Why everything is “meant to be”…

DISCLAIMER: This one, is very, very, VERY long…but…
I decided to start writing my blog, as a way to remember the feelings and emotions I’ve gone through while dealing with my Thyroid Cancer…as a way of coping and healing and moving forward… but I thought I’d explain why “Meant to be” came to my mind as my overall title for my blog…

In my life, I’ve had so many things happen that I can’t explain, except that they were just “meant to be” or as I also call it “God’s plan” or “God’s will”… Everything that I’ve ever questioned the outcome in my life, I’ve been able to look back on my past and see that it all had a way of working itself out. I think I best explained it in a facebook status though…God always knows what He’s doing… Tonight was a reminder… Just because you aren’t where you thought you’d be or would like to be, doesn’t mean you aren’t exactly where you’re supposed to be. Sometimes, things can turn into something even greater than you ever imagined. Some things are just “meant to be”. After I wrote that status last night, I started this blog…

Everything from (1.) A relationship I thought I wanted for years not working out in the long run, to (2.) Dating around, to find “the one”. (3.) My ex dying in a motorcycle accident, to (4.) Dating a guy who looked eerily like my ex and then another guy, still trying to find “the one”. (5.) Meeting Wes twice & then marrying him, to (6.) My decision to stop going to school, to (7.) My miscarriage, to even (8.) Getting diagnosed with thyroid cancer… and finally, (9.) Some of my longest friendships ending in the past 2 years, to even I can honestly say I can see the “bigger picture” and they were all “meant to be”.

1. My ex. I had liked him for 7 years. I had liked him since I was 13.. We dated a little over a year when I was 20. I had only really had 1 serious relationship before him, so I really had a lot to learn. I’m not going to really talk about the specifics of that relationships, because it is in my past, and the point is to grow as a person, not step back. All I will say is that is was a growing and learning process. I learned a lot about me & I learned about what I wanted and definitely didn’t want in a relationship.

2. After that relationship ended, I spent a lot of time searching for “The One”… dating all the “wrong ones”…and it seemed like the more I searched, the more things seemed to fall apart… This leads into 3.

3. I met Damon at karaoke one night. He was in a “boot” because he had broken his leg… I remember this night vividly. I was sitting at a table near the front because I knew I was going to sing soon, and it was always my regular spot. Damon goes up to sing “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.. As he was singing, I was just watching and wasn’t particularly interested in him… but a girl randomly went up to him and grabbed his crotch. He and I ended up making contact and both kind of mouthed “Wow!” to each other… and then he ended up coming up to me and we ended up hitting it off. We dated casually for a little while and then he asked me to be his girlfriend.. A week later he breaks up with me, basically just saying he wasn’t ready for something so serious. I remember the next part so vividly, it will stick with me forever. I was at a bar one night, because Damon and I weren’t dating anymore and I had nothing better to do. I was parked up front, and these 2 guys get into a fight by my car and end up knocking one of my side mirrors off. I called him the next day, because he worked at Sloan’s (a place that sold motorcycles) to see if he had suggestions on how to fix it… He was really short with me. That was the last time I ever talked to him. I get a call a couple of days later, on Memorial Day evening/night 2007. It was Damon’s sister. She was calling to tell me that Damon had gotten killed while riding his motorcycle on May 28, 2007. I was crushed. I went to the funeral alone because I knew I had to. I had started falling for this guy and now he was gone. It was the only way I could ever get closure. I get there and I see his one friend that I know… but his mom approached me and says “You’re Lindsey, right?” and I said yes… and she said… “My son talked about you all the time. He was falling in love with you”. A little while later, his sister comes up to me and essentially says the same thing… So here I am, thinking I felt the same way and to find out that he basically had gotten scared and that’s why he broke up with me… But, it was MEANT TO BE… This took me a long time to realize why it happened this way…but God had a bigger plan… Damon broke up with me a couple of weeks before he died, which essentially protected me a little bit in the long rung.. Even though, I was crushed, it was better for me emotionally that we weren’t together when it happened… I’m not sure I would have recovered from that, if things happened the way that they did. 

4. After Damon died, I just was lonely… I wanted love, but I never thought I’d find it. Basically the same thing happened again. This guy (Seth) asked me to be his girlfriend, shortly after us dating.. I leave to go on vacation for 4 days.. I get back and he breaks up with me that night. He says basically the same thing… He says he just isn’t ready for something serious… Months later, I realized the reason I had given this guy a chance (he had tried to hang out with my before, but I had blown him off the first time, because he was younger)… but the reason I gave him a chance, was because he looked like he could have been Damon’s younger brother. I was hurt, but then I met another guy (online this time)… but when I went to go meet him in person, he just didn’t look anything like his pictures and the whole thing just seemed forced. He told me he “loved” me, within hours of meeting me in person, and it just turned me off. A week or so after that, I broke it off.. During this time… (5.) comes into play.

5. As I said in a previous blog, Wes was coming to visit my roommate, Kelli, to say goodbye before he moved to California in 4 days… Since I’ve already told you the story of how we met, you can go back to read that for yourself, since our whole story is already there in a previous blog… Needless to say, that as broken and “unready” as I thought I was for a relationship when I met Wes, and as much as I never expected anything more than to just have a nice date and hang out and then he would move… things were just “meant to be” with us… He actively tried to make things work and eventually my heart was totally open to him and has been ever since. It made everything else I had been through with everyone else up to this point, totally worth the pain. He made me forget (almost) how hurt I had gotten over the previous 2 years before meeting him… I’m truly blessed with the most amazing and perfect person for me and my life. I couldn’t imagine life without him. (I love you, Wes!)

6. After Wes proposed, I decided to take a “break” from school, to plan our wedding. It was beautiful and wonderful and totally worth it… BUT, in the process, I felt like I was supposed to do “something”… In that time, I learned to bake, I took singing lessons, I sold jewelry (for 3 years), I got to be a housewife and I learned calligraphy… If it wasn’t for that “break”, I would have never have gotten to explore my talents and I genuinely love being crafty and doing the calligraphy. It was meant to be, because I found something I could be proud of, make money with and be home… because I liked being a housewife and I want to be a stay-at-home mom eventually. So this is perfect for me. Who knows where God is going to take me, but I like the direction so far!

7. In August of 2010, I found out I was pregnant. We were so excited, because we were just trying to see if we could naturally… and we got pregnant the first try… Unfortunately, at around 6 weeks, right after I found out and we had just told Wes’ family, that same weekend… Within HOURS, I started to miscarry. I felt guilty… for getting everyone’s hopes up…. I thought it was my fault… I wondered if I had caused it somehow… I just felt guilt and sadness and it took a long time to get past the “loss”. I’ve been much more in the “When is going to happen for real?” phase for the past couple of years. I can look back on it and say that even this, was meant to be… For several reasons…
  1. We had a lot to figure out.
  2. We don’t know if we’ll ever have a healthy pregnancy, so we started looking into in vitro.
  3. Because Wes is retired from the military, in the process, they have started to allow financial assistance for veterans for procedures (like in vitro) to help people start a family.
  4. The discovery of my thyroid cancer… Which leads me into 8….

8. Basically, I’m thankful that things happened the way that they did, because I feel like if we hadn’t discovered my thyroid cancer the way that we did, things would have been a lot harder on me. We were about to move into the steps to start the in vitro process. I went to have a female exam and during that time, I was just explaining to my doctor that I had trouble sleeping, etc… He also knew that since my miscarriage, I had SEVERAL false positive pregnancy tests… (like 3 or 4)… I’m not sure if the false positives were related… Regardless, whatever things I had told him provoked him to ask if I had ever gotten my thyroid checked out. I said “No, but is this normal?” and I showed him my neck, where I had noticed (but had ignored) some nodules in my neck, chalking it up to swollen glands from a sore throat. He immediately got me in for blood work… and I found out I had Hypothyroidism… I will address all of this, in a later blog.. because that process deserves a blog in itself. I did in fact have Thyroid Cancer it turns out though. I’m so thankful for my doctor and for his knowledge and for catching this thing… I had gone previously to a Reproductive Endocrinologist, who took one look at us, decided she didn’t want to help, and her only advice was “Get a sperm donor or adopt”… Even that, I think was meant to be… As mad as I was at her once I found out I was diagnosed with cancer, I now know that I’m in good hands with my current doctors.

9. Finally… the ending of friendships. I won’t say who these people are, but I will say that they were similar situations, except one bounced from relationship to relationship, and the other was a 27 y/o who was also in a wheelchair and had never lived on her own. I was basically a replacement for these ppl.. Either a replacement boyfriend or a replacement parent… Either way, once they weren’t getting what they wanted out of me.. I was the bad person… Apparently. Since then, those friendships that I had for so many years, have ended. I was angry and sad at first… but I’m glad… because shortly after the 2nd one ended was when I was diagnosed with cancer… Within WEEKS of the 2nd girl moving out… It happened the way it did, I fully believe, because I NEEDED to worry about me and only me for the first time in my life… and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I don’t regret it.. I’m sad that things had to end the way that they did. In both cases, the other people decided to take the easy way out and either talk to Wes behind my back or to just not talk at all, and then chew me out, in both cases I was made to be a “spoiled brat”… Even though, I had my heart in the right place, in trying to help them… They didn’t want the type of advice, opinion or help that I had to offer. Those friendships were meant to end, to make room for better, more mature ones… because soon after, that’s exactly what I needed in my friendships. I needed support, selfless love & compassion. I needed friends who would be there for me without any expectation of me in return. I was surrounded by so much love & support, that I realized… I have exactly who I need in my life right now…. I’m not saying that I was perfect in these situations and I’m not saying that I would never speak to either of these girls again, but things would have to be very, very different in these “friendships”.

I apologize for such a long blog. I just really needed to tell people why I believe there is a reason for everything and everything has a way of working itself out in the end,  with usually an even better outcome than you expected.. “Let Go & Let God”..

I will leave you with a few quotes… because I LOVE quotes… and they apply…. Enjoy (if you made it this far!)

“When we put our problems in God’s hands, He puts His peace in our hearts”

“As much as you want to plan your life, it has a way of surprising you with unexpected things that will make you happier than you originally planned. That’s what you call God’s Will”

“When life gives you challenges, they’re not obstacles preventing you from getting what you want. They’re supposed to help you discover what you’re really made of”

“When you’re going through something hard & wonder where God is, remember the teacher is always quiet during a test”

“Hard times will always reveal true friends”

“People are often unreasonable, illogical & self-centered-forgive them anyway.

and finally…

“Sometimes removing some people out of your life makes room for people who need you & that you need even more”

I love you all!
Linds