When I Grow Up...

      I had friends and teachers growing up that always ask me the same question. When I was little the question was, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" In middle school they would say, "What are you going to go to college for?"  Assuming that everyone would go to college after graduating high school.  And in later years the question was, "What are your plans for the future?"  Wow, that's pretty deep.

     I noticed the people around me always answered these questions with things like; a doctor, a lawyer, a pediatric nurse...  I've always been the type, since a young age, that wondered, why doesn't anybody ever say, "I'm gonna be a trash man" or "I'm gonna work at McDonalds." After all, somebody has to do it. But the one occupation that nobody ever named, possibly the most important job out there.  A mommy!  Who do they think raises those doctors, lawyers, and nurses?  Hello?! 

     So, my senior year of high school, my high school sweetheart, with whom I had planned to spend the rest of my life, said to me one night, in deep conversation, "Jenny, have you thought seriously about your plans for your future?" My first thought was, here we go again.  By this point, I was sick to death if this question! I was also tired of critical eyes when I told people that it wasn't in my plans to go to college.  I had nothing set in stone.  So I made it very clear to him that I was put on this earth to be a wife and a mommy. That's all I had ever wanted and all I had planned for "my future."

     Guess what I got?  Critical eyes.  Needless to say, that was the beginning to our end.  He wasn't "Mr. Right" after all.

     I'm so glad I didn't conform to what someone else wanted me to be over what I knew in my heart, was the calling on my life.  I hate to think of where I might be today if I hadn't held on to the unseen hand of God.

     That was the hardest, saddest, most horrible breakup in world history!  I was just sure I was going to die.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't drink, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think, I couldn't concentrate on anything.  I pretty much walked around like a zombie, until.......

     August 26, 1998.  That's when I spotted him.  There he was, walking into the gas station.  Ahhh...could he be real or was he just a vision?  I must admit. I DO NOT believe in love at first sight.  But if I did, I would swear this was the closest that anybody had ever came to it in the history of existence.

     If it wasn't love at first sight what was it?  It must've been lust.  But it's over now:)  I'm not proud of this but that's the only explanation.  Lust it was.

     I noticed he was with a friend and his friend was pumping gas.  So, I took myself and my outgoing, unfiltered, personality to that friend and said "hi."  He probably thought I was hitting on him.  But I shortly followed "hi" with "your friend is really hot!"  He laughed.  Hottie came out of the store.  Friend introduced us.  And the rest is history.

     Hottie, a.k.a. Curtis, has now been my husband for fifteen years next month.  I would be lying through my teeth if I said we had been happy every single day of those fifteen years.  That would make a great story but a very untruthful one.

     After starting to date we learned that we both wanted a big family.  Cha Ching!!!  I hit the baby jack pot!  And I was thinking, "check this guy out.  We'll make some beautiful kids."

     It's true what they say. Whoever they are.  The first year of marriage is NOT EASY!  Immediately after saying "I do" those cute little things that Curtis said and done while we were dating...NOT cute anymore.  They were now ridiculously stupid and obnoxious, which lead me to feel many different emotions for him in that first year.  Aggravation, annoyance, rage, hatred...love?  Not so much.  Mostly I just wanted to kick him in the throat and run the opposite direction while he was laying on the ground gasping for breath.

     Now, almost fifteen years later, we realize where we were going wrong.  We had our priorities completely out of line.  First of all, we did NOT have God at the head if our marriage.  Without Him as the leader.  It will never work!

     Yes, we went to church on Sundays. We checked the "Christian" box on hospital papers.  But were we being "Christ like?"  Absolutely not!  It's a sad reality that I've recently learned, too many people think all it takes to be a Christian is to believe in God.  Darwin, the inventor of the evolution theory or the "big bang theory" believed there was a God.

     It didn't take us fifteen years to get our priorities lined up.  But it did take us longer than I like to admit.  God first.  Spouse second.  Children after spouse.  Then everything else.  Sometimes that's a hard pill to swallow.  But that's the way it was intended.

     Recently, after being blessed enough to be able to stay home with our children for fourteen years, I started working.  I'm constantly bragging on my sweetie to the ladies I work with.  I'm proud of my man!

     Three nights ago, I came home from work at mid-night and Curtis had bought me roses, a Caramel Milkyway (my favorite), and written me the sweetest card telling me how much he appreciates me.  Aaannnddd he rubbed my achey feet while I told him all about my evening.  It's the little things:)

     I know.  He sounds perfect, right?  He's not!  There are still times I'd like to kick him in the throat and run the opposite direction.  

     So, I don't have a college education.  I've never traveled out of the country.  I wouldn't know how to act at a five star restaurant. 

     But if you ask me thirty years ago what I wanted to be when I grew up, or twenty years ago what I was going to college for, or seventeen years ago what my plans were for my future.  I could've looked ahead to today and with perfect contentment said, "Yep."