In your own time, your own way

When I was young, I always thought my love story would be similar to that of my parents: go to college, meet your future spouse, fall in love, graduate and get married six months out of college.  Have babies two years later and be done having children by the time you're 30.

My love story looks something more like this: go to college, graduate.  Meet my future spouse three years later, fall in love and get married three years later -- six and a half years out of college.  Potentially begin having children by the time I'm 30 -- God-willing. 

I think many of my friends' love stories are pretty similar.  We all thought we'd have similar stories to those in the generation before us, marrying and having children much earlier in life. 

A few of my friends did, actually, get married right out of college, and they already have a couple children and hope to be finished having children by the time they're 30.  This scared me when all this was happening because here they were going through the experiences I thought I was supposed to be going through and I feared not being able to relate to my best friends anymore.  I was still single, going through difficult breakups when it seemed the rest of my friends were moving forward.  My friends were fabulous and were there for me as best they could be, but their lives were changing, as were they, and rightly so.

Thankfully, I found my community not too long after.  Through the Catholic 20-Somethings Ministry, most all of my friendships with young adults who were in the same stage of life as me were formed.  I had finally found others who were single, young adult career professionals, to whom I could relate!  It made all the difference.

Today, most of my friends are still the ones I met through that ministry, and we're all growing together, mostly at the same pace.  Many of us have begun to meet "the one," are getting married, some even beginning to have children.  It's been so fun to go through these things together, at the same time.

So, what I've learned from my love story is that everyone has their own love story.  It unfolds in the fullness of time, as I like to say and pray, in the perfect way.  Had I not gone through my young adult ministry experience, I wouldn't be the person I am today -- true story.  Had I married right out of college and kept being the person I was, I would be completely different.  I wouldn't have met the most amazing man and be in this wonderful, loving marriage that I am so blessed to be in today.

I pray our future children's love stories, if they're called to the vocation of marriage, are just as beautiful, just as perfect.

Praying for our single loved ones to be revealed God's perfect will for their own love stories in the fullness of time and, in the meantime, may they grow in the virtue of patience.  It was a constant prayer of mine for several years!

Christmas 2009, Our first married Christmas!