I am a woman with a plan. Always have been. Since I can remember I've always had an image in my mind of where I was going, what I wanted my life to look like. Heck, since I was about 10 years old I've had what I was going to wear each day planned out in my head about a week in advance. I tend to like to write it all down in notebooks and make lists. Each one is carefully drawn out with markers and stickers and scrapbook paper. But for all this planning, to do list writing and dreaming, I have learned one thing...life never turns out the way I plan.
On the first day of summer vacation during high school I would always sit down with my soccer workout plan and color up this elaborate schedule and calendar with the idea that this year I was going to be in the best shape once the season started. The first day of practice would roll around and through my exhausted wheezing and pained breaths I would curse the fact that my summer training ended when I put the markers down. In college, I would get so pumped for each new semester. I would set my notebooks up, get my books together and make sure everything was collaged and decorated for all the studying I was about to do. One week in and I was inevitably leaving them in my room and scribbling my notes on whatever pad of paper I had in my purse. Come time for finals I would be lucky if I could find half of these slips of paper in order to review. Again, I was learning the harsh lesson that one must do more than simply color, decorate and plan to succeed in life.
Later, in my mid 20's I met a guy, graduated college, had a good job, got engaged. Everything on my pretty little "to do list for life" was happening as I planned. All this awesome life conquering I was doing culminated in my perfect outdoor dream wedding. It was gorgeous. So gorgeous that it was written about it in the newspaper. I was winning the game of the prettiest life. But again, life would teach me that it isn't about how pretty and dressed up something is. Plans don't magically happen because you wrote them down or dreamed them. Once I got to this point and checked all of the little boxes, I was at a loss. I didn't know where I was going from here. I spent the next few years trying to figure out what I was doing. For someone who likes plans and order and everything to be colorful, neat and pretty... I was scribbling outside the lines with a brown and yellow crayon. I had done what I thought I was supposed to do, in the natural order of things. Yet I was lost and unhappy.
A couple of years, a divorce, multiple jobs, and few misguided friendships later and I finally woke up and realized I didn't like who I was or where I was going. Instead of busting out the markers and making a new life plan, I embraced the mess that it all was. I remember visiting a good friend in Nashville one day and as she was showing me all of the new things she had done around her house, I just lost it. I began to cry. I couldn't hold it all together anymore. I couldn't keep pretending everything was all ok. I just stood there and sobbed about how much of a mess everything was and how I didn't want to go back to Texas and face it all. She listened. And then she pointed out some hard truths about the life I was living, the people I was surrounding myself with and how none of that would help me get where I wanted to go. The next day I flew back to Texas, got a second job and started saving to move back to Tennessee. Looking back at it now, I believe I stayed in Houston for so long because I was hiding. I didn't want my friends and family to see what a mess I'd made of my life. I thought they would judge and be disappointed. But after talking to my friend, I realized I wasn't hiding anything. They all knew and were simply waiting for me to let them in. So I spent the next two months working like a crazy person. There was no time for markers and pretty plans. There was no time for pretending to have it all together. Instead of a list, I had a goal. And it was simply to get home.
Ironically it was during this time that I met my husband. Which clearly tested how devoted I was to getting back to Nashville and starting over, because meeting him introduced me to some of the most wonderful and fun people. And definitely the best I met in Houston. I think that if I had met him sooner then I would have stayed in Texas. But God has his timing. And right then it was time for me to focus on myself. Luckily, God's plans are much better than mine and I ended up getting it all... Nashville, Ivan and a new group of friends and family.
I'd love to say that once I got back to Nashville my ship righted and it was smooth sailing into the sunset. But that would be a lie. Truth is, I got to Nashville with no tv, not much furniture and no job. It wasn't pretty. But I made it work with the support of family, friends and a new church home. My life became boring. And I loved it. I was in the complete opposite place of where I had always planned to be at this time in my life. I was 27, divorced, soon to be back in the retail business, dating a military guy (I swore I would never date anyone from the military) who was 900 miles away and I spent a majority of my free time with my dogs or my grandparents. I was happier than I had ever been.
My life has stayed that way. Never very consistent and never going along with my plans. I still make to do lists that I spend more time doodling and decorating than I do accomplishing anything on them. But I have learned that that is ok. Ivan and I got married in a courthouse by an 80 year old retired judge and preacher. Our reception was the drive thru at Zaxby's and then going to watch my brother play baseball. And it was perfect. And now, two years later...2 kids later, I still fight the urge to want it all to be pretty and perfect. I wake up every morning with elaborate plans to clean my house and dress my girls in these great outfits and cook a big breakfast and it all to just be pinterest perfect. But the reality is that I wake up, change diapers and make coffee that I will inevitably microwave at least three times before I finish it. I will make whatever my toddler seems like she is in the mood to eat. And most likely they will not get dressed in anything but diapers because we plan to paint and play outside all day in the dirt. I still fight the urge to come across as put together, but honestly, my hair lives in a ponytail, I have farmers' tan lines from my ergo baby carrier and the only reason my toes are painted is because my daughter wanted me to paint hers. But if I were to spend all day stressing about how things aren't what I planned, how they don't stack up to someone else's ideals, I'd be wasting my time being stressed, upset and overwhelmed. Instead I choose to look back on the wonderful changes God made to my life when I just embraced the mess and quit worrying about how pretty it all looked. These days we make messes, my girls have crazy bed hair until they take their bath at night, we eat on paper plates to make it easier to clean up, sometimes we have eat scooby do macaroni and cheese for dinner... and all of this is ok. My life is not always pretty and put together. I am (almost never) pretty and put together, but I am happy. I am surrounded by love and laugher, imperfection and chaos. Instead of spending my days making lists and pretty plans, I sit with my husband and our beautiful girls and we color outside the lines with broken crayons.
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