I Have a Problem

I have a problem. I've never been great at waiting. As a junior in high school, I had a lot of great senior friends. As a result, I caught their "senior-itis." Chronically. I was just so ready to be moving on with my life, and watching all of them take those steps made me yearn to do the same. As a senior, my family announced their plans to move to Missouri within the year. A part of me was devastated. Another part of me - the obsessive, planning part - wanted to leave immediately. If I was going to have to leave everything I'd built up during three years, I didn't want to postpone having to get used to my new situation. So, I said my goodbyes and moved in with my grandparents a month or two ahead of my family.

After that, I couldn't finish high school fast enough. Then came college. I applied to three schools. By the time I'd gotten acceptance letters from the first two schools, University of Utah and Brigham Young University - Idaho, I was going crazy. I wanted to see if I'd gotten accepted by the third school, Brigham Young University, but a large part of me said Idaho was the place to be. I accepted their offer, including a half-tuition scholarship for the first two semesters, about a month before my BYU acceptance letter came, and never looked back.

I loved everything about college. I loved the classes, the activities, living in Idaho, and being much closer to family I hadn't seen in years. I also loved always having something to do. BYU-Idaho's semesters are a little different than "regular" semesters, so I had a significant amount of time between one semester and the next, which drove me nuts.

Just before my second - and currently last - semester, I had joined a couple of dating websites (because, frankly, I had no men lining up at my door.) At the beginning of my summer break, I met a guy in Vegas. We spent some time together while I was there for a choir reunion, then I went back to Missouri to await starting my next semester.

We technically had a long-distance relationship, and I had a strong feeling that I was supposed to be married within the year, but I was miserable. I felt I couldn't possibly be meant to be married to someone like that, so I started looking for other options... and what I found was so worth the wait. (Story can be found HERE, on our daughter's blog.)

I found true love, and once someone like myself finds a love like that, you don't want to wait to start your married life. Thankfully, neither did my intended-spouse. Two months and two days later, we tied the knot. Truly, I would have been happy with doing it immediately, but that's not how things worked out. It's been nearly two years now, and I have never regretted our decision.

We wanted children immediately, and, after about three months, we got the answer we wanted. Of course, things didn't quite work out how we'd expected, and awful periods of waiting ensued. Then there was the waiting after giving birth, and the waiting while trying to conceive (read: INSANITY.) Now there's the waiting to see our baby at each appointment, and the waiting for our little blessing to finally be here. 

As you can tell, I have a major problem. I despise waiting, but it seems to be a favorite of life's teaching tools. You know, while writing this post, it occurs to me that maybe life is teaching me to enjoy the wait. Though my life can be summarized into many different periods of waiting, I have had many small moments which make the wait worth it. Waiting to finish high school gave me the opportunity to make some great friends, and enjoy a pretty great choir career. Waiting to marry Charles just made me want to marry him more, and appreciate how happy he makes me when we're together. Waiting to give birth to Sophia gave me the time to get to know her in the womb, which was especially important because I knew I wouldn't have much - if any - time to get to know her outside of the womb. Waiting with this little one is giving Charles and I the opportunity to enjoy our last months of real alone time.

Waiting doesn't have to be so bad, and really, life hasn't thrown me any period of waiting which didn't teach me something I needed or wasn't appreciative of afterward. I'll be thirteen weeks along tomorrow, and - while they haven't been particularly pleasant - I am grateful to have had them. The next twenty-seven will undoubtedly fly by, and when I get the chance to look back a couple years from now, it really won't seem like that waiting was very long or hard at all.