Getting old. . . .

I know I'm not getting OLD old, but I've been feeling kind of old because I've been forgetting things lately. That's not like me. But then again, maybe it's not like me because I'm not used to being quite "so busy." (I'm not actually busy as in things are taking up all my time; I'm busy in that the things that take up my time are all different things - makes it harder to keep track of stuff.)

So in the spirit of being forgetful, I'm going to blog about something that I'm pretty sure I've blogged about before, something that's been on my mind a lot recently.

My topic is things that I always wanted/always expected. And my thoughts about WHY I wanted those things or expected those things.

Something I expected (though not something I wanted) was that I would not live around my family when I grew up. I didn't know where I would live, I hoped for certain kinds of places, but in all my thinking about what life would be like as a grownup, I never expected to live around my family.

I wanted to marry a preacher - a pastor, a missionary, an evangelist, it didn't matter. I went through them all at different stages, but the overarching theme was I wanted to marry a preacher.

This one I didn't just expect, I was relatively certain of, even though it began later in life (I think I was pretty convinced by the time I was fourteen): I had to meet the guy I was going to marry online. People liked me better online; I could get to know people online; I had an easier time communicating, etc. etc.. There were lots of reasons.

On the flip side: I could never picture myself dating, and in actuality, I've been on very few dates. "Dating" for us was talking on the phone for more than three hours on Saturday night. I knew I would get engaged, because I knew I would get married; but not being able to see myself dating helped my conclusion that I would marry someone I met online. It also made being Zack's girlfriend somehow more novel to me than being his fiance. Haha.

I expected to be poor. Not super poor, but as fun as it is to think about having money. . . . I wouldn't know what to do with it. Or, at least, I can't think of worth-while things to do with it. Haha. I could spend lots of money on STUFF - but what good is stuff?

Anyway, the WHY of all of this. Believing, as I do, in the God Who is involved in every aspect of the goings on in the world, I know that He orchestrated it. He gave it to me to expect things that He had long before determined were going to happen. Part of the reason, I think, is because I don't do well with unexpected things (I think I've learned to be more flexible, but it still gets rough sometimes). So He decided to let me know YEARS prior to events the basic way that things would happen.

Maybe He knew that if I hadn't been somewhat mentally preparing to leave my family for as long as I can remember, I wouldn't have been able to when Zack came along. The really interesting part is that God used my fears - my fear of being alone - to help me get used to the idea of not having my family around, so that when it came time for me to leave. . . I was sad and it was hard. But moving across the country was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much better than losing them for the rest of my life. I can visit them in Michigan this way; I get to see them on Skype every week.

Anyway. It's been on my mind. God is. . . . Heh. I couldn't think of a word that would fit what I wanted to say, so. . . God is that He is. And anyone who knows Him partially understands the depths of what that conveys.