Take Away the Timeline

Part 1.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the timeline your 8-year-old self naïvely imagined, isn’t going as planned, right? Did you imagine yourself in a serious relationship by now? Even engaged or married by this point? Did you have your degree? Did you own your own house by now too? I have to assume our generation isn’t alone in this obsession with the timeline of our lives but sometimes it feels like it. I believe social media is to blame for the pressure we feel about it, but I digress. 

For the sake of being absolutely honest, my life has followed pretty closely to the timeline I imagined as a kid. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Then how can you understand?” Fair question. Even though my timeline has stayed relatively “on track,” life itself and the experiences I’ve been through, have been far from the plan. And of course, those closest to me have fallen victim to the timeline panic too.

This is going to sound corny but truthfully what rocked my world and changed my whole perspective of the “timeline” of life, was Matt. I can’t say something like that without some back story, right? I’ve been meaning to write a whole blog post on how we met and fell in love and all that cute crap. But for this, I’ll keep it simple.

Matt and I met in high school. I was a sophomore and he was a senior. We were fast friends! I started dating my high school boyfriend about a month after I met Matt. I dated him for over 5 years and Matt also dated someone in that time, for 3 years. We stayed close friends the entire time. We both ended those relationships (for very different reasons) within two months of each other and started dating roughly 6 months later. 6 years in between meeting and eventually dating. Through the years of friendship, there was always a small what if. But life didn’t put us on the path to pursuit for 6 years and we respected that. Not to mention the potential for ruining the friendship. 

Now, almost 9 years later, I am engaged to my best friend. I am the surest about him as I have ever been about anything. We’ve had the conversation a million times about how lucky we are that God brought us together at just the right time. I believe life has a way of teaching us what we need to learn and putting us on paths for a reason. 

What if we had started dating in high school? You know that quote, “I wish I had met you sooner, so I could love you longer”? It’s sweet in theory but I call BS.  

Had we started dating back then, we would not be together now. I wouldn’t be counting down the days until I get to marry my best friend. We would not have made it. I wouldn’t appreciate Matt nearly as much as I do now had I not been in my past relationship. Matt wouldn’t have been as mature and grounded as he is, if we had dated when he was 17 vs. 23. 

You haven’t met the right guy (or girl) yet because you’re not supposed too! Maybe you have things to learn about yourself or people to meet or an amazing job to get. Or maybe you think you’re completely ready! But what about your person? Maybe they need to go through a hard season in life to appreciate you someday. Maybe they need to learn to love themselves, so they can love you fully when the time comes. I know it’s hard to believe now but have faith.

You’re supposed to have your degree and a dream job by now, right? It seems we all anticipated we would have our act together by 25…. Man were we wrong. 

I’m going to use one of my close friends as an example for this one. She graduated with her Bachelor’s degree at 26 years old after changing majors, transferring to 3 different schools, and moving to a different city. Of course there were times when she was frustrated and stressed about her “delayed” timeline but now she has her dream job –a job she never would have known even existed had life not brought her through the timeline it did. She works at a chicken plant y’all.  You can thank her for your Chickfila nuggets. If she would have figured it out sooner, we would never have been college roommates. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken school seriously if she had done it at 23 vs 26. Maybe the job wouldn’t have been available then.

Okay, so you see where I am going with this, right?

Forget the dang timeline. Seriously, you’re off the hook. Erase the plan you dreamt up when you were eight years old.  There’s a reason you are where you are right now. As long as you are not stagnant. As long as you have goals that you are working towards, you are on the right timeline.

You will meet your person and realize exactly why you didn’t meet them sooner. The lessons your baby taught you when you graduate college a little later than originally planned will be invaluable. You will realize that you needed to meet the people you met and experience the things you did in order to have the life you were meant to have. The tough part is, you don’t realize it until it’s happened. So, let yourself off the damn hook and enjoy now, exactly as it was meant to be. 

Part 2 coming soon, stay tuned!

-The Relatable Red