Prince Charming and Other Wedding Horror Stories

Disclaimer on this story: the tone of annoyance is mostly falsified.

I once watched a movie titled, “Wedding Daze,” it was a hilarious account of three sisters who all ended up getting married on the same day. While none of my sisters are currently getting married, I feel like I am stuck in just that, a wedding daze.

If you did not catch it, this is a play off of wedding “day” with an added element of insanity, and that is where I am.

I have six friends, close friends, who will be getting engaged/married in the next year, and really, the number may go up before the year is out.

I’m stuck in the middle of wedding plans (which happens to be one of my passions in life, even if I have yet to experience it for myself) and “when will he propose” worries and I am so happy to be a part of the love that all my friends are currently experiencing but seriously…this is getting ridiculous!

The majority of my conversations over the last seven days have consisted of wedding colors and if they want dresses with buttons or ties down the back. But the weird thing is, I’m right there with them. I know my color scheme and every time they are looking at dresses on davidsbridal.com I am picking out my favorites. I even found a picture of my dream wedding-vale and saved it to the desktop of my computer! (Did I mention I am single thus this has no relevance to my life?)

This cannot be healthy.

Why is it then, that as little girls we grow up dreaming of our wedding? I mean, we plan Barbie’s wedding at age six which, by age twelve, has translated to exactly what we want for ourselves in ten years – because God forbid we not be walking down the aisle by twenty-two.

No wonder men freak out. Us girls have their entire lives planned out in “blush and bashful” colors and minute details before we even meet them. It makes perfect sense that they would avoid us all together. There is no way they can live up to this dream/romance novel idea that we have in our heads. Not just anyone can be Ken and Prince Charming all at once.

Simple Expectancy

This past Wednesday I attended a college youth group that has just started up in the town I go to school in. Yes, if you didn’t know, I believe in Jesus! Anyway, I went to this youth group and, though it was my first time to attend, I basically new everyone there because they are all students at my university. Never the less, I walked in and experienced maybe the most surreal feeling I have ever felt in my life.

I felt like I was in high school again. Like I had just jumped back in time five years and it was just another Wednesday night youth meeting. It wasn’t just a feeling either, it was everything. There were people playing basketball and talking and flirty before we went in the sanctuary, and the sanctuary was a light show, cement floor, and folding chairs just like the old days. It was crazy, like I said, most surreal thing ever! But anyway, to get to my point…

I realized something, sitting there feeling like I was back in time, church used to be so much different for me back then. There was this feeling of excitement and expectancy that I just haven’t felt in awhile. A feeling of standing in a room full of people but it still just being me and God, accompanied with the feeling that He was fully there in that room with me.

I don’t know what it was about being a teenager in a place like that. I think it was what I said earlier, expectancy. You just walked in expecting God to do something because there was nothing else to expect, He was going to do something. And for me, I was there to worship and connect with Him and not there to prove myself or tell anyone who I was but somehow being that way was showing them all who I was.

This may sound backwards, believe me it does to me too as I type it. I mean, high school is when we are supposed to be unsure of who we are and how to be that around other people and have a hard time, say, just worshipping in public, because we are afraid of what others might think.

But really it was easier then. Life hadn’t gotten in the way. And for all the crying I did over how “hard” my life was back then, it wasn’t. It was just me and God and I really didn’t have that much that had messed that up. I hadn’t chosen to run away from who He was in my life or just let everything around me distract me from what He was trying to do in me.

It was just simple. Simple expectancy.

That is something I miss, and need to get back, because God will still move and meet me wherever I am.

Story Starter

Sarah’s alarm went off early that morning, 6:00am. She stretched one hand out from under the covers shivering as the cold air rushed into her previously snuggly warm blankets. She slammed her hand down on the alarm clock to stop the incessant, if not completely depressing, beeping sound and pulled her arm back under the covers. It was near the end of fall when the air gets crisp and cold overnight but warms just enough by mid morning to be comfortable in a sweater. But being that it was so early, her room was filled with the sweet cold air that comes just before winter and Sarah revealed in it.

She lay in her bed blinking her sleepy eyes and trying to get her mind around the day ahead. It was early yes, but she was eagerly awaiting her day and could scarcely contain the excitement she felt. “Lord,” she prayed barely out loud, “I give you this day and all it has in it, may it go as You have designed. Amen.”

After just a few seconds of enjoying the peace and chilled stillness she popped out of bed and quickly ran across the room to the adjoining bathroom that waited with space heater and a hot shower. She showered quickly, dressed for the day and was out of the house just before seven with a bagel between her teeth and two thermoses of hot coffee.

When life gives you a problem, consult Jane Austen

Problem: You just started dating this boy, I mean just. You walked from the front porch where he asked you out into your mom’s room and she practically has you married to him and moved off to Ray, Wyoming.

Problem #2: One of my friends comes to me the other day with a story: So this boy walks into my class, and I’ve never seen him before in my life, and he’s cute and he starts asking me questions and stuff, and he’s cute, and I just wanted to marry him right then and there. I mean I wanted to text someone and say, “I think I just fell in love.” And I don’t even know his name.

Answer: “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, love to matrimony, in a moment.”

- Pride and Prejudice

Problem: Horrid English assignment in which there is a requirement of eight full length novels, this means over 100 pages each – oh no!

Answer: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid!"

- Northanger Abbey

Problem: Your best friend likes a boy who is the sweetest thing ever one day, and makes her cry for hours the next. (I hope you are in high school if this is happening, if you’re out, RUN AWAY!)

Answer: "I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."

- Mansfield Park

Year 2010-2011 Begins

Well, it's the start of a new year and a new set of mandatory blog posts! This may sound like protest, put it's a facade, I really do like blogging, though I generally forget I have to do it!

This year I hope to turn this blog into...well, I don't know really. The novel is out - at least for the time being - so I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do. I know that I want to keep the name RossRoads, though the blog is no longer about my journey through a novel.

My friends say I like the name because one day when I marry a man my best friend has picked out for me - who happens to have a last name resembling roads - it will fit perfectly. But, just so you know, that isn't going to happen, but they like to laugh about it.

Anyway, the point is, new year, new blog and what that will bring I'm not sure at this point. I would like to build a readership, even if it is a small one, but who wants to read my random ramblings really? Also, I think a blog should be useful for something, and by that I mean more than just getting a grade in class.

For now I'm still at a stalemate, but be ready for some random!

A Random Story

So this has absolutely nothing to do with my novel I was just in a writing mood and this story popped into my head. I'm not sure if I'm going to add more to it but just for know her it is!

It was the first day of my sophomore year of high school. In my school, for some strange reason, freshman where still in with the seventh and eighth graders in the mid-high so tenth grade year was my first year in "the big high school." I was always the sort of nerdy girl who was friends with lots of people but wasn't really anything much to anyone around so I had, of course, decided that this was going to be a new start for me. I was going to "re-en-vent" myself as it where. Yes well, re-en-veiting oneself really only works in novels and made for TV teen dramas so that plan pretty much failed the second I walked through the big yellow doors that lead into the high school. My perfectly quaffed hair fell flat from the crazy Oklahoma heat and I walked into the school to face a crowd of people who had known me forever and new I was nothing like what I hoped they would now see in me. So instead of being the cute new girl wearing a barely dress code white tank and jeans I stayed the lame girl who was freezing in class and wore a wrinkled sweater over her tank top after pulling it from her backpack. And instead of being talkative and whitey I barely said a word to anyone because I was to consumed with the fact that I had failed my attempt to be a completely new person or at least and alter ego of myself.

After scuffing my feet and being all but impressed with myself through an entire day I came to my last class of the day. As I walked into sophomore Biology 1, the slacker on-level science class which I really should not have been taking because I was much more capable in the field of genetics and all things biology but knowing it meant no Chemistry in my entire high school career - a fact I am very proud of to this day, I took a seat in the front row at least two full rows in front of all the other kids who had already arrived.

I didn't mind the front. I'm sort of blind so I can see better and then I didn't have to see the faces of all the kids starring at me when the teacher announced I got the highest grade on the pop quiz he'd given the day before and so there would only be a one point curve. Granted I could feel their lazier beam hate eyes searing into the back of my skull, but at least I didn't have to look at their faces.

As soon as I took my seat it dawned on me. If I was trying to change my image why in the world had i sat in the front row in everyone of my classes that day? I could have kicked myself and I was really bad at this whole "re-en-venting myself" thing. I of course began wrestling with myself as to weather I could move to a farther back seat inconspicuously enough that I wouldn't look like an idiot. By the time I almost had enough courage to move back a seat or two while whispering a very well thought out script to the people in the seats around me that went, "why did I sit in the front that was lame," and maybe an additional something about having heard the teacher spit when he got excited about the reproductive system of giraffes I looked up to realize the classroom was almost entirely full except for the seat next to me which really wouldn't do me any good. I continued to be disappointed in myself while Mr. Stewart, the Biology teacher, called role. I had a glimmer of hope when I realized I could switch to a different seat tomorrow if Mr. Stewart was one of those cool teachers who don't believe in seating charts. Just as I started to get excited about this fact I heard Mr. Stewart announce, "This will be your seating chart for the entire semester. That way I can learn your names easier." My heart sank and I resigned myself to be the nerdy smart girl with flat hair who sits in the front row for the rest of my life.

The Fail Continues

Well, not much to report today. I still haven't done much at all writing wise. I have been way busy working on a big project for school and it has taken over my life! However, I will be done in two days and life can go back to normal!

Oh I almost forgot, I met a publisher last week. A real legit publisher! He has an online publishing company that publishes only electronic stuff but it is mostly things no one else would publish which is really cool! Also, he may be a teacher here at my school which would be wonderful because it was obvious with talking to him that he knows what he is doing and he has knowledge in an area that will really help me in what I would like to do.

He gave me some advice about writing which I would like to pass on to you:

Read great books! Don't read good books. Read great books!

So...read great books! Maybe one day one of mine will be one of those great books!