I had a dream the other night about Curtis and me. It was the high school version of us. Just two young-and-in-love band geeks. That dream got me going through old scrapbooks and reminiscing.
I look at these two pictures, taken almost exactly 3 years apart. From 2002 to 2018. From 16 to 32. So much has happened in those 16 years. That first picture was taken a lifetime ago…or was it just yesterday?
That 16 year old girl knew she would marry that 18 year old boy. Never questioned it, because I just knew. We have been “Curtis and Deidra,” a single unit, for over half of my life now.
Do you ever look back and realize just how different your life turned out to be? I had so many plans. Big plans, small plans, but all “planned.”
First off, I always thought I wanted to live in a subdivision with lots of neighbors. Then we went to college and actually had neighbors! Yeah, learned real quick that we didn’t care for having neighbors! Now we live on a farm with no visible neighbors. I always swore I’d never live on a farm…
I most certainly didn’t plan to struggle with infertility, yet that experience gave us the most precious son.
In my head, we would have three kids. Two girls and a boy. We ended up with two perfect boys, and three babies we will meet in Heaven someday.
I thought I’d be the super cool, super skinny Pinterest mom (okay, Pinterest wasn’t a thing back then, but that’s the kind of mom I wanted to be!)…and here I am, still a geek at heart, carrying around “baby weight” four years after delivery, and never doing ridiculous crafts with my kids. (I know…the shame I bring upon my family, right?!)
I thought I’d be a soccer mom, PTO mom, all of those things that moms do. I might still be that mom someday, but for now, I’m a therapy mom.
I never planned to have a child with special needs, but I am so thankful that God saw fit to give Colin to us.
While our life together is completely “off” from what I planned, it is kind of exactly what I wanted too. We are together. We have two beautiful children. We have good jobs working in the fields that had chosen to pursue all those years ago. We sit outside at night by the campfire while the boys play and eat marshmallows. Life is pretty good.
If I could go back and talk to those two kids in that top picture, what would I say?
Well, I would to hate ruin all the surprises, but I’d probably tell them that everything will okay. They will build a good life together.
Don’t focus so much on your plan and how things “should” go, but rather enjoy the here and now. As I am learning, most of the things we worry about and plan for, well, they aren’t that important or even necessary. I have wasted so much time and energy on such insignificant things over the years. At 16 i thought I had our whole lives planned out. At 32, I can barely plan for next week! Just give up some of that control, Girlfriend – it’ll save you lots of stress and worry when God throws a wrench in your plans! He’s got it all figured out way better than you could ever plan anyway!
Don’t compare your journey to everyone else’s. You two are special, afterall (which they’ll agree, of course), so your life together will be special and different. Live your life and let others live theirs. Being a little different is all part of being who you’re meant to be.
I’d probably also tell myself to eat that extra cheeseburger while I still can, (16 year old Deidra wasn’t fat like she thought she was!) because once you hit 30, every carb counts…and everything you eat will give you heartburn.