Sophie talks about her first taste of working from home and relishes in the fact that she could do it in her pajama’s.
At 18-years old, she was doing far better things than I was at that age. Yes, 18 was my year of “rebellion”. Finally an “adult”, who bought her own car, I decided it was time for me to call the shots. It’s not that I went off the deep end or anything, but I did hang out with a less-than-stellar crowd I called my friends. Many of them were several years older than me, and most were male.
I called myself a Christian, but didn’t always do the “Christian thing”. I sometimes set my convictions aside so I could be part of the gang. Not that I want to put out the wrong message here, but they were little things, such as smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor; not things that completely changed the course of my life. Except maybe in the right direction.
The more I suppressed the Spirit, the easier it became to compromise. I definitely was in the middle of an identity crisis, not to mention a relationship crisis with my boyfriend/fiance’ [who’s now my husband]. There was a short season when we were not together and I decided to explore other options.
Needless to say, I didn’t like the other option. I mean, you could call it a crush, a rebound, whatever. But the “other option” didn’t have an interest in marriage — as in, ever. As a girl who grew up without her dad at home, I guess I was pretty eager to start my life. I wasn’t interested in wasting my time on flings. Not to mention he had no interest in God. No, the grass isn’t greener sometimes. Sometimes, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Sometimes, you think you know what’s good for you but you don’t.
Sophie made mention of that when dealing with accounting in her sister’s business. She didn’t do well with numbers. She thought it would be fun to move to Atlanta simply to spend the summer somewhere other than her hometown. She didn’t take into account there was work involved in agreeing to help with this business.
Eighteen-year-old’s are funny like that, aren’t they? They want all the benefits without sowing and believe there are no consequences to making poor choices. But, we both learned valuable lessons during that year of our lives, so that has to count for something.
This is when I learned Sophie and I are about 10 years apart. Our childhood’s don’t look anything alike, even though I remember so much the 80s. Yet, we still learned some of the same lessons, just in different ways. That just shows me that God can work in any circumstance, even when we are a hot mess at eighteen years old.
So, when my boyfriend/fiance’ and I decided we were better off together rather than apart, we decided to push our wedding up. You see, we were quite literally engaged when I entered my senior year of high school. He proposed before having a ring, but then spent all summer saving up to pay for one and I bore that pretty ring on my left finger all throughout my senior year of high school. Other than my circle of friends, I didn’t draw attention to it because, really, I knew people wouldn’t believe we were serious.
There were a lot of reasons we got married so young. (By the time we’d gotten married, we had been together three years.) But my housing situation needed to be remedied and since we planned on marrying anyways, we just pushed it up and planned it in 3 months flat. With our own money. Today, we joke about how redneck it was in some ways.
We married in a park, had our reception in that same park, with picnic tables covered with dollar store, plastic table cloths. We also had BYOB on our invitations. You know, Bring Your Own Beer, because we weren’t even of legal age to consume it and if people wanted it, they’d have to bring it. We weren’t concerned about impressing anyone, that’s for sure. We wanted a simple wedding that didn’t break the bank.
I was nineteen when we exchanged our vows and I have never regretted marrying when we did. Yes, we both went to college and worked full time, but we managed. It may have been what helped us build such a solid foundation in our marriage. If we could survive that season, why not have lots of children and and a few pets, too! (Side note: we have seven children, 3 dogs, and a parakeet).
What do you remember about being eighteen? What stands out the most?
