One summer day in between eighth grade and freshman year of high school, I was enjoying a pool day with one of my longest and dearest friends, Maddie. Maddie and I danced together for several years, and at that point, attended church together. As we were swimming and soaking up all the summer sun’s rays, we started to discuss every young girl’s favorite topic: boys. At this point in our lives, neither of us had had a boyfriend, nor had we kissed one or even been on a date.

We were both sharing our expectations and hopes for our love lives that were soon to come. We both had very clear ideas of what that would look like.

And guess what?! It went exactly as planned!

Yeah, that’s definitely not true… But hey, we were 14 and thought we knew how it would all go down. Little did we know how wrong we were.

Mads told me that she thought she might wait to date until she was in college and save her first kiss for her wedding day. I had opposite plans. I confidently said that I hoped I would have a boyfriend, and a first kiss, in high school. Granted, we still both had already made up our minds to wait for marriage for anything further, and we did maintain those values until present day, but that’s the only thing that day that we actually predicted correctly!

Update on how our love lives have ACTUALLY played out to today:

Mads was happily MARRIED to the love of her life almost two yeas ago at 20 years old (they recently finally got to go on their European honeymoon, a year later, as I write this!), she did in fact date in high school, and she had her first kiss before her wedding day. (Sorry Mads for spilling on your love life.. love you!) It has been the sweetest thing and such a joy watching my longtime dear friend find love and so much joy in being a wife. Me? I’m 22, I have graduated COLLEGE, and I still have not had any relationship at all, nor have I had any sort of first kiss. I also went on my very first “real date” just last year.

Needless to say, we got some things wrong with our predictions!

Have you ever heard the saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.” Well, I think it’s safe to say that we might have given God a good chuckle that summer day!

In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.

Proverbs 16:9

To address an inevitable question I get when I share of my extended “season of singleness,” yes it was both by choice and not. Some years I was intentionally not dating, but other years I was open to it, but it just never happened. So, for those reading this who are younger than me and feel that they *have to* date in high (or nowadays even middle) school to be fulfilled, that is so not true! (but that’s also a whole soapbox for another time…)

As much as I do absolutely desire the companionship of a significant other, and believe me, I 100% hope to be married one day, I also find myself so thankful for the years of singleness that He has blessed me with. Granted, I don’t always feel this way in the moment (Christmastime is the worst with all of the cute couple-y things), and I know that that is perfectly okay to wrestle with it from time to time, but at a higher level, I get it and I see the blessing of it.

There have been various seasons of life, as we all experience, that left me stressed, upset, or struggling in some form or another. In these seasons, I have no doubt that had I had a significant other, I would have wanted to go right to him for comfort, that I would have sought peace and assurance in the arms of my fella. In the absence of this hypothetical man, though, I instead found myself running to someone far greater, I ran into the arms of my creator. I learned how to be dependent upon God and seek comfort and assurance in His presence and His word. It set a routine and precedence in my life that I can now maintain one day in a relationship as we both healthily run to God first, and run to Him together, in all things.

I also needed that time, this time, alone relationally to become who I needed to become, and it needed to happen independently from a significant other. For others, though, the opposite can be true, where God uses a relationship to foster growth and development, and I am sure that day, too, will come for me, but not thus far. It’s so cool how He really does have such unique plans for each of us down to the tiniest of details.

Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

I have always found that there are specific ways through which I come to hear and understand God best, one of those being through music. Several years ago, I was listening to a song that I loved and had heard before many times, but this time, one line stuck out to me. The song is “Different” by Micah Tyler, and the line is the following:

“I don’t need to recognize the man in the mirror, and I don’t wanna trade Your plan for something familiar.”

That line is full of such trust and surrender when you think through what it is truly saying. It is asking God for a transformation so potentially radical that one doesn’t even recognize themselves. It is giving up complete control over who we become and what happens, and it is surrendering a carefully constructed plan and image for whatever He has planned. What a shame would it be if we were to miss out on His perfect plan simply because we thought ours was better?

In order to see His plan and become what He wants us to be, we have to be willing and able to accept that things might not go the way that we hope or plan for, and we have to be willing to abandon all expectation in favor of His will and plans. We can’t cling to what’s comfortable and recognizable, but instead we must openly welcome complete transformation. Because in the simplest of terms, knowing Him, truly having a relationship with your Creator, it naturally brings about transformation of your mind, spirit, and soul.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

I didn’t plan to be single at 22, with no relationship history to speak of, and as I shared above, this is not exactly what young-Kendall hoped for, but I learned, and every day am learning, the importance of accepting that things might (and probably will) look a bit different from what I had hoped- whether it’s in the littlest of details or the massive day-to-day aspects.

But this abandoning of expectations makes way for truly radical transformation. At the end of the day, that’s what I want. Yes, I want a husband, and yes, I one day want a family. Ultimately though, I want to be who God wants me to be, who He created me to be. All these other desires of my heart might grant earthly happiness and fulfillment, but it is only through walking in His plan for me and His will that I will find true fulfillment and joy.

In order to reach that though, I have to be willing to change everything, cast off anything that He wants gone from my life, and I have to be truly willing to look in the mirror one day, and see a stranger where my face once smiled back. I don’t need to recognize the woman in the mirror if this new face is who He created me to one day be.

That’s terrifying. And that’s okay. Surrender isn’t easy, and it’s not a one time thing. Yes, surrendering our lives to Jesus in the form of being saved is absolutely an instantaneous thing, but the daily walk or surrender, that is a minute by minute, day by day decision and process. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.

So all this to say, sometimes, we make ourselves laugh, at our past, at our former hopes and dreams, at who we once were, and oftentimes, we make God laugh with these plans and expectations that we think are set in stone. At the end of the day, though, while it’s scary to leave behind who you once were, it’s always worth it to look forward with complete surrender to who He is creating you to be, to be someone your past self wouldn’t recognize, but your future self will thank you for becoming.