By Now.

I am 24 years old now. And this isn't your predictable birthday post.

(Husband is 27 years old, by the way.)

We have been graduated from college for 2 years.

We have been married 4 years, 6 months and 5 days. The big 5-year mark is coming quickly. 

And as a result of certain conversations and comments, I feel like other people "wonder" about us...

By now, they should be settling down.

By now, they should stop traveling so much and start saving money for the future. 

By now, that husband should be in the middle of graduate school, or working a full-time salary job.

By now, they should have a house with a dog barking in the backyard.

By now, they should have a child, maybe two... 

Or at least by now, she should be pregnant, unless there's something wrong with her.  

By now, they should be grown-up, and start acting like it. 

Sometimes I get caught up in it all. I believe them. I find myself thinking, they must be right.

We are behind. We should be this... We should be that... Why aren't we? What's wrong with us? 

But then I realize, this is our life.  

We don't have to be like everyone else. We can eat ice cream for dinner, and play Super Mario brothers on the Wii until 4AM, and spend money on irresponsible toys, clothes and traveling to far away places. We can go dirty dancing in college clubs like we're 18 again, and have Nerf gun wars, and sleep in until noon on the weekends. We can go on date nights every night, just because.

My new favorite quote is:

"What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it's supposed to be."

When grown-up things are meant to be, they will happen. And we can't always plan when, or how quickly they will happen. Life is not a race, or a rush. So we might as well enjoy where we are... right now.   

And to be honest, I don't feel 24. I feel 18. While I love looking at million dollar houses on Pinterest (with showers the size of our living room), the idea of a house payment and being stuck in one location for at least 5-7 years frightens my gypsy soul. 

And while I dream every day about having 5 children of my own, the thought of growing/raising a human and never sleeping-in again still terrifies me.

I wouldn't trade these past 4 years, 6 months and 5 days of being young, immature and selfish for anything. Because we needed them. I needed them. I  needed this time to learn, to experience the world, and to grow up at my pace. We needed them to figure this whole marriage thing out before bringing extra stress into the mix. We needed to learn that fights don't have to last 5 days and that Burger King lies...I can't always have it my way. We needed to figure out how to be happy together, despite our (frequent) differences of opinion. I needed to stop picturing my life as a Disney movie with unrealistic expectations. And I think we are finally (almost) there - to that point where we still fight, but with softer yelling and less swear words, AND we can (usually) forgive, say sorry and compromise in less than 12-24 hours... and really feel like we're stronger together, like we can overcome anything. 

Conclusion:
Please don't judge us. I'm OK with where we are, despite what other people say we "should" be doing by now. And when the time comes that God thinks I'm ready to be a mother, with a house, and officially "grow-up"... I know I'll be OK with that too.