ON BEING 25 (part 1)

Turning 25 is really not that big of a deal to me but it’s a good time for a little evaluation of where my life is at and where it is or isn’t headed.

My bigger younger brother is kind to me. He’s really spoiled me over the last few years… by loaning me his brand new car - not just for a day or for a week but for almost 2 years, giving me a computer, giving me a significant amount of support money for my Amazon mission trip and he even helped me out one month when I wasn’t sure how I’d pay rent… Since our dad passed away, he’s the man in my life. He loves me very much and I know that, whether he says so or not… because otherwise he would have hired someone to murder me when I had an accident in his car.

My bigger younger brother is mean to me. He picks on me and makes fun of me pretty much all the time. If you heard some of the things he says to me you’d think, “You’re such a jerk face!” I say that to him a lot actually… but, I know he thinks highly of me and values me as the wonderful sister that he knows I am (hehe) and that making rude comments is his weird way of showing me how much he cares… And we both have twisted sense of humors (his much more than mine) so we think it’s funny.

I say all of this because for my 25th birthday my brother gave me a speech… It wasn’t a very nice speech. It was a “Why do you want to celebrate being 25? It just means you’re that much closer to being 30 and not married. Maybe you should go sit in the corner and contemplate what you have done to get yourself here… 25 and still, you’ve never had a boyfriend! You should probably figure out what the problem is so that by the time you are 30 someone will at least ask you on a date.”

I told him he was a jerk and I laughed and went on with my life. It’s really okay with me that I am where I am… but, I’m not gonna lie - I really do want to get married someday (and before 30 is not a bad idea). I don’t put a lot of weight on what my brother said but it did make me think a little bit. I had a few realizations about myself… I’m not going to publish them all on a blog for everyone to read, but I will admit that I would love for my older younger brother to not have to be THE man in my life for the rest of my life (although if I stay single long enough my little brother Josh will be bigger than me too and then they could split the duties).

All of that said, I’ll say one more thing… I know why I’m 25 and single… I had a good dad who told me when I was a little girl that the purpose of dating was to figure out who you were going to marry and that marriage is forever. He told me that I deserved an amazing man and that I should never date anyone who wasn’t an amazing man in hopes that he would someday become one, because he might not… and I listened. So when my friends were dating idiots because they thought it was fun, I decided to just be friends and wait until someday there was an amazing man who wanted me forever. I’m still waiting… But my brother did have a point. There are some things that maybe I should do differently.

And that’s all I have to say about that.