Blog-tember Challenge prompt: 10 items off your bucket list.
Just ten? My bucket list is a little long and that’s okay. Bucket lists are a life thing, right? I could get lost in dreaming about the things I want to do, but I’ve been learning how to set goals. Here are ten items on my bucket list that I want to accomplish within the next ten years. They’re dream-able but also achievable.
1. Publish a book/sell a manuscript to a publisher
2. Visit Italy
3. Attend a Christian blogger conference (recommendations?)
4. Attend a masquerade ball
5. Grow a plant (so close…if only they stop dying)
6. Watch a musical on Broadway
7. Go on a road trip
8. Dance in a rainstorm
9. Learn archery
10. Catch a fish with a fishing line
There you go. Ten things from my bucket list I want to accomplish in ten years. That means by the time I turn 40.
What’s not on there – wait, am I really about to admit this? Alright, I will – is to get married and start a family. But those are not checklist items or end goals.
The world will have you believe they are, and there are woman who agree. They look at men as husband candidates and children as the finish line. That sounds harsh and it is. I’m not saying all single women are like this. I’m single and I’m not like this, but I used to be. I used to think that life is about getting a job, getting married, and having kids. Do all those (check them off your list) and you’re life is good. You’ve arrived. You got it all.
When I was 18 years old, I read a Christian book on singleness. I don’t remember the title or the author or most of the content. I only remember one piece of advice. Look at your brothers in Christ as your brothers in Christ and not as potential boyfriends, and give them the chance to become your brothers in Christ.
It changed my perspective.
It helped me guard my heart. It helped me stop reading into every little nice thing guys did for me. It helped me stop investing in relationship dramas because it was easier to walk away. When guys are your brothers, you’re not thinking of losing potential boyfriends.
These didn’t happen right away. I had A LOT to learn, and I was open to learning. There was space in my mind and heart for God to teach me. And I stopped wanting a boyfriend, and start wanting the husband God has for me.
More importantly, I started wanting what God has planned for my single season. I can have a good life now. “Arriving” and “having it all” changed from checking things off my life list into being where God wants me to be and doing what He called me to do. Living in His plans means I’ve arrived and I have it all.
Here are ten items from my bucket list that I have checked off in the last ten years as a single woman.
1. Take ballet
2. Knit something I would actually wear.
First I had to learn to knit. That was on my bucket list. Then, not counting scarves, I made a shrug with hideous seams and a cute beret by accident.
3. Go to Hawaii
4. Watch a movie outdoors (I watched E.T. on the field of a ballpark)
5. Go parasailing
6. Go on a cruise
7. Go ATVing
8. Go wine tasting
9. Sponsor a child. This is Joshua, my 2nd sponsor child. My first, Jesster, is now grown up.
10. Be published in print (I had an article published in Guide magazine)
What have you checked off in your bucket list the last ten years? It’s good to look back and find the blessings in our lives and measure how far we’ve come, because then we can look forward and know that we will continue to be blessed and continue to overcome life’s challenges.
