Fairy Tales.

Since I mention fairy tales in this blog on occasion, I want to share a modern day fairy tale. I have told this story a hundred times over so I wanted to have record of it to share.

Growing up, my bed time stories consisted of Princes and Princesses, beauty and valor, adventure and love. So its not far fetched to say that I have always been a fairy tale kind of girl. I believe you can have your storybook kind of love if you are patient enough to let it find you.

That being said, Christmas weekend I was on the 'behind the scenes' making of a fairy tale. This Christmas Eve, 2011, my family and my sister's fiance surprised her with a wedding!

On December 5th, my mother sent a message to my sister's fiance, Luke, asking his thoughts on a surprise wedding for him and my sister, Lauren. Luke, the sweetheart that he is, was on board for this crazy idea and wanted to make it happen! They called me and we began planning.

Because everyone was so busy, planning was very difficult. My mother owns her own jewelry store where she crafts, designs, and re-purposes all types of jewelry. Christmas is not exactly the best time for her to focus her attention outside of the store. Our sweet Luke works hours and hours a week in retail while also going to school so again Christmas time is not opportune for planning an event such as a wedding.

December 14th was the first time we were able to get any concrete plans set. Luke and I had a thirty minute conversation over the phone while he shooed my sister out of the room he occupied at their apartment. Finally, we were able to discuss the details. Tears streamed down my face as he talked about how much my sister deserved a perfect day. How lucky is she? I thought, to find someone who realizes what a precious soul she is and how much she deserves something worthwhile and lasting -beginning with a surprise, fairy tale wedding.

You see, things in their relationship hadn't worked out quite how they had planned in the beginning. After several years of being friends, they decided to date. Over the summer, Luke and Lauren found out they were going to be parents. (Surprises seem to be a theme for them in 2011.) Though things were off to a rough start, they made a choice not to look back, only to look forward.

I admire this decision.

For months they've been planning for our little girl to arrive. Choosing a name was NOT one of the easiest tasks our family has encountered, but after much deliberation and dictionary usage, finally a name was chosen for our little angel: Hadley Sophia.

Because working and planning for Hadley became the priority, and rightfully so, Luke and Lauren placed their dream wedding to the side and decided to tackle becoming good parents first. Instead of traditional vows, Hadley would be their vow to each other until time allowed to make their big day possible. Little did Lauren know that day would be sooner rather than later.

The week of the wedding comes and I'm all in a tizzy with tying up loose ends and waiting for Luke and my mom return my phone calls. This my friends, was a feat all of its own. Things were kind of a blur between working full time, getting ready for Christmas and trying to plan a dream wedding from someone else's perspective. Even though it hasn't yet been a month, I can't remember all of the details, save this one:

Isn't there always something that goes awry in the plot of unfolding fairy tales?

Wednesday, December 21st I was traveling out of town. My boyfriend's dad was having surgery, and I was hurrying from work to be at the hospital. At some point towards the end of my two hour drive, wedding complication #1 arose: location. The venue we were planning to use does not 'allow' weddings. (It's a small public PARK, people.) So here I am avoiding the hospital parking garage, which screams no cell service, calling everyone I know to help devise Plan B.

Eventually, I have to stop circling the parking garage... so I walk into the hospital with my boyfriend, a slight heart attack, and no one to help reverse this disaster waiting to happen.

No location. No wedding. Not an option.

A few hours later I escape downstairs to check my phone. There is one message:

I called the Mayor. We have the park and blessings from him. 

A dear friend and angel had taken it upon herself to save the day by calling the Mayor to straighten the situation out. So in short, I finally took a breath. We could have the wedding!

To be continued...

Thankful.

Because its's November and Thanksgiving is just around the corner, I am going to be incredibly cliche and list a few things I am thankful for this month. Since I think on them everyday anyway, I feel I should keep a record to remind myself of the things that have been important in my life this year.


I have been blessed in many many ways throughout my life, but espeically in the past year, I believe.


01: Good friendship is hard to come by. Old friendship, the kind that picks up where it left off weeks, months before, thats even harder to come by. I am thankful for the quality friends I have collected throughout my life; the ones who are true, who know my soul, to whom I have nothing to explain.


02: Talent. I am and will be forever grateful to the God that gave me talent. Even though I don't always see it, its there, waiting for me to tap into it. When it comes out in full force, I am always confident in it. I am blessed to be a well rounded individual. (Please note I am not bragging. Sometimes you have to acknowledge your strengths. Notice I'm not listing things I'm awesome at. :))


03: I am thankful for the colors of fall and the beauty they bring to my life. I'm not sure there is anything more beautiful to my eyes than the turning of the leaves and their meeting in abundance on the ground underneath the trees. My happy place resides in a scene full of oranges, yellows, reds, and greens. Throw in a cool breeze, a log cabin, my love, and a fireplace and that might be my heaven.


04: The love that family brings. Not everyone can love you like your family does. Its a special, forgiving, generous, unending love. I have been blessed with a mom, dad, and sister who show me this love on a daily basis. No our family isn't perfect. Never has been; Never will be. But at the end of the day, we have love and in this life, that is all I can really ask for.


05: Thankful for beautiful weddings & seeing my friends happy. Weddings sure are a lot of work, but the joy and beauty they bring into the lives of the bride & groom makes it worth it!


Having a big bed to fall into following the wedding also makes it to the thankful list. I enjoyed every second of those 12 hours of sleep.


06: Following a good night's sleep, I am thankful for a good productive morning. They are few and far between these days. In a time where I'm no longer a college student nor am I a fully grown adult, I struggle with my desire to play on the weekends and sleep in or to be responsible and do things like spend my Saturdays cleaning and doing laundry. On weekends when I successfully complete both, I'm a happy camper.


06.5: Also today, I am grateful for sweet friends who offer no judgement, only a solution to your dilema.The world needs more of women and men like this. To be able to come to a person in a jam and share your feelings and needs with them is very difficult; however, knowing that person will only receive you in love changes everything. Thank God for them.


07: I am thankful for Monday workdays that go by quickly. In grown up life, that truly is a blessing that needs no explanation.


08: Friends who are there for you when it really counts.

Opportunity.

Opportunity doesn't always knock.

Sometimes. It creeps up very slowly, then all of a sudden, it jumps out and says, "HELLO!" To which you should return an equally as enthusiastic, "HELLO, Please come in!"

op·por·tu·ni·ty:
[op-er-too-ni-tee, -tyoo-]
1. an appropriate or favorable time or occasion
2. a situation or condition favorable for attainment of a goal.
3. a good position, chance, or prospect, as for advancement or success.    [dictionary.reference.com]
As you grow up, you learn which opportunities to take advantage of and which ones to let pass you by. Sometimes it isn't always clear; others, its plain as day. And you begin to notice its not often that things you wish for come to fruition on their own accord. But when they do, you must take hold of them - even if it means flying by their coattail for a while.

Often, opportunities can be seen as risks.

Often, they are.

This little detail is what makes them so exciting! The fact that you can't know what will happen at the finale is part of the journey.. well part of the jump before the journey begins, anyway.

It gives one a rush to jump into an unexpected opportunity. At least this has been my experience, she thinks.

Today, for the first time in her adult life, she saw an opportunity creeping up, and at the perfect moment, she seized!

New opportunity is exciting.

Life is unexpected.

Together, what a thrill!

Still searching for the perfect thing, but she just might be well on her way to finding it.

Patience.

Since we last spoke of time, its only appropriate that we now speak of patience. Patience is not on her of strengths. Its not even close to making the list.

Waiting. "Who has time to wait?," she thinks. What is she missing while she's waiting?

Patience/waiting...plays a rather large role in her life. Especially in her relationship. 

About a year ago, about a year ago almost exactly, she linked herself to a boy, a boy from a very small town. And this boy has become quite an important person in her life. First only described as a friend, this boy quickly became more than that to her. 

They met in the woods of lower Alabama in the middle of a hot, hot Summer. He introduced himself to her with his name followed by a cheesy line that she will always remember. They spent that summer living in those Alabama woods, camping, helping, serving, growing, sweating, learning about life, each other, their friends, and themselves.

Following this experience and the end of Summer, a whole new level of friendship developed; one of hours and hours of conversation, weekend trips to and fro, respect, understanding and - - strictly friendship.

Let's rewind to the part where I left out the fact that this boy lives roughly 250 miles away from our girl.

These little weekend trips he was making to see her were no small feat. And our girl, what did she think of this? Well, she seemed to pay no attention to the notion that a boy usually doesn't just drive 8 hours in a weekend to hang out with his friends, nor does he spend hours on the phone with his friends every night of the week. So... after six months of friendship, she finally realizes that she's been missing out on a whole different level of friendship with this small town boy.

One cold night in December, as the snow fell onto the window of the truck in which they sat, in those same Alabama woods that brought them together six months earlier, she finally gathered the nerve to tell this boy that she had given up on fighting the feelings that were so prevalent in her heart, feelings that she had been fighting for months while he waited patiently... and that was all it took.

And so it was. The beginning of our girl and her boy.

Their entire relationship is sustained by patience. Yes, even by the tiny shred that she holds on to. They go weeks without seeing each other. Their days are tied together by every form of communicative technology possible. (Even though a relationship hinged on hand written letters sounds much more romantic, in this day in time, technology equals sanity - especially in a long distance relationship.)

So patience plays an active role in the girl and boy's relationship. They are constantly counting down the weeks, days or hours until they can see each other. This type of patience in particular is quite difficult. When love is involved, it seems that even minutes can be painful when spent waiting to be reunited with the one your heart longs for.

Our girl feels so lucky to have her boy. He helps teach her patience daily, among other values. He is the laid-back to her uptight, he is the calm to her frustration, he is the steady moving to her fast pace, he is the breath she sometimes forgets to take. She belives he has been brought into her life for a purpose. And even if that purpose is nothing other than to teach her about patience, she will hold on to it as long as she can because he is different. His heart cares about her. She knows it.

So here she sits. Waiting (ironically) for patience to wash over her as she waits for the day when they can be together... without the 250 miles.

Time.

Time is a funny thing. Once it has passed, it reveals things you never saw coming. The passage of time reveals the inner workings of the plot of your life that you never could have imagined for yourself.

This small town southern girl, she believes in time. (Lord knows she plans out her time like she's the one in charge of it.) Nevertheless, she believes in it. She calculates it and spreads it out. She bundles it up and gives it out when needed. She is also very selfish with it at times. She understands the value of it; like it is a gift to be given out sparingly. Time is a very real factor in her life. He will appear many times throughout her fairytale. Sometimes as the Fairy Godmother. Sometimes as the Wicked Witch.

Just like everyone else, she knows that time cannot go on forever. Her fear is that time will run out before she has experienced all of the places in her dreams. Daily tasks and everyday living sometimes take precedence over those dreams - not by her choice, however. That's just the way life is.

If she had it her way, these tasks would not trump her idealistic plans, but enhance them. They could work together, hold hands and weave their way along the open roads of this life - smiling and laughing, reminiscing about the good times they've had and all of the journeys that lie ahead. But life is not this fair. Its as if life knows time is precious, but has us book him up anyway with things that aren't important yet remian necessary to survival.

Life is tricky like that.

Do you ever think about time? How it sneaks along, sometimes crawling past us at the speed of a snail and at others, flying by so fast it leaves heads spinning.

Time is one thing that our girl can't grasp fully. While she does cherish it and believe its passage has purpose, she gets wrapped up in it. Thinking of how it slips through her fingers, focusing too much on what it holds for her in the future. Sometimes, she's afraid she's missed the present because she's been looking toward the future - contemplating her relationship with time.

She wonders why she can't simply enjoy time as it comes. Is she the only one who chases after him?

Once upon a time.

Just as every good fairytale begins (or should), so shall this one. Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, there was a small town, southern girl who dreamed of seeing the world. She dreamt of exotic places that would reach inside of her and pull out her highest potential, culturally enriched foods that would thrill her taste buds like never before, and of course, as all small town girls do, she dreamt of her prince charming, her knight in shining armor, her one true love.

She thought daily of each of these dreams. Will they ever become a reality? Or will she live the rest of her life hoping and praying that she will "someday" reach these idealistic places that she's built up so in her mind? See, the one problem with someday is that someday will never exist. Someday is a cop-out for those who never actually plan on reaching whatever goal it is that they've set for themselves, she feels. It is a vague word with no purpose behind it. Instead of someday, she prefers to use "one day." One day has more meaning behind it in her mind. One day, meaning, there will a point in time that she will go out and catch these dreams.. or perhaps, they will even catch her.

Our girl is quite idealistic. She almost always hopes for the best; she believes in things and the potential of things.. and people for that matter. On occasion, she has been known to believe in these things, and people, a little too much. She builds up these ideas in her head that don't always come to fruition. She does her best, but others don't often do theirs. Not that she is perfect. By NO means is she perfect, but sometimes it seems she tries very hard to be. But here lately, she has given up on trying to be someone else's idea of perfect. She has grown. She has grown up. She has grown into someone she is quite proud of...now if she only knew what to do next.

You see, a problem with small town southern girls is that they often get comfortable. Comfortable with their life, their friends, their family, their expectations. And to our small town southern girl, comfortable is not always the way to go.

You see, she has planned many things in her life: comfortable things, idealistic things. Such as a comfortable school. A comfortable goal for her time at her comfortable school. A comfortable career. A comfortable (dream) husband...so on and so forth. And if nothing else, from all of this planning she has learned God has other plans. Every time our girl believes she's got something figured out, something that sounds perfect in her plan, that figured out turns into a lot of : a.) re-figuring. b.) submission. or c.) tears. (Usually tears accompany each of the options. Yes, even the tears option is accompanied by more tears.) There is one trend that seems to follow each of these, um, disruptions to the plan: that trend being that it works out for the best. How? Who knows? But she believes it may have something to do with the passage of time.

Introduction.

First of all,  I should start out by saying that I do not know everything or sometimes, anything, but I love to think and I love to share my thoughts. 
You should also know that I have chosen the title of this blog not by my own creativity. "A woman in search of her word" is a line from the book Eat. Pray. Love. by Elizabeth Gilbert. One of my favorite lines in fact. If you've read the book or seen the movie, you know that Liz is in Italy when her friends discuss the notion that everyone, every place can be represented, summarized in one word. Your word describes who you are -not what you do.

So here I am. Searching. As always. For myself, who I am, beauty, significance, purpose, love, travel, and the enjoyment of life. And friends, if you're reading, thank you for caring enough to take in my thoughts and words however silly they may be. And if you don't know me, and perhaps just stumbled across my words, I hope you didn't laugh too much at my expense.