To The Girl Making Important Decisions
Exactly a year ago I was in the most perfect relationship that I had ever been in. I graduated college and was applying to grad school so I could get my dream job. I absolutely loved the town I lived in and I had the cutest little apartment.
Everything was going effortlessly perfect and according to my plan. I was so excited for my future.
That was a year ago.
“We plan and God laughs”- This quote is truer than you’ll ever know.
Today, I have none of that.
I am not in school, I have no boyfriend, and I live with my parents. Yes, 2016 will be marked as the toughest year of my life.
Everything seemed to be going against me. It started out with receiving a rejection letter from the university because two professors didn’t turn in a recommendation form. Talk about a letdown. I did everything I was supposed to do but the two professors didn’t do their part so I got punished…I am still annoyed by that.
The very next week, my boyfriend broke up with me
The last of my friends had moved away.
So, now I was all alone in my one-bedroom apartment that once felt so homely in a town I knew nobody in.
I had my whole future ripped out from underneath me in a matter of a couple of days.
It only got worse with the coming months.
It had been 5 months and nothing was going right. Every time I thought I hit rock bottom something else happened and once again I had fallen down farther than where I was. It was pure torture.
I was still living in the same town where the only other person I knew was my ex. But, it wasn’t the same anymore. I couldn’t enjoy it anymore. Everywhere I went I always thought back to the last time him and I were there together and it would bring back all sorts of memories. Even just the littlest of things! I would be driving and look at a billboard and automatically think about a conversation him and I had about it.
To say those 5 months was excruciating is an understatement.
I felt so ashamed about myself that I would avoid people at all cost because I knew they would ask about an update on my life. It was miserably excruciating when it did happen. Thankfully, most people were nice and tried to find the positive.
Others, though, did not.
I was actually told by a friend’s mom that I was one of the few in my class who failed in life. I was literally the butt of the joke in that family. Ouch!
Why was I living like that?
I had to start changing things.
The last thing I wanted to do was give up and move back in with my parents. That just seemed like a sign that I was giving up. Maybe because all the movies put a negative twist on it or I was comparing my life to my friends (whose lives were fitting together amazingly well). I don’t know, I just knew that if I moved back home, in my mind, that meant that I had failed myself and my family.
It came down to this…
I had people at home who loved me and would help out with anything I needed, yet I chose to sit in my apartment, alone, in a town that had no meaning to me anymore.
As bad I didn’t want to, I knew it was time for me to move home.
It’s not that I don’t love my parents, I do. I love them to death. I had been out on my own for 5 years,though. Living under their roof again was not ideal. I had grown accustomed to my ways and my way of living. If I moved back, I had to change all that in order to get along with them. After all, it was their house and they were nice enough to let me back in with open arms. The least I could do was change my way of living for theirs.
That wasn’t the issue.
The issue was the fact that I was more worried about how people would think of me if I moved back home.
Let’s be honest…
We will forever be worried about what other think. I know I struggle with it greatly. I’m a “people pleaser” so it’s hard to let people’s opinion just roll off my back. I take everything to heart and dwell on it. I try not to, but when it’s all said and done, I have over thought every little word. It’s not healthy, I know. I’m still working on it.
If you’re like me, try to remember this verse, “ Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.” Galatians 1:10.
We aren’t living for people’s approval, but for God’s. In the end, He knows what’s best for us even when we think otherwise. If it’s truly what we should be doing, or if we feel that it’s God’s way, we shouldn’t care what somebody says.
I would constantly (like every day) debate if I was doing the right thing by living so far away from my family. I knew that everyone else had moved away and never looked back. Why should I feel so guilty staying away?
Unfortunately, I had to go through those 5 months of loneliness and pain to realize that the guilt I was feeling was God calling me to move home to be closer to my family. I was just too stubborn to accept it.
He was simplifying my life to help me realize that even when everything was falling apart, the most important people were there-stronger than ever. Even if it meant that I was going to be “the failure who moved back home” I needed to shut out the world’s opinion and do what God wanted me to do.
I had been so wrapped up into other people’s opinions that I had missed that completely!
Take my advice…
When you’re making decisions leave opinions out of it.
I know, I know it’s easier said than done.
However, you’re the one that’s going to have to live with the outcome so you might as well make it the choice you chose- not what people’s opinions chose. Hopefully, if it’s truly what you want and God’s way, you’ll feel so much better in the end.
Eventually, you won’t care what others have said because you know it’s what God wanted for you!
