I was sitting on the living room floor of a cabin my family had rented for a summer vacation together when I was prompted to consider just how big a deal it was that I only had one semester left before I would graduate with my masters degree. This felt like a big deal because it's just that, a big deal. And to add to it's significance...I never thought I would get a master's degree nor did I think I was capable. Yet here I was only a few months away from accomplishing just that. Oh AND I was going to be turning 30 just before the summer, so figured I might as well add that to the list of things to celebrate!
My ideas to celebrate started small with sky diving, quickly grew to going on a trip and landed with going to Europe. I'd never been to Europe and though I never really had a huge desire to it seemed like a great place to choose and one that felt feasible. Of course, I'd find a few friends to go with me, and we'd be able to save for a year because summer was the only time I could take a trip like that. Sounded easy enough.
My next step was to start running the idea by a few friends that I thought would be both fun and easy to travel with and thankfully one friend was in. Fast forward several months later after the hardest semester of my entire master's program, presenting my capstone project and walking in graduation and it was time to really get to planning things out. The only bummer was, the friend that was originally in was now out. No big deal, just crushed me a bit but it wasn't going to stop me.
Next step, find someone else to travel with. So I set out and while I had a few people with the desire to do it, nobody could in the end.
Sitting at a bar with a friend, having a beer and watching the "game" (don't ask me what game, I have no clue) we talked about my plans to go to Europe and the dead end I found myself in. Our conversation led me to a place of realizing that this trip would likely not happen if I wasn't willing to go alone. ALONE?!?! Seriously, this wasn't the plan and never had crossed my mind but it's where I found myself. Either go alone or stay home alone. And THIS is where the story took a turn deep into my heart.
What did those deep places look like? Scary!...with lots of definitions and expectations on my life as a single person.
I realized that according to who really knows, the church and most people in it, that there were some pretty major expectations I should live by. Here are the heaviest hitters. First, I should be married. I would be 30, long past the age of most married people in the church and marriage makes you an adult and a whole person. Second, my life didn't start as a single person until I married. Why? Because the ultimate goal in life is marriage and THEN you can go travel places together because that's what you do when you're married, if you have the means. Third, which is a mix of expectation and the truth of my heart....I desire to be married and how fun would it be to go on a trip like this with my spouse? So fun...assuming he likes to travel and that we have all the same expectations, hopes and dreams for our trips together. ;) So maybe I should wait! Oh wait, I'm not guaranteed marriage, the means to travel if I am one day or the time off like I had then to take a trip like this. Did I mention I was going to go for 30 days?
These were big expectations I never had put words to or realized just how much they impacted the way I thought about life, how to live it as a single person and my worth therein. And the truth is and was....I don't believe they are true and yet in big and small ways I was living by them and at times find myself living by them still. As I sat in all that was coming up, processed, asked myself questions, talked with others and dug deeper and deeper into it all one thing became clear, I needed to go on the trip. I needed to go because my life had started 30 years prior, single doesn't mean incomplete, and marriage isn't guaranteed. And so I went.
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