Time for some risking-embarrassment, brutal honesty. When I started this blog three years ago, I didn’t know the plan for how I’d use it. Over the years, it’s become a keeping place for stories from my life I thought may bring someone laughter, pieces of wisdom God inclined me to hear, or ideas I thought should be made known. Despite the sporadic nature of this online journal, I hope that the things I say, and how I use the power of the Internet, would edify the moments you spend reading them. And most of all, I hope my small pieces of already lived-and-somewhat-learned-and-shared life would cross the eyes of mothers and their young daughters, as we’re all here living and learning the same stories, just different adaptations.
This lesson of mine hasn’t been “learned” necessarily, but instead, it’s been realized and accepted as true. However many times I’ve heard it though, I need reminding of it every day. This is the lesson of realizing my life is not running behind, my heart has not been forgotten, and my story is not over…just because I’m about to graduate college without a ring on my finger or in my near future.
Now, I don’t want pity or hopeful comments that one day I will be “swept off my feet, you just wait!” I just know there are so many girls in this world, in this season of life, who are wrongly accepting Satan’s lies over their lives that God has looked past them. Including myself. They are wrongly coined as desperately sad if the conversation is brought up, and I am a firm believer that that is broken. God gives desires, and God invites vulnerable expression. He is our listener, and no matter is too trivial for His ear.
My dad is a florist. His fingers and creative touches are magic, and some of my very earliest memories are in our old house when I was a toddler. Before Mary and Martha’s, before room-sized coolers and a delivery van, Dad worked weddings out of our house. Mom would turn the air conditioning all the way down, and our dining room would turn into a beautiful forest of lush blooms and buckets of greenery. What a playground for two little kids! As I grew older, I have more memories of going with Mom to help Dad set up weddings in empty church sanctuaries. Sometimes, I’d even ride in the back of the delivery van, just loose cargo, making sure the altar pieces didn’t topple over while on the interstate. Helping with weddings always was a precious thing for me. Because it was a memory with my dad, but also because I thought I was living in an almost secret world: a world where I got to stand in the very spot where two people in love would stand just hours later and be married. Nobody else got to do that! My favorites times were when I would carry cardboard boxes with cups hot glued into them into the bridal suite. Those cups held all of the bridesmaids’ bouquets, and they were always greeted with glee and mid-makeup smiles. Or I’ll never forget the one wedding where I sat in the sanctuary with just the groom, waiting on Dad to bring back a candle or cutters or something. I talked to the groom about the day, and I always will remember feeling as if that was such an honor.
Of course, the older I got, the more these weddings would send me on a Pinterest frenzy, an all-consuming wedding overload. My cousin Meg and I would spend hours cutting and pasting gowns and paint swatches and snips of magazine flowers into our wedding journals, all the while hypothesizing when our day would happen. Of course, even at a young age, I already had the idea that I should be married around the time of my college graduation. That’s what my parents did, and both sets of my grandparents married young, so I didn’t know I really had any other choice.
In high school, my plan was written in the blackest of inks. I considered myself old enough to know I’d be in love or married within the decade. Everyone I knew lived as such. Every Ouachita student I knew was on that track or had already completed it. Every adult around me met their spouse during childhood or college it seemed. And I thought I had it all figured out at the age of fifteen. But then my plan was sharply wiped clean with White-Out and slowly shredded to pulp.
My freshman year of college, I think every girl at Ouachita Baptist University had their mind fattened up by grandmas and neighbors, aunts and church ladies with the belief that we were going to find the “perfect Christian boy down on that pretty campus…they’d be stupid not to date a girl like you!” And so when we got there, it was the most terrifyingly embarrassing show I’ve ever watched or been a part of. My friends and I adopted the phrase “everyone deserves a Coke and a taco!” and happily went on almost every date offered, some more than others. (LOL #iykyk.) We desperately tried to make relationships that didn’t exist happen. We watched upperclassmen flaunt their perfectly perfect relationships on campus and on social media, and we sat late into the night and dreamed about when it would be our turn. We celebrated every first date and mourned every last one; all with excessive eating and shopping. We embarrassed ourselves more times to count, and yet I still wrote more plans in the blackest of inks, sure that this time…it would stick.
During sophomore year, there rolled around a season where every single one of the girls I do life with had a boyfriend. And I remember telling Mom, “Wow. God is so good to us. He listens to our plans so well. He did not have to be so good to us! We are all on track to be in love with our person and maybe even engaged senior year. What a good, faithful Father! This is so great.” I declared so many happy endings over our lives.
Oh.
Again, the plan was coated in White-Out and shredded to pulp for good measure. Maybe even doused in gasoline. And lit on fire.
And let me say this, my friends and I never pursued our relationships with the sole intention of meeting a marriage deadline. Contrarily, we all just were fulfilling every girl’s desire to love and be loved. And at this point in life, the idea or possibility of marriage was naturally connected to that, as what seemed like everybody around us was inviting us to their engagement and/or wedding. So, we weren’t shallow-minded, we weren’t desperate, we weren’t “in it for the wrong reasons;” we were just mistaking our college relationships as God’s final blessing to us.
(Side note: one of these relationships thankfully succeeded, and Grayson and Trevor are getting married this coming January, and I have the absolute stunning HONOR to stand beside them as a bridesmaid. Their love is one I hope to model mine after one day, and I am thankful J has taught me what true love should look like through them. Ily Gig + Trev.)
So, I had a wise, wise friend tell me that this season of singleness is so special, because it’s the only time I get to be Addy Goodman. Just Addy Goodman. I’m not Addy Goodman, someone’s fiancé. Or Addy Whatever, someone’s wife or mother. I am just plain Addy Goodman, with a life of my own. That wisdom gave me fist-pumping power that oozed “YES! I am Addy freakin’ Goodman, and I seriously don’t need no man!” Of course, as the future loomed nearer, and weddings and engagements became more constant, that energy dropped just a tad. Naturally.
Then, of course, I thought about the purpose of past relationships. If I had written those plans in ink, and God had just laughed at my sureness and erased it, wHHyyyyYYYYyyY did I have to endure those heartbreaks? My Kyla told a near-hysterical, mid-run, sweat-and-tears-running-together-into-a-tomato-looking-face Addy that God wrote these temporary relationships into our story to teach us the things to look for in future relationships.
Ok. So, obviously my justice-minded thought process immediately goes to the fairness of these pieces of advice. Why do I have to be Addy Goodman, single? And she doesn’t? (“She” is taking the persona of every girl with a relationship currently J) Why can’t I be Addy Goodman, girlfriend? Or…why do I have to learn for so many years, when she doesn’t? Doesn’t God love her the same? Why isn’t she having to learn like He’s teaching me?
It was like love was this big, warm-colored door with a diamond knob on it…absolutely beautiful door. And I kept trying to open the dang door, and I never had the right key. And everybody around me is opening their beautiful door, and inviting me in to see. And yes, of course, I want to celebrate them, but I truly just want to hire a locksmith for mine.
Well then this summer I listened to this podcast of a women’s conference led by Mia Fieldes. She told this beautiful story of her life, and our lives, being custom-made by the Father. And she, like so many girls in this life, was struggling with God’s plan for bringing her somebody to love and be loved by. In the podcast, she talked so sweetly about her revelation that she had not be abandoned by God, or forgotten by God, but rather hidden by Him. Hidden so that she would wait for his custom-made blessing of a life for her.
Of course. Here I go again! WHY COULDN’T SHE BE HIDDEN TOO? WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE HIDING BRO? Literally feels like I’m playing hide-and-seek by myself and there ain’t nobody looking for me. It’s like grade school sleepovers all over again haha!
And here I am…about to start my senior year of college. And I have cloudier answers than I did when I started three years ago. I’m fearful of the future…so fearful. I don’t know where I’m going to live. I am terrified of living alone in this broken and evil world. (I’m literally already on a waiting list for a dog to be adopted next May. Have been since probably February.) I am scared I won’t be prepared for a job. I’m anxious about making new friends, as my best friends most likely won’t be with me. (I also watched Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and am fearful I have borderline personality disorder because I related to the main character WAY too much. Just kidding, but still.)
BUT. With fear, oftentimes there’s overwhelming excitement. I’m excited that I don’t know my story yet. I was driving the other day for work, and I started thinking about that beautiful door. How there are doors to many things…not just front doors, like I originally imagined it to be. And you know what? That door to love is not the front door. But a door inside a house, a beautiful house that is filled with stunning and warm rooms that hold pictures of my life. Pictures of football games. Driving to Dallas with my made-up “soror” sisters. Hugging Meg before she walked down the aisle. Holding a puppy for the first time. Running miles with my best friend.
The front door to the house is unlocked. And you know who sits on the porch swing in this excessive yet helpful metaphor I have created for myself? Yes. It is our sweet Lord. What a good Father He is…that He leaves His house of blessings He built for us unlocked. Promising to welcome us home each day, so that we can slowly explore each room He designed just for us.
And isn’t it just so beautiful that one day, all the doors will be unlocked? But for right now, like Mia said, He has given each of us a custom-made life. And we are not abandoned, we are not forgotten, and we are not playing hide-and-seek by ourselves. We do not need to feel that way anymore! Just because we haven’t discovered all of our lives yet. I think it is a testament to God’s character and His creativity as the Author of this universe…that He perfectly times our lives in a way that fits who we are individually. Yes, it’s frustrating that she is never without romantic pursuit, or that she is getting to plan a wedding, or that she is dating that dreamy tall glass of water…all while you watch television shows about crazy ex-girlfriends. It’s frustrating and easy to misinterpret as injustice. But while God listens to our frustrations, He will always be the one to hold the key, hold the next chapters of our stories. Mine is perfect, yours is perfect, and hers is perfect. And none of them look the same.
Absolutely none of what I’ve said is profound or a surprise. But like I said, it just needs to be accepted as true. Now, go get your nails done just for the heck of it, sister. You don’t need a ring to make them look beautiful.
Xo. A
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