What If I’m Not Late?

12 Aug, 2026

Sometimes I do the math.

I don’t even mean to.

It just happens.

If I meet him soon, we could date for a while.

Then maybe get engaged.

Then married.

And then I start counting the years I want with him before anything else comes next.

Because if I ever have children, I don’t want to meet my husband and immediately rush into the next chapter.

I want him first.

I want us first.

I want to know what it’s like to finally find the person I’ve prayed for and simply get to love him.

I want to travel with him.

I want spontaneous weekends away and slow mornings together.

I want to find our favorite places.

I want to learn how he takes his breakfast and what makes him laugh when he’s had a terrible day.

I want music playing while we’re cooking and dancing in the kitchen for absolutely no reason.

I want years of memories that belong to just the two of us.

And maybe that’s exactly why I sometimes scare myself.

Because the older I get, the more my mind starts turning love into a timeline.

And I know I’m not the only woman who does this.

Especially in your twenties and thirties, there are so many invisible clocks.

Marriage.

Children.

Biology.

The age you thought you’d be when certain things happened.

And suddenly you’re not just hoping to meet someone anymore.

You’re calculating.

If it happens this year…

If we date for this long…

If we marry by then…

Then maybe there will still be enough time for…

Enough time.

That’s the phrase underneath all of it, isn’t it?

Will there still be enough time?

And lately I’ve been wondering…

What if there will be?

What if I’ve spent so much time being afraid of being late that I’ve never really questioned who decided I was late in the first place?

Because somewhere along the way, I created a version of my life.

Certain things would happen at certain ages.

Love would come first.

Marriage would follow.

Everything would have enough space between it.

And when life didn’t follow that order, I started treating every passing year as though it were taking something away from my future.

But then I read this:

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” ~ Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESV)

In its time.

There is something about those three words that makes me want to unclench my hands a little.

Because maybe God’s timing doesn’t mean receiving something at the earliest possible moment.

Maybe beautiful things don’t become less beautiful because they arrived differently than I imagined.

And maybe I don’t need to know today how everything will fit.

I don’t know when I’ll meet my husband.

I don’t know what the years after that will look like.

And I certainly don’t know which parts of the future I’ve imagined will actually become mine.

But I know how I want to feel when love finally finds me.

I don’t want to greet it with panic.

I don’t want to finally have the man I’ve prayed for sitting across from me and already be mentally racing toward everything that needs to happen next.

I want to look at him and think:

There you are.

And then I want to stay there for a while.

I want to fall in love.

Deeply.

Slowly.

Ridiculously.

I want to discover him.

I want to build something with him.

I want to enjoy the love I spent so many years wondering about.

And maybe that’s what I haven’t allowed myself to consider:

What if there is time for that, too?

What if God’s timing doesn’t bring me to love only to make me rush through it?

What if I don’t have to understand today how every dream will fit into tomorrow?

Maybe some things will look exactly as I imagined.

Maybe some won’t.

Maybe life will surprise me completely.

But I don’t want to spend the years I have now grieving years I haven’t even lived yet.

And I don’t want fear to convince me that something beautiful has already become impossible simply because it hasn’t happened yet.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” ~ Ecclesiastes 3:11 (ESV)

Maybe I don’t know what its time is yet.

Maybe that’s okay.