Today I sat in a room full of high schoolers listening to my husband speak to them about how the most important question in their life right now should be, “WHO do you want to be?” This was a beautiful thing for me to hear, because as a high schooler the question I was answering and the question at the forefront of my mind was: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At their age if you asked me that question I knew the ‘what’ and I knew the ‘how.’ By the time I was 23 years old, I accomplished all of it. That is the girl I was… goal-oriented and driven by well laid plans. As a freshman in high school, my grandfather made a deal with me that if I graduated with honors he would buy me a car. Freshmen year I figured out exactly what I needed to do to meet those qualifications, spent the subsequent four years executing it and senior year I walked across the stage in my white robe as an honors graduate.
Fast forward a few years I graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, went on to get my teaching credential, dated a guy, got engaged to that guy, finished my teaching credential, got a teaching contract, got married, and began my teaching career! The whole part about the guy was nowhere in my plans at this stage in my life. Haha! I should’ve known then that I was up for a treat! This ‘guy’ that I get to spend my life with is not at all who I would’ve envisioned myself spending the rest of my life with. My ‘type’ was Will Smith. LOL! He is shorter (but taller than me), dark chocolate and at the time he had dreads AND tattoos! On top of not necessarily looking the part, he wasn’t really established in his career nor did he necessarily have any career ambitions or a college education. There’s definitely nothing wrong with this, but when I think back I wonder to myself why was I so confident that our marriage would work?
This guy is Glen Henry (aka Beleafmel). If you follow me on social media I know that’s no mystery to you, but I figured it was time to give “the guy” a name. While Glen has a sexy swagger about him, it was his heart for the Lord that truly attracted me to him. I trusted him to lead me as he followed Christ, and it gave me all the confidence in the world that we would be alright. I’m not necessarily suggesting this path for everyone, but everything about this union was God-ordained. That’s something that I still don’t doubt to this day.
As I approach my 31st birthday, I find myself asking the question ‘how did I get here?!’ I’m not necessarily asking it disappointedly, I’m more so asking genuinely… Like, HOW did I get here?! I am married to an amazing & inspirational man of God, I have three beautiful, smart, funny chocolate babies & I left the career I always dreamed of having to become a stay-at-home-mom. All of this while sharing my life with over 100,000 people on YouTube! My husband often attributes his current drive to a question I barely remember asking him, which was ‘what’s your five-year plan?’ Recently, he turned that question around on me. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a plan. I’m looking at him like my plan is YOUR plan. LOL! What do you mean what’s my plan?
I’ve been pondering that question for a while now. Today as I type this, I still don’t have a plan. However, I’m more than ever confident that the Lord has a plan for my family and me! While I’m still desirous of discovering my new ambitions in this season of life, I’m shifting my focus to answer more the question of WHO I want to be rather than what do I want to do. I feel like the ‘what’ will fall into line with the ‘who.’ IDK! This might sound really cray cray, but I have this strange desire to have a home going service for myself before I actually die. I want to hear what people have to say about me while I’m alive. This may have something to do with my love language being words of affirmation, but I also want to make sure my life is a reflection of who it is I actually want to be as a woman of God, wife, mom, daughter, sister and friend.
Anyway, these are the ramblings of a woman on the path to self-discovery… Xo.
WHO do YOU want to be?!
