I’m sitting here, nine days after Nathan proposed to me, in my bed that I’ve had for years in a home we’ve owned since I was ten. I’ve been thinking so much about time lately. I don’t have time to figure out my living arrangements for this next semester. There’s not much time before school starts. I can’t find enough time to hang out with my fiancé and just sit back and watch a movie without my mind bombarding me with wedding planning. I can’t remember the last time I was this in love with a piece of jewelry. I wonder if I can get scheduled for a time to try on wedding dresses. We don’t have enough time to plan this wedding. When will I find the time to plan a wedding in the midst of making it on the Dean’s List, managing the school paper, being in choir, working, and having a social life? I think it’s time to stop and reflect.
I’m the youngest and I can’t remember a time when I was ever happy with where I was at that moment. I tried on my sister’s hand-me-down shoes that were too big for me and wished I was older so they would fit. All my friends were losing their baby teeth and I didn’t lose my first until I was 6. I was still wearing training bras when my friends were onto the real deal ones. I thought I was a freak for not yet having my first kiss when I started junior high. I thought of marriage when I was dating someone for longer than a month. “Only seven more years until I’ll be twenty”, I thought. “Then I can marry him.” I was single while my two best friends had been in the same relationships for over two years.
I got caught up in the future and I didn’t think about where I was in that moment. I mapped out my entire life before it happened.
But then time knocked me on my butt. At seventeen, I made a list of characteristics I wanted in a guy, expecting it would take years to find someone like that. Three months later, he introduced himself. Twenty-two months after that, he proposed. And in these past nine days, I have been knocked down on my butt. It’s as if I’m hovering over my life, watching it like it’s a movie. It’s not my life, is it? I’m not old enough for this, right? I’m getting married at twenty. Just like I said. But when did twenty become so young and soon? I’m planning a wedding that is actually happening. It’s not just a daydream. It’s real and it’s mine. And I can’t wrap my mind around that.
Don’t twist my words, I’m so extremely excited to marry Nathan. I will never regret saying yes on that mountain. I’m ready to experience time in a different way with him. There’ll be the first time I wake up next to him and smell his disgusting morning breath and feel like the luckiest girl in the world. The first time we truly fight and things get hard. The first time I butcher a recipe and we decide to order Chinese food instead. The first time a family member dies and we cry in each other’s arms. The first time I get such a bad sunburn that I look like a lobster and he laughs every time he sees me. Then there will be the first time we look back at our wedding photos and realize just how much we’ve grown up together.
My entire life has been leading up to these moments because I have no idea what comes after them. I don’t know who Nathan and I will be in five months or five years. I don’t know what circumstances we will be thrown into once we are married. I’m humbled by this season of life because I absolutely know that I will never get it back. I won’t get any of these nineteen years back. I’m enjoying this season because it is the most beautiful and mysterious one yet.
It’s time to find out what happens next.
