“I’m going to be the last one to get married.”

Have you ever had this thought? It feels like you’ve somehow lost a race to all your friends, right? Like maybe one day you’ll cross the finish line, but bringing up the rear?

I know this feeling all too well.

In the midst of what I call “The Wedding Year”, I look around at my pockets of friends, even my family, and it’s not lost on me that most if not all the people I hold dear will be married before me.

Maybe you have much the same story, and maybe it makes you feel much the same way it used to make me feel. Like you’re less than. Like your marriage, if or when it happens, will be less valuable because it didn't happen first, or even second or third.

But here’s the thing I’ve come to learn, and that I want you to picture me jumping up and down (lovingly) shouting at you today.

What order you get married in compared to your friends will not determine the success of your marriage. It will not determine the value of your marriage. It will not and does not determine the value or worth of your life.

Friends, marriage is inherently valuable because of what it is, not because of when it happens. There is no more importance assigned to marriage when you are the “first” versus when you are the “last”, and there is especially no more importance or worth assigned to YOU because you are the first, the last, or whether it happens at all.

Sister, we need to give up this race we feel like we’ve lost and stop analyzing where we fall in the pack.

The race is and always has been a complete fabrication. It isn’t real, it never was, and please hear me when I say, we don’t need to run it or base our worth on it anymore.