I Wish I Learned This When I Was Single...

So my anniversary is this week!!! As I’m looking through my wedding photos and planning our trip I realized how much I have grown and matured over the past year. I truly thank God that I am not the same woman I was in 2016.

But …

I also realized that there are two areas I could have handled while I was single that I didn’t. But I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to pay attention and grow. If I had spent more time working on these two areas, being married would be a thousand times simpler.

Discipline

When I was single I didn’t have a daily schedule. I had a class schedule and sometimes I didn’t even follow that. I made half baked attempts at organizing my life, but I never stayed committed to it. I spent a lot of time at the beginning and the end of the semester throwing away plans and schedules I had written out, and planners I had bought and halfway used. From my health to education I didn’t do it on purpose. It is literally a miracle that I have a degree because I didn’t have any margin in my life, and when I tried to create margin I would throw away my plan and say “I’ll get back on track tomorrow”. I think about two weeks into being married I realized I couldn’t live like that anymore.  Is one thing to make a plan but being disciplined enough to stick with it is a completely different story.

Perspective

I also spent a lot of time focused on myself, and not in a good way. I was selfish, prideful, and impatient. I spent most of my time figuring out how to make ME happy and how people made ME feel. I knew God. I knew he was supposed to be my focus, but frankly, I was too concerned about the fact that I couldn’t have sex to think about it. I really had to flip my perspective and realize that honoring God is more important than my next orgasm. Glorifying God and bringing others into his kingdom was more important than how those same people treated me. I had to swallow my pride and pray for the people that hurt me. I had to take a lot of cold showers and spend a lot of time in prayer to avoid the temptations that surrounded me in school. It wasn’t easy but until I started zooming out and looking at the bigger picture, I didn’t discover my purpose and I am so thankful that God has pushed me to change my perspective.

So as I’m reminiscing on the good times and the not so good I’m also looking towards the future. Actively praying and actively changing my behavior for the better, so the next 80 something years might be a little bit simpler.

Orianna