lately i’ve been thinking a lot about marriage. as in i’ve considered it and have decided that it looks like fun. what it also looks like is a lot of work. and even harder work if spent with the wrong person.

now i’m not naive to the fact that marriage isn’t just a fix-all. i realize that after you say i do it isn’t always roses, rainbows, and butterflies. but i have to believe that when entered into with a pretty stellar human (who may or may not also look just like ryan gosling) it is mostly pretty awesome.

here’s the thing. i am nowhere near marriage right now. i mean, physically speaking, i’m actually very close to it considering how many weddings i have attended in just this past year, but in the emotional, psychological, and well logically (seeing as i don’t have a ring on this left hand) speaking, i am about as close to marriage as i am to china. so the idea of how it’s going to fit into my life, and well, obviously, how my life is going to fit into it (and the life of the lucky soul that gets me for eternity -good luck with that sir) is still quite abstract.

i love my life right now. i do. i can go to studio barre six nights a week and eat roasted vegetables and a baked potato for dinner and go to bed at 8pm or 1am and no one can stop me. i can go to nashville on a whim or go out to dinner with girlfriends every night of the week or stay inside all weekend and watch friday night lights episodes in my pajamas. i can come and go as i please, i can spend money as i please and i can portion my my free time as i please, too. i, i, i. it’s all about me. and i’m totally okay with that.

so call me selfishly single. or single and selfish. or just selfish, really. but at this juncture, i’m realizing that i’m okay with being selfish. there hasn’t been a gent to catch my eye so much that i would want to trade my sweatpants and say yes to the dress episodes (oh the irony) for an evening out with him. i feel like sometimes i have to apologize for the fact that this is truly where i’m at. like i’m supposed to be listening to my biological clock and freaking out that i’m approaching 30 and not betrothed. don’t you think i’ve thought that already? don’t you think i’ve thought about it for the past four years and as that milestone birthday continues to inch closer that i continue to question if it’s ever going to happen? y’all. i have thought everything you could be thinking and more. but i have learned in the last year especially that i really have no other choice than to be okay with where i’m at. actually, more than okay with it. i have learned to embrace this season with relativelyish open arms.

after an experimental year of saying “yes” more often than i said “no” to advances of the opposite gender proved to be more emotionally draining and frustrating than expected, i have learned to truly evaluate why it is i consider a specific gentleman’s invitation. is it because i’m bored? lonely? looking for a free meal? a reason to get dressed up? or option e -all of the above? because if any/all of those reasons aren’t really justifications for toying with someone’s emotions -mine and most especially the man on the other side of the date.

so what’s the alternative? create the best possible life while i wait to be wooed. create a life that i would have to think long and hard about giving up. for one date or two or two hundred and two. and most certainly marriage. now is the time to be selfish. to be choosy with my time and resources and most definitely my heart. i think the older i get and perhaps around this season in particular, there’s a tendency to focus on the fact that there isn’t a special guy in my life. and it would be pretty easy to fall into the “woe is me” trap and put my life on hold as i sit and wait for mister right to drop from the sky. and i have done that. i have literally not furnished my house or taken special trips or done a whole other slew of things on my bucket list because i was in some sort of holding pattern waiting for marriage. but plain and simple, the one true love of my life hasn’t happened yet. i don’t know when it’s going to happen or if it’s anywhere remotely in the immediate future. that is equal parts terrifying and exciting to comprehend. one of my girlfriends once told me that “things can change in an instant, you never know.” and i truly believe her. things really can change like that (snaps her fingers). God is capable of anything, truly anything and i’m discovering that more and more and it’s awesome. but i also know better than to put my life on hold in anticipation of that instant. if things happen when i least expect it (as they say), then i really want to be surprised when they transpire. i don’t want to be in this desperate place where it’s a race to the altar before i become a thirtysomething cat lady who everyone feels sorry for. i want to live my life and be filled with the community i’ve built around myself. that those relationships and the one i have with my Savior would be enough. that i would be a content person without a plus one. and that his presence would only compliment it, not complete it.

image via: bekah fry.