When We Make Our Little Plans...

I was three years old when I picked up my first microphone.  I was light, and it was heavy.  I didn't want a plastic one.  I wanted my dad's full metal, shiny, Shure microphone.  I would sing into that thing all over our house, even if I got tired and had to drag it behind me.  I wrote little ditties that made no sense, directed my own little music videos.  It was just in me. 

It's funny how, at the tender age of three, I thought it was figured out for me.  I remember being around five years old, humming myself to sleep, the melodies so perfect and spot on to what I'd heard on the radio.  I felt in those moments, God was teaching me how to sing.  Then, when I was nine, I was at a sleepover with girlfriends, singing Motown and they stopped and told me that I should be a "real" singer when I grew up because they couldn't do it like I could.  It wasn't until I was 16 that I put every ounce of my being into a love in my life that is/was music.  And from 16 to 28 I didn't stop. 

Music felt like it started to become ALL that I was, or maybe I became all IT was.  I never saw any other single purpose for my life, and I was so stubborn to listen to any other possibilities. Until God started opening my eyes to new blessings, and to new life. 

One day I stopped telling God that this is what I was meant to do, and I allowed him to fully come into my heart and show me that maybe His way really is better.  

Did I think I'd meet the man of my dreams when I visiting home between tours? No.  Not in a million years.

Would I have written into my own story that not more than a few months into being a newlywed my body would start shutting down on me and I'd have to give up most of the foods Mr. Charming and I fell in love with while we were falling in love?  No.

Did I imagine that I would stop recording in the middle of my sophomore album to immerse myself wholeheartedly into being the wife my husband deserves and working hard as the best journalist I could be, while LOVING every second of it?  I honestly didn't a few years ago.  I didn't think there was anything else meant for me but what I was struggling to do at the time. 

But these non-choices, these things that happen... they ARE part of our story.  We are responsible for some of what happens, but ultimately God is the editor-in-chief, the main author of our book, the end all be all of what lies before us, and we have to just open our hearts and minds to the beauty of this journey.

I thought I would spend my entire life creating beautiful music and writing beautiful stories...

And then I take my husbands hand, look forward into the unknown future, and I realize, that's just what we're doing.