Thankful for Octobers 🍂

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” -Anne of Green Gables

I love October. It’s my favorite month out of the year. It’s sweater weather!!! Leaves are changing. Pumpkin lattes. And everything seems to be falling into place.

Or maybe just falling apart instead. Let’s admit, who loves change unless we are the ones changing it? Because that means we are the ones in control.

I’ve been coming to Thailand since 2017 and have never seen the beautiful waters that everyone travels to. So five years later, here I am determined to make it happen. In the month of October, teachers get two weeks off out of the whole year unlike America you get the entire summer. My friends and I have been saving and planning to go to an island for months.

We planned it all out. We go. We get scammed by our tour. We booked another tour and it was a beautiful day with perfect weather…besides me falling off the rocks and getting hurt. (There was mercy all over that fall too.) Next day a huge storm came and it rained literally the entire day. We decided to still go out and try to make the best of it with mud, sand, and all. I got hurt, again, causing me to not being able to do any more activities. The entire rest of our trip it just downpoured. We would just wait. Every once in a while there was an hour where it didn’t rain so we would run out to get food just to run back soaked. And wait some more hoping the weather would change.

So as we wait, I’m scrolling on IG and read a caption of a woman’s post, who I don’t know, who said she’s still in a season of waiting. That got me thinking. I know 95% of the time when you hear women say they are in a season of waiting they are waiting for the right man of God to step into their lives and change everything.

Am I wrong? Or am I right? I’m right, aren’t I?

Who loves a season of waiting?
Who longs to have a season of waiting?
It’s not like we choose that either…
I’m in a season of waiting (like waiting for the weather to change).

Scrolled down a bit and that’s what it was about. Go ahead and silently eye roll. I get it. I was there too for the longest time. And I’ve said it for the longest time too. And now you can eye roll again and say, “See. She can say that because now she’s got a man too.” I say this because I’ve done that too many times myself. (Haha so guilty) And I kept waiting. Looking. Praying. Nothing. I felt like I was looked over in life and I came to a place of accepting it. So my heart really goes out to women who feel this way.

Out of this entire blog I want you to know this one thing:
Waiting doesn’t mean sitting. Don’t sit but seek. Seek Him for Who He is.

I was seeking. He answered. But His answer was that he’s preparing someone among other things. Four months later I met Tyler. I never expected him to walk into my life so fast and now I can’t even picture my life without him.

Is change coming? Always.
Am I still waiting? Yes. For what?

In life you’ll always be waiting for the next thing. High school, college, jobs, dating, break-throughs, wedding, paying off debt, promotion, babies, then waiting for them to grow up…the list is never ending. And does having a boyfriend solve your problems? No. It takes away some but it also creates some that you didn’t expect ever having.

The world we live in today makes you feel if you don’t have someone yet you’re not secure.
Let me tell you something.

We should be secure in Christ – if we are single, dating, or married. Be secure in the One Who is in control when the leaves change and when they fall. Be secure in One Who knows how long the seasons will last and how much you will have to endure. Be secure in the One Who will be there for you to lean on no matter who you have in your life at the time or not.

Maybe you’re in a season where you did want that change but now don’t know how to handle it. Maybe you’re in a season where you’re begging for change and nothing is happening. Maybe you’re in a season of waiting and you feel that’s all you’ll ever do is watch everyone get what you’ve been praying for. Maybe you’re in a season of feeling nothing ever goes how you’ve planned (like me).

Honestly, I don’t know why I wrote this blog. Maybe because I needed to be reminded that I love Octobers. That Octobers reminds us it’s ok to let things go. That change is good because God is in control. That we should continually seek and not sit. That waiting is just a season and it is also good because that’s where our faith is being used to become strong. When things don’t go as planned we can breathe knowing He has a better plan.

Octobers show me there’s so much beauty even in the hard things that need to be let go.

Being in Thailand, at this tropical island where it just rained the entire time, not what I had planned for, doesn’t look like the ideal American October I wanted but that’s just it – not one October looks the same. I’m on an island typing this out for crying out loud.

Embrace your Octobers. We have so much to be thankful for.