I'm making a dress for this wedding because if I'm going to be the only person over the age of 12 who is single, I'm going to have to look FABULOUS...

Today at Walmart, instead of running into someone I knew from high school (probably because I wasn't in there long enough), I stood fairly patiently in line behind two little old ladies who were buying Fancy Feast cat food...in bulk. Sixty or so cans and about ten minutes later, I finally checked out with my contact solution, dismissing the fear that those ladies foreshadowed my future.

On the plane ride here I had a bit of a revelation. In an effort to ignore the smelly awkward man next to me, I wrote in my journal.

I'm headed to Texas for a quick look at the life I thought I'd always get.
Wanted this story, by the book, but found my way
To LA--instead
Of all those dreams
God gives me new things
And I find joy.
Since at the day's end I see it never mattered where I went,
But Who was next to me.

It's almost too easy to feel overwhelmed by the pressure to be married here. As I planned this vacation home around a wedding of one of my best friends from high school, I started to fear the inevitable--I am going to stand out like a sore thumb. Sure enough, at the bachelorette party, I was the only person there who was single. And at quite a few functions so far, the question came up like unsettled indigestion: "So is there someone special in your life?" Plenty of special people, but none to satisfy their question. I smile sweetly and say no.

If I let myself, I will slip into that selfsame daydream where I stay in Texas and my life turns into the picket fence existence I imagined growing up. According to that course, I, too, should be entertaining a church full of guests and a new last name. But there was a day, several years back, when I made a tearful choice to leave all of the Lone Star State behind.

And God went with me into the wild.

I packed my things and went on an adventure--full of loneliness and trials, excitement, new names and faces, places I never knew I could go. I've been to heights and depths.

And still, God came too.

As I look back, it's tempting to ask the what ifs and ease my mind by down playing the possibilities of what might have been...all to convince myself that I made the right choice in going this route because the other would have been stagnant and boring. The truth is, it might have been just as fulfilling to stay home. Life would have had its own, albeit different, thrills.

But when it comes to whether or not I am happy that I took the different rabbit trails I took, to whether or not I am pleased with my current trajectory, I really have no opinion.

Because my joy is complete purely in knowing that my God was beside me all the while. It has little to do with the specifics of what has happened in my life, and everything to do with the specific Person who walks with me day by day.

So I will blow whichever way the wind takes me,
Anchored to the One who leads me home.

At the risk of being obnoxious...

At different points in my life, I go through phases where I don't really like children. I don't ooh and aah at newborns. In fact, I think they are usually kind of ugly. They are wrinkly and awkward and cry too much.

That being said, I am in love with my brother's new kid. It is ridiculous. So here is my obligatory proud Aunt Meredith post...

Dad sleeping with the baby

Bradly yawns...I think he looks a little bit like an old man...


Double chins and awkward faces...actually look cute to me..

They are, like...tiny...

personality.

I think I'm going to like this kid.

"Cuz My heart is damaged...damaged..."

After hearing this song on the radio this morning, with a van full of college-bound high schoolers, I shot my mouth off like I often do:

"Oh...my gosh--this song is ridiculous! Trust me ladies, no guy wants to hear you gab on about how epic your baggage is. It is the quickest way to make them run for the hills!"

Despite the passion of that soapbox moment, I should have offered a more rational clarification--it's not that guys are insensitive and can't deal with the fact that you've been hurt in the past. I guess what irks me about the song is that it glorifies the sort of jaded mentality that permeates so much of the dating world I've seen and experienced. Not only that, but the girl specifically demands that her guy be the one to "fix it." Heresy, if I've ever heard it.

By this point in my life, nearly everyone I meet seems to have their own version of the scorned lover story. Courtship is a dead horse we revive every now and then, just so we can shoot it in the face. It's no secret that our modern system of mate-matching has its flaws. With little guidance coming from our family or the church, a lot of us end up with a blemish or two on the ol' dating record. Be it a brightly patterned Vera Bradley or something we picked up from a street vendor downtown for ten bucks, a lot of us are toting some serious luggage.

Tonight I was reading a post on Stuff Christians Like that compared unforgiveness to carrying around a dead body. I think relational baggage works the same way. It's not that men (or women for that matter) are insensitive to the hurts of our past relationships--it's just that after a while, the stench starts to really ruin things. All that dead weight (ha) makes it difficult to frolic through the daisy fields of a new love. And despite my notorious pessimism about all things romance-related, I like that word, frolic. It makes me think of another word I like: joy.

At Bible Study this week we talked about finding our joy in Christ. If I were to live my life underscored by this poppy, top-40 number, no amount of synthesizers could drown out the hollow cry for salvation: "How ya gonna fix it...fix it...fix it?" We live in a fallen world, where pain is an inevitable part of life. It shouldn't shock me at all when people turn to one thing or another for a salve, some aspirin...a tranquilizer.

But as for me, I can sing a different tune, because through Christ, God already fixed all of it, allowing me to drop the cadaver already...and leaving me free to frolic.