“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

When I was around ten, we made these booklets about ourselves in school.  They included a timeline of past, but also of future events. Next to each event, we would put an age. For example, age 10 was written next to “When I moved to North Vancouver.”  I remember that 27 was the age that I predicted I would get married, … on the Love Boat!  Or was it that I would meet my future husband on the Love Boat and then get married?  Either way, 27 was the magic number as far as the wedding went.  It seemed ‘perfect’ at the time.  And I also decided that Italy would be our honeymoon destination.

Well, when I think about what I was ACTUALLY doing at 27-  the guy I was with, the relationship I had with my SELF at that age, and all the things I have learned since then, I can see now that the Big Man up there (you know, the BIG G?) knew better.  My boyfriend and I were feeding off of each others’ insecurities, just bringing each other down instead of up.  If that had turned into a marriage, I think it would have been a very unhealthy one.  I also think I found so many other interests that I wouldn’t have had the time to pursue if I had been married and with my own family at that time.  Music, dance, and singing came to me with greater depth later in my life.  And they have brought me so much inspiration and happiness.  I think it would have been difficult to make room for them in the same way if I had been a wife and possibly a mother.

I guess I could accept that I was not meant to be on the Love Boat.  But somewhere, in the back of my head, or my heart,  I hold onto a kind of sadness about whether the marriage ship has just completely sailed me by.  Despite the number of broken or unhappy marriages I have heard about from friends and family, I still believe in marriage, and funny enough, I still believe I could be in a good one.  But if it didn’t happen at 27, or 30, or 33, when will it happen?  I’m sure my already-married-with-kids-from-a-young-age friends might be doubtful as well, secretly pitying my hopefulness.

But, when has that stopped me before? In fact, other people’s negativity about achieving certain rare goals has often fueled me to make those goals come true.  And since the Universe has proven to me many times, especially in the past few years, how powerful it can be in making dreams a reality, I decided to set up a kind of new timeline a few years ago.  It wasn’t set out as formally as the one I made when I was ten.  But it was still backed up with a strong faith.  Luckily, it takes a lot for me to give up on things that I really feel and believe in. One of the new goals was to drop the idea of saving Italy for a honeymoon. So what if I didn’t have a husband yet?  Maybe I was meant to enjoy the place on my own and reverse the order of two of my childhood goals.  I could go to Italy and THEN find a husband and get married.  Or maybe I would find the husband IN Italy! That sounded even better. Why didn’t I think of it earlier, I asked myself.

So I gave myself a deadline. I set the end of 2014 as the date by which I would be married or at least engaged.  And I was excited at the thought of coming up with a new honeymoon destination with my new husband.

Wondering how successful these goals were?

Well, I couldn’t actually afford the trip to Italy at first, but my mom decided she was going to get rid of some of her old jewelry a few months before. She gave me a pouch of necklaces, old earrings, some missing their other pair. She told me to do as I wanted with them.  I knew I wouldn’t wear them, as they were not my style and had already been sitting around in a safe deposit box for years. So I took them to a place that converted gold to cash, and to my surprise, the jewelry was enough to get me a flight out to Venice!   I couldn’t believe that my dream was coming true!

But unfortunately, the trip didn’t seem as dreamy as I thought. Sure, the art. architecture and the gelato were amazing.  And I did meet a handsome man from Rome that added a great romantic story to my trip as he showed me around the city for a few days.  But our connection dwindled not long after I got home.  So much for Italy introducing me to my future husband.  Oh well, I wouldn’t have been able to put up with most of those Italian men for even a few minutes anyway.  The majority of the ones I met were crude, disrespectful, and arrogant.  Couldn’t they see that they were completely breaking down my dreamy stereotype of them?

Even the natural environment was not as inviting as I thought.    I landed myself in the hospital three times during my stay in Italy.  One of the hospital visits was because I got bitten by tiger mosquitoes in Florence. Even though technically, it was past the season when they would be around, the weather was still warm. So unfortunately for me, I guess they decided to stay a little longer.  My body was so sensitive to these unfamiliar insects and their bites, that I had a bad allergic reaction to them.   Here I was, right in the heart of all of Florence’s beautiful cathedrals, historical monuments, turrets, and cobble stone, and I couldn’t wait to leave that city which literally made my skin crawl. I was so uncomfortable and full of tears in a place I spent so many years fantasizing about.

And how did my second goal turn out? Well, here I am, 12 days until the end of 2014 and not only am I husbandless but I am not even in a romantic relationship.

I could take this as a failure, and just give up all hope, which is what I thought I would want to do.  But what if it’s actually a success that I don’t even know about? I mean, what if the Universe is actually saving me from another expensive, energy sucking experience that might bite deeper into me than even those mosquitoes in Florence?  Not to say that this is what I think of marriage all of a sudden. Not at all. But marriage with the wrong person or at the wrong time? Well, I’ve definitely seen and heard of some messy ones.   Maybe God is not taking away a dream from me, but making sure my dream lives up to the standards that I hold for it.  Unlike with Italy, I wouldn’t be able to just shake off a marriage that didn’t work by taking a flight home. And maybe one day I will go back to Italy one day and enjoy it.  But that it’s all about the timing.  Maybe it’s still not the right time for me to be a wife, or to be in that dream relationship.  Maybe God has a timeline for me that is so much more beneficial for me than I could ever imagine.  I think many of us don’t realize how much NOT getting what we want, when we think we want it, could actually be a blessing.

Last week, a friend of mine told me that he went back to his home in India to marry his girlfriend.  They had been dating for four years, but now that he is living in Vancouver, and she is still back in the area near Mumbai where his family lives, this friend of mine wanted to make things official and show this girl how much he wanted to be with her.

It sounded like such a sweet story, until he told me that his family would not accept the girl because she is of a lower caste than he is!  Does that still really happen? I thought to myself.

“I went back there specifically to marry her,” he told me. I could hear the pain in his voice, even though he was trying to smile through his words.

“Well, I do agree that family is important,” I replied, “but I know from personal experience that breaking off a relationship only because family want you to can build up a lot of resentment towards your family. And in the end, it’s your life. You don’t want to have regrets.  If this girl is really that great, and really makes you happy” I added, “Don’t let her go.”

“She already got married to someone else,” he replied as his head slowly dropped down towards his chest.

“What? But you were out there recently, right? Who did she get married to so quickly?” I asked, without letting him get a word in.

I felt my own heart breaking just in hearing this story. So I couldn’t imagine how painful it was to be the one in it.

“What do your parents say? Don’t they feel bad that you are so sad?” I asked, not caring anymore if I was prying too much.

I figured if he was sharing as much as he did with me, I had a right to know how the rest of the story went.

“I am not talking to my parents anymore,” he said, matter of factly..

How could this happen, I thought. This is so wrong. It sounded like this young couple were meant to be together.  How unfair that OTHER people’s opinions were pulling the couple apart? How can these families not see how much hurt they were causing their children?  In a world where it is so hard to find love, how can it be right to break up a love that has already been found?

But once I was given space to think about this at home, another perspective came to my mind: As much as I admired my friend’s desire to declare his love for this girl, and to show her that he chose her to commit to, maybe God could see the bigger picture.  Maybe God had something else in mind for him. Maybe a relationship with someone who would stand up for him and their love. Maybe a relationship where he would not have to communicate over long distance, and maybe someone who would not throw away the four years they had together by accepting a ring and a whole new life with another guy so quickly.

This friend of mine tried to explain that the girl was under a lot of pressure and she felt that a union with him would only hurt her family. But she also ended up telling him that HE was hurting her family.  Couldn’t she see how much she was hurting him, not just by giving up on them, but by ‘replacing’ him in what seemed like an instant?  Would making her parents happy truly make her happy?  But then again, would my friend have been happy with this girl, knowing that their families would never approve?

Who knows? What a complicated situation. One which neither he, nor I, nor his now ex girlfriend or their parents could ever predict the future of.  But again, maybe the Universe really knows what is in store for us in the long run, and how much we can handle.  Sometimes, when we think we are being treated unfairly, there is actually a great power looking out for us. we just don’t know it yet.

So maybe our job is not to be disappointed when what we hope for doesn’t come to us. We can instead learn to be excited for whatever this new space opened us to us will  bring and trust in the Universe’s ability to know best when to bring it. So, I didn’t get a ring put on my finger this year, and I didn’t get a man in my life to call husband.  That doesn’t mean it will never happen. And what about celebrating all the great things that did and do happen?

Perhaps 2015 will bring me a whole bunch of other gifts in the form of people, places, adventures and experiences that I didn’t even know I wanted.  And I’ll have a whole new set of stories to share with you.  Don’t worry. I won’t stop setting goals.  I’ll still make lists and new timelines.  But I’ll let God decide which ones He will see as fitting and which He will cross off as not being the best for me.  My job will be to keep dreaming, and believing, but this time I’ll leave the rest in His hands.