Saturday, January 14, 2017

Fully Content, Fully Present

My sister recently shared a blog post with me that a young girl, about my age, wrote. It was about her "word" for the year being engaged, and how she wants to focus on engagement this year.

No, not that kind of engagement. It's a bit click-baity in that you read it expecting that she's betting her year on becoming engaged to be married. Instead, she wants to honestly and intimately engage with the people around her. To be fully present in the moment, not living in a day dream or a social media lie.

It struck a weird chord inside of me. A personal one that has been carefully and deeply buried under layers of pain, growth, and experience. Because, in one particular year, I did bet my life on becoming engaged to man. I had been told by a man who claimed to be speaking by the power of God, that I would be engaged that year. Life more or less crumbled around me as that prophecy became less and less likely to be true.
I hinged a lot of decisions that year on the hope that I would finally not be alone. That I would finally have a man to come home to and go through life with. Surprisingly, it as rather liberating when I finally let that dream die and be buried in that year. I received a greater measure of liberty and freedom when I stopped treating it like a fortune cookie.

All of that to say:
I am as single as the broken Pringle at the bottom of the can that you just can't quite reach, and I'm becoming OK with it.

So this year I am making a conscious effort to focus on being completely content with where I am and who I am, and not spend energy in looking for a man. I've wasted a lot of time obsessing over this boy, or that boy, or regretting poor relationship decisions, or fretting over whether or not a certain someone would notice me. And I am just 100% done with it. It's exhausting, and it leaves me stressed, and frustrated. I get angry when a guy I notice doesn't notice me back. I want to scream and ask why I'm not __enough for him.
I can't always help it when my emotions are basically flying out the window, and I'm trying to bring them all back inside with a strong "CONTROL YOURSELVES, CHILDREN". But. I am in complete control of the decisions I make. I choose whether or not I am going to act on impulse towards a guy I'm attracted to. I decided whether or not to feed the anger, or the jealousy that says "you deserve what SHE got, she doesn't deserve it". It's my responsibility to make the right choice every time, in spite of how I feel.
In 2017 I am going to make a conscious effort to complain about my relationship status less, and less, and take more joy in the daily relationships that I build and experience at work, school, and in the Church community. Instead of being mindful of, and obsessed with, what I don't have, I am going to be thankful for all the wonderful things and people that I do have.

Please, if you ever hear me whining about my singleness feel free to remind me of this very blog post.


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