Someone asked me recently how I’ve stayed so positive and upbeat during this year of weddings.

I initially didn’t have an answer, and also felt the immediate need to tell her that I drove home from the last wedding with the same song on repeat pretending a man was proposing to me as it played in the background (I’m only mildly ashamed to share that with you). So I certainly haven’t always felt “upbeat”. I’ve still deeply desired my own marriage, but it is true that those feelings of envy or despair I used to feel, honestly haven’t come.

“So why not?” I thought, and finally the answer hit me as I stood at a friend’s wedding last weekend:

Her story isn’t my story.

This, right now, this wedding, this marriage, is a part of HER story. Would I like it to be part of my story at some point? Totally, but her story isn’t mine.

My story has its own timing and its own characters.

It’s a story of overwhelming highs, and deep struggle to overcome the lows. It’s broken, and redemptive, and adventurous, and mundane, all rolled into one.

It isn’t perfect, but I’ve come to realize that the best stories never are. The best stories never go according to plan. Their pieces come together in ways the characters could never predict. They tell a story of God’s faithfulness and grace, and friends, God is in the business of writing these stories, the BEST stories, and I’ve finally claimed mine. That’s what has changed for me this year.

I’ve allowed myself to take a new look at my own story, instead of focusing all my energy on wishing I had a different one, or on reading someone else’s.

I’ve stopped believing that God has withheld the best parts of my story to write into hers, and instead given myself permission to see the beautifully unexpected ways He’s written mine.

Friend, you have a story that was written, and is STILL being written just for you.

It won’t always be perfect, it won’t always be the way you would have written it, but girl, it’s yours.

Give yourself permission to fall in love with it, to claim it, just as it is, with hopeful expectation of what’s coming next.

I promise it will make all the difference.