The most ironic picture of my life

Let's do a little throwback here, to a Halloween of yesteryear. It's 2006, and I am a sophomore in college, living with five of my very best friends in the world. I am also engaged, so naturally when my roommates and I make up our "marriage order prediction" list, I am number 1. Hence the picture. You can see here my painted pumpkin-bride. It's clear what was on my mind. I'm pretty sure it was my fiancé who took the picture even.

Seven years later, and this picture kind of haunts me. Only a few months after it was taken, my fiancé and I broke up, and my roommates systematically began getting engaged and married, one by one. And I had a horrible on-again-off-again with the ex-fiancé for years and years afterward. Yeah. Painful.

So here's the thing. When I was in high school (or really, I guess as soon as I started thinking about it), I always had this idea that whoever was prettiest and skinniest would get married first. So I was psyched to be the first one out of all my pretty, skinny roommates to tie the knot. 

Well, that knot was not to be, and for years afterward I thought, "well of course. Naturally! How could I be the first one to get married? I'm neither the prettiest nor the skinniest. I was doomed from the get-go."

I have since realized the ridiculousness of that train of thought. Logically I recognize that there are people less attractive and fatter than me who have successfully gotten married, but somehow it's still something I struggle with. Why else wouldn't I be married by now? (Sorry if this post is beginning to sound a lot like this one.)

Does anyone else feel like perfection is a prerequisite to marriage? Or is that just me? For far too long I've been listening to that voice that tells me that I'm just not good enough to be married. I'm learning, little by little, to not heed that voice. But it's hard. And I think of that picture and that pumpkin and how I never thought I would get married, so I was incredulous when it was happening and then had to revel in my self-fulfilled prophecy when it didn't work out. 

I so often have to pray, "help thou my unbelief," because honestly, I still just don't really believe that it's going to happen. How could it? I'll never be good enough, pretty enough, skinny enough--especially to satisfy someone who fits my picky qualifications. 

I just think there is something eternally ironic in that painted pumpkin of mine. Marriage: my ever-elusive attainment. Despite how much I think of that pumpkin and how it seems to mock me and feed my insecurities, I will keep reminding myself that for whatever reason, I needed to go through those experiences. And I will keep reminding myself what an awesome, way-better-than-if-I'd-have-gotten-married-then life I've had so far. So many experiences have made me never regret that it didn't work out. 

Hope has become my new mantra in the face of my unbelief, especially as other serious relationships have come about and also ended painfully. I will continue to place my hope in my Savior and my Father in Heaven, knowing that they will bring every good gift and blessing into my life; that they will guide my future as they have the past. And my past has included some freaking awesome things.

If only I hadn't ever painted that dang pumpkin.