves. So much has happened over my summer it’s ridiculous, and I’m expecting the fall to be just as hectic. Quick recap of my life. In May I got my associates degree from a small community college I never really wanted to go to. I was planning on moving to Seattle to be with my boyfriend of a year and a half, and leave this place I never really wanted to live in as well. April I broke up with boyfriend and May didn’t move to Seattle. Cried a lot. Made some new friends. Prayed harder than I ever had before, then cried some more,(I’m a crier,…I read an article that said the chemical makeup of tears is actually stress leaving your eyeballs so I embrace it rather than avoid it) and then I eventually began dating my friend from said unwanted community college, and life has just been crazy from there. My life at the moment is one of those things people talk about at church that I used to always be jealous of. Somebody would be giving their testimony about how God just took the reins of their life after they fully surrendered to him and it’s better than they ever could’ve imagined. Those were the stories I’d listen too and envy wishing I could just lose control and my life would be amazing, but I was always scared. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still “scared” but not in a sense that I’m worried…I just think all change makes people feel a little uncomfortable. Anyways I decided to do that, just step back and let God be God and show me what he wanted for my life. Also don’t get me wrong, it hurt. Even though you know you’re doing the right thing because anything else you do just gives you an uneasy feeling in your gut, it’s still difficult. The boy I had been dating was the first boy I allowed myself to really love. The selfless kind of love where you put everything in your life after the needs of that person just in hopes to make them happy. So when that gets taken away it feels like a huge piece of yourself goes with it. Although God is God. Of course after a breakup all you think of is the reasons you hate that person, everything they’ve ever done wrong, everything they did to hurt you…but then I stopped and realized by doing this I was hurting myself. The boy I’m with, the boy God gave me, loves me, and by holding on to the anger I have inside, I was shorting him of the love he deserves from me. June was a roller coaster. All and any life plans I had been planning on were gone. The white board up inside my head had been erased, and I was just wandering around wondering whats going to happen next. Remember how I said I was praying hard? Well yeah, that hadn’t stopped. July, I got a new job. Previously, before said new job, I had been wearing a bright orange shirt with the words “How May I Help You” written on the back, wondering around the local grocery store near my house. My job was literally to be a traffic cone, meant to attract stupid customer questions, that could often be answered by simply reading a sign clearly posted, or pointing out an object I was standing three feet away from. It was not fun. However, (again) my new job was nothing short of a blessing from the Lord. How it worked out was, my cousin who lives with me had been offered a job as a sterilization specialist (fancy words for you clean tools) at an orthodontic office not far from my house. As it would turn out, someone somewhere in the office was getting promoted, opening up a new space for my cousin to work in the front office, and I was offered her job. This job is four days a week, 8 to 5, Fridays through Sundays off…and I didn’t even have an interview in order to be brought onto the team. Like I said total blessing. The empty whiteboard in my brain now had something written on it, “Better Job”…that was a start right? I mean for about a month it had “New Boyfriend” written on it too, but that one scared me. Like I said getting over someone is so not easy, so I was honestly just trying to enjoy spending time with this new boy and taking things really slow (this will be ironic in a minute but oh well). Anyways, August…August 17th, I got engaged. Life is crazy. Taking it slow became real overrated, real fast when I just realized there is no possible way this boy wasn’t put in my life for a reason. Rewind back to when we started dating…actually rewind before that. Remember that community college I told you about? Okay, August of 2016, I take an 8 a.m. class (side note, 8 a.m.’s suck unless you meet your future husband in there like I did, but really though, it’s such an awesome way to make sure you’re totally sleep deprived all semester). I’m then placed in a group project (gag group projects) with this skinny white boy with crazy long brown hair and really blue eyes. He sits across from me and I think there is no way this boy is going to contribute anything helpful (yes I’m a little judgmental and by a little I mean a lot, but I’m working on it). Well apparently crazy hair blue eyed boy had been wanting to ask me out for a while, and almost worked up the nerve right as I mention my boyfriend in Seattle. That was that, class ended didn’t think about blue eyes again. Next year, last year at this community college, I was in a pretty rough spot in my life where I was constantly unhappy with the situation I was in. This lead to little motivation to do anything so, previous boyfriend which was still boyfriend at the time, suggested I think about others, so I decided to start a bible club on my campus. Conveniently, (and by convenient I mean not convenient at all) you can’t start a club unless you have a President, Vice President, and a Secretary…completely ridiculous I know. Well, considering I had been a sad, depressy mess most of my first year at college I didn’t have a whole lot of friends, but I did remember blue eyes was a christian and so was another friend I had also met on campus. I managed to scrounge up both boys numbers, and both agreed to help out with the club. It was successful to an extent. It made me reach out and meet people, it allowed me to share the gospel, and it gained me some new friends. Well after the semester was over, and I said goodbye to blue eyes and my other new friends, my family had started going to a new church. One Sunday morning I see blue eyes sitting in a pew way up in the front and I couldn’t believe it. My family urged me to go sit with him because they knew he was my friend and he was alone…however, I really didn’t want to considering I was still dating previous boyfriend. Having any male friends other than him was causing a major rift in our relationship, (understandable to an extent but at the same time a bit overbearing), anywho, out of principle of being kind I sat by him…like two feet away. Well little did I know this boy has had a crush on me for almost A YEAR now so ya know what the punk did? He decided to keep coming to that church. We remained friends, joined the college class at church, but he never touched on the fact he liked me (cause ya know still in a relationship here!) until the shiz hitteth the fan in April. When I realized I had no peace about my life with previous boy anymore, and my plans to move, it finally came out. Blue eyes admitted he liked me and for a little bit that was that. But then we decided to date. What got me though was when he told me he had been praying we might date if that be the Lord’s will but decided that he would set a date. If we weren’t dating by then he would take that as a no from God. Well the day I decided to date him was the date he had set (I however was unaware he had been praying or done this), and again I was amazed. So yes I apologize for the fact that, that was the longest explanation of how come I think this boy was meant for me, but there ya have it. Little did I know too many members of the college group had been praying I wouldn’t leave as well (the little punks, totally the opposite of the prayer request that “My trip to Seattle goes well” but oh well). So back to him being the boy for me, while I had been hoping and praying for this once we started dating, I was still an emotional wreck from my previous relationship. I didn’t want to just run a million miles a minute with this new relationship, I wanted to be cautious. However by the time I reached August I just knew. No one had ever made me happier in my life, no one had pushed me towards God like he had, and trying to picture my life without him wasn’t something I wanted to do. People say time heals wounds, which is true, and yes 5 months isn’t long from going from dating one boy to being engaged to another, but sometimes you just ignore typical societal standards of the correct periods of time in which you let things run their course and follow God’s time. Of course you can’t completely erase a person from your mind. I still think of previous boy from time to time, I still think of old friends that have come and gone, but really what kind of a person would you be if you didn’t? If a person made an imprint on your life and you cared about them I think you should always remember them even if it’s just to send up a silent prayer and hope they’re doing okay. But back to being engaged, I’m excited. A few weeks ago I was reading a devotion and the passage was the one that talks about “Husbands love your wives, wives submit to your husbands”. Well it went on to say, and I’m heavily paraphrasing, that when two people become one is a mystery intended by God in order to bless Him, at least that was my interpretation of it. This then got me thinking. I had always thought God made marriage as a blessing to man, but thinking about it as the other way around made me really happy. How cool is it that by God blessing you, you get to turn around and bless him. I then began to think of the ways in which you can do this and I realized in everything. In the way you raise your kids, in the way you interact with people, in the lives you lead and the example you uphold. So it’s September 1st. I’m engaged. And I’m ready for this hectic fall.