And Just Like That.

Recently, I have been waking up in a bit of a haze that tends to linger for the first hour or so of my early mornings. Perhaps it’s a sense of gratitude for being in the midst of a future I have always dreamed of. Or maybe it’s disbelief that this is the life I am currently building, that it’s real and happening. I like to believe it falls somewhere in the middle of the gray area.

What do you do when life changes unexpectedly, without your control or preparation? And how do you allow yourself to fully enjoy it?

At the end of one of my earlier columns, What Love Wasn’t, I reflected on the twists and turns I navigated throughout my teenage and early adult years. I wrote that column during a nearly three-year season of singleness and quite the absence of mingling.

In that column, I wrote a line that somehow became one of the most quoted things I’ve ever written:

“Love is just a bonus. A really good bonus. But not the prize.”

A year later, I still believe that. But I do think it deserves a revisit.

Because a little over two weeks ago, I got engaged.

Trust me, my jaw is still on the floor too.

It’s funny what a year can do. A little over a year ago, I was writing about learning to be content on my own. And this week, I’m planning a marriage. And if we’re being honest, that changes things. I still don’t think romantic love is THE prize, but it certainly is a prize. It isn’t a finish line per se, but it is one hell of a turning point. A decision that reshapes your future and intertwines it with someone else’s in ways both beautiful and terrifying.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t chasing this. At least not when it happened.

Life has a way of arriving while you’re busy making other plans. Sometimes the things that change you most show up quietly, without warning, and ask you to trust them anyway.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been waking up in a haze lately.

Not because I’m confused.

Because I’m trying to catch up to a life that changed faster than I expected, and learning that sometimes the hardest part isn’t waiting for the good things. It’s believing they’re finally here.

Here is a compilation of points pulled from recent journal entries, reflecting on the insights I have gathered during this complex period.

I Call The Haze Vegas

The best way I can describe the haze in this season of life is Vegas. It’s similar to the saying, “Waking up in Vegas.” And not because it feels like my life changed overnight.

Actually, one of the defining characteristics of this season has been how intentional every step and decision has been. How carefully it has unfolded, and how faithfully God has moved through circumstances I could never have orchestrated on my own.

Yet I still find myself waking up some mornings feeling slightly disoriented.

The kind of disorientation that happens when you wake up somewhere new and spend a few seconds remembering who you are and where you are.

That’s what this season feels like. Not necessarily confusion. Adjustment.

For years, I dreamed about certain things, like living a life filled with purpose, creativity, and meaningful relationships. These weren’t fleeting wishes. They were prayers that followed me through different chapters of my life.

The strange thing about answered prayers is that nobody talks about the adjustment period afterward. I feel like we spend so much time discussing the waiting that we rarely discuss the arrival.

What happens when the thing you’ve hoped for starts becoming real?

What happens when your future stops feeling theoretical?

What happens when the dream moves off the vision board and starts appearing on your calendar?

I’ve discovered that there is a unique kind of disbelief attached to joy.

Not because joy feels impossible.

Because after waiting for something long enough, it can be difficult to stop bracing for disappointment.

You become so accustomed to hoping for good things that you forget how to recognize them once they arrive.

I think that has been part of my haze. It’s a quiet disbelief that this chapter is actually happening. A new realization that life is changing, whether I feel prepared for it or not. Maybe that sounds ridiculous. But I think all meaningful change carries a period of adjustment with it.

The first day at a new school.

The first day in a new city.

The first day in a new career.

The first day after achieving something you worked years to accomplish.

There is always a moment where your reality changes before your mind fully catches up.

That’s the haze. That’s Vegas.

And perhaps instead of rushing through it, we should appreciate the twinkling lights reminding us of where we are. After all, there will come a day when this chapter no longer feels new. The lights won’t feel quite as bright. The novelty will settle into routine.

But while I am here, standing in the middle of this beautiful unfamiliarity, I want to notice it.

I want to remember what it felt like when everything was still becoming.

Oh, We Made It!!! To Another Waiting Period!!

I have noticed a pattern throughout my life. Every time I reach a milestone, I convince myself that life is finally going to slow down.

When I get through this semester, things will settle down.

When I get that opportunity, things will settle down.

When I figure out my next step, things will settle down.

When I finally arrive, things will settle down.

The problem is that “arriving” seems to be one of the greatest illusions we tell ourselves. There is always another decision to make. Another challenge to navigate. Another season waiting just beyond the one we are currently standing in. For a long time, I viewed life as a series of destinations. I imagined a finish line somewhere in the distance where everything would finally make sense. A place where I would feel completely certain, completely secure, and completely prepared for whatever came next. The older I get, the more I realize that life was never designed that way.

Growth has a funny way of disguising itself as arrival. You spend months, years even, working toward something. You finally achieve it. You celebrate. You breathe a sigh of relief. Then, almost immediately, a new horizon appears. Not because you failed to appreciate the milestone. Not because what you accomplished wasn’t enough. Simply because life keeps moving.

I think this realization can be frustrating at first. There is comfort in believing that one day all of our questions will be answered and all of our uncertainty will disappear. There is comfort in believing that we can eventually earn stability through enough hard work, enough planning, or enough preparation.

Yet some of the most fulfilled people I know still have unanswered questions. They still face uncertainty. They still find themselves standing at the edge of unfamiliar territory. The difference is that they no longer see uncertainty as evidence that something is wrong. They see it as evidence that they are still growing.

They trust that uncertainty is not the enemy we often make it out to be.

I used to think waiting was what happened before life began. Now I think waiting is where life happens.

It happens in the conversations before the decision.

The moments before the breakthrough.

The ordinary days between major milestones.

The quiet stretches where nothing appears to be changing, even though everything is.

Maybe that is why we keep finding ourselves in new waiting periods. Because life is not a collection of arrivals.

It is a continuous process of becoming. And perhaps the goal was never to reach a destination at all. Perhaps the goal was to learn how to find joy while walking toward whatever comes next.

What Love IS

For most of my life, I misunderstood love. We know this.

Not because I didn’t believe in it, but because I believed the versions of it that were easiest to see. The versions that occupy entire movies, entire songs, and entire conversations between friends over brunch. Love was always presented as something all-consuming. Something that would sweep in, rearrange your entire life, and demand your constant attention. In some ways, it does. But not in the ways I expected.

What has surprised me most about healthy love is how peaceful it feels. I don’t spend my days questioning where I stand. I don’t spend hours dissecting conversations or searching for hidden meanings behind someone’s actions. There isn’t a constant need for reassurance because reassurance has become part of the foundation itself. That doesn’t mean love has become less important. If anything, it has become more important. The difference is that it no longer feels fragile.

The best way I can describe it is that love has stopped feeling like something I need to manage. Instead, it feels like something I get to experience.

For years, I thought love would arrive and somehow make me feel complete. I thought the right relationship would answer questions I had about myself. Looking back, I realize how much pressure that places on another human being. No person was ever meant to carry the responsibility of becoming someone else’s purpose.

Real love has not completed me. It has challenged me. It has challenged me to trust. To communicate honestly. To accept care when it is offered. To allow myself to be known without editing parts of who I am. Those things sound simple until you actually have to do them.

Perhaps the greatest surprise of all is that real love has given me room to grow. It has not demanded perfection. It has not required me to become someone else. It has simply created an environment where growth feels possible. I think that’s what people mean when they talk about finding the right person. Not someone who fixes you. Not someone who saves you. Someone who looks at the person you are becoming and decides they would like to walk beside you while you get there.

That kind of love is quieter than I expected.

Dear Little Me

I keep a photo of myself as a kid in my notebook.

Not because I miss those years, and not because I would necessarily go back if given the opportunity. Trust me, I would rather not. But because I think about her and how she spent so much time wondering what would happen next. She was always looking ahead. Always trying to predict the future and escape her present. Always trying to figure out whether everything was eventually going to work out.

In many ways, she believed life existed somewhere in the distance.

She believed happiness would arrive after the next achievement. Confidence would arrive after the next accomplishment. Peace would arrive after the next season of uncertainty had passed. There was always some invisible finish line she was chasing, convinced that once she crossed it, she would finally become the person she was trying so hard to be.

I think a lot of us live that way for a while. We postpone our joy.

We tell ourselves that once we lose the weight, get the degree, find the relationship, move to the city, land the opportunity, or accomplish the goal, then we’ll finally be enough. Then we’ll finally deserve the life we want.

The problem is that enough never arrives when you’re measuring your worth by accomplishments. The target simply moves.

I wish I could somehow sit down with that younger version of myself and tell her that she has been worthy all along. Not because of what she would eventually accomplish, but because worth was never something she needed to earn in the first place.

I would tell her that there would be seasons when she felt lost and seasons when she felt found. Seasons filled with disappointment and seasons filled with joy. Seasons where doors closed and seasons where opportunities seemed to appear out of thin air. Yet through all of those changes, her value would remain exactly the same.

Life has a way of convincing us that we are constantly becoming someone. That who we are today is simply a placeholder for who we will eventually be tomorrow. While there is truth in that, I think there is also danger in it. Because if we’re always becoming, we can forget to appreciate who we already are.

We can spend so much time looking toward the next chapter that we fail to read the one we’re currently living. I do think that is one of the greatest lessons this season has taught me.

The things I once desperately wanted did not suddenly transform me into a different person when they arrived. They did not make me more valuable, more deserving, or more complete. They simply became new pieces of a life I was already living. And maybe that is what I would want younger me to understand most - the future is simply another place where you will continue learning the same lessons.

But you will also discover joy in places you never expected to find it. You will laugh harder than you thought you could. You will survive things you once thought would break you. You will experience kindness, adventure, love, and grace in ways that are impossible to fully imagine beforehand.

Most importantly, you will learn that a beautiful life is not built by finally becoming worthy of one. It is built by realizing that you were worthy of it from the very beginning. And if I could tell her one final thing, it would simply be this:

Keep going.

And definitely not because everything will go according to plan. Not every dream of mine has rolled out as expected. But because there are moments ahead of you that are worth staying for. Moments that will one day make you look around, smile quietly to yourself, and realize that some of the things you once hoped for have already found their way home.

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As I finish writing this, I realize that the older I get, the more I realize that life is rarely divided into neat chapters of waiting and arriving. More often, we find ourselves doing both at the same time. We are celebrating one thing while preparing for another. We are becoming who we once hoped to be while discovering there is still so much growth ahead of us.

So wherever this column finds you, I hope you allow yourself to be present in the season you’re in. Not constantly looking ahead, not rushing toward the next chapter, but taking a moment to recognize the one you’re living right now. Because sometimes the things we once prayed for arrive so quietly that we forget to notice them. And if realizing that leaves you feeling a little hazy, perhaps that’s okay too.