His Purpose, Not My Plans

To the girl with a Plan:  You know who you are.  You have the Pinterest boards.  You have the ideas.  You have ...THE.. Plan. You will find prince charming before college graduation. He'll propose spring semester (that ring by spring). You'll get married that fall, and both have wonderful jobs that fully support you and the crazy travel excursions you'll wanna take. A few years later, when the timing is perfect, you'll decided to have a family. And you'll move to your dream home in your dream town, and have weekly Tuesday brunch with your best friends. And then the kids will go to college, and you'll stay involved in volunteer work of course, life will go on just splendidly, and at the ripe age of 97 you and your husband will die at the same time thus preventing any tragedy.  Oh my friend, if only God worked that way.  He doesn't. You might not ever find prince charming. That perfect job of yours falls through. You lose a child. A...

Most Mondays I wake up early with a goal of getting homework accomplished. I head to my favorite coffee shop, and try to start my week off productively. And then every now and then there are Mondays like this. When I come with every intention of doing homework, and instead cannot stop writing. So here I am. And I have something to say. To the girl in the blue dress at church yesterday: I saw you. I saw the way you looked at the girl next to you in the row. I saw how you looked at her shoes, and then your shoes. Her outfit, and then your dress. I saw how you looked at her body, and then looked with sadness at your own. I saw how, in a matter of ten seconds, your mindset changed and you began to see her image as the perfect one, and tear yourself down for not being the same. And friend, I am so sorry. I am sorry that you are taught to think that someone else is the perfect version of you. (She's not.) I am sorry that tv shows say that you have to have perfectly strai...