"A new experience can be extremely pleasurable, or extremely irritating, or somewhere in between, and you never know until you try it out."
— Lemony Snicket
When I was about 15, I remember being at church and talking with the other girls about when we would get married and have children. I think we even wrote down our guesses so we could look back one day and see how close we were.
I'm pretty sure that everyone thought I would be married when I was 21. And when I was 21, I'm positive that I thought I would be married by the time I was 25 and when I was 25, I was sure I would be married by the time I turned 29. And here I am, 2 months away from turning 29 and my life is nowhere close to where I had imagined it would be.
Am I disappointed that my life is so different than my 15 year old self imagined it? Sometimes. Am I scared that my life might never turn out the way I want it to? Yep. But would I take back any of the experiences that I've had in the past 14 years? Absolutely not.
If I would have been married at 21 (or even at 25 for that matter), I probably would have never gone to grad school, or vacationed in Hawaii, or traveled the US so extensively, or moved to Blanding, or met the amazing people I have. I would have missed out on so many things that have made me who I am.
Three years ago, I would have never dreamed that I would be living in small town Utah, working on the Indian reservation. But I will always remember the feeling that I got as I drove from Salt Lake to Mexican Hat. The feeling that I was home.
That maybe for the first time in my life,
I was exactly where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there. So while my life might be different than I planned, I'm grateful to know that the plan for my life is still right on track.
