The Game of Life

The Game of Life is probably my all-time favorite board game. The little station wagons, the white buildings, the mountains that came up off the board, and the spinner. I can still hear the clicking of the spinner as it spun around. The point of The Game of Life is to get money. One website describes winning as “your score is represented by the wealth your token car collects as it travels through the board, with the overall goal being to retire the wealthiest player at the end of the game”. 

However, my eight year-old self did not think that was the point of the game. I wanted to get married at the chapel and have a car full of little plastic kids. My mom tells the story about how my dad didn’t understand why, when my two choices from my spin were to get a lot of money OR get a kid. I would always go for the kid. Always. I would squish as many kids as I could collect during the game into that tiny six seater station wagon. 

My eight year-old self and my thirty-eight year-old self are similar in many ways. I’m a kid at heart. I love singing songs with my class (and even dancing sometimes), playing Hot Wheels or Thomas trains with my nephew, and reading lift-the-flap books with my niece (her favorite). I love chocolate milk and chicken fingers. I also LOVE Harry Potter and all things Disney!! 

This week I will turn thirty-nine. The thought of turning thirty-nine is hitting me hard. I thought forty would be bad. But these past few weeks have been hard. Like all consuming hard. Mostly because I do not have a husband and kids. And at this point in my life, that’s a long shot. 

I know my path has shaped who I am and how I got to this place. I KNOW God’s plan is better than I ever could imagine. He knows what’s best for me. It’s just hard when that doesn’t line up with what you’ve dreamed for since you were a kid. 

I don’t know where my story took a turn and sent me on this path of singleness. It’s not easy. Seeing friends happily married. Friends with kids. Realizing that we are in different places in life and that inevitably creates a divide. Which makes singleness even lonelier. 

Granted since my autoimmune diagnosis six years ago, my life has changed drastically. I’m not going to rehash all of that in this post. You can find it in the blog archives (if you’re really bored and looking for something to read). 

Some days are better than others. Sundays are especially hard and I’ve yet to figure out why exactly. Don’t get me wrong. I have great friends, awesome coworkers, and amazing family members. My kinder friends keep me entertained and on my toes! But most of them have seen and experienced more in their short five years than anyone should ever see. My church nursery and babysitting friends balance out part of my life because it’s nice to know that there are kids who are talked to, have books read to them, and have their needs met. 

My first ever group of kinder friends graduated high school last spring. That was a huge milestone for all of us! So proud of those young men and women who will always be kindergarteners in my mind. I love seeing kids from classes I’ve taught in the past. I enjoy (sometimes) teaching younger siblings of kinder friends! 

But something is missing. Someone is missing. Some people are missing. 

Being an aunt to a super smart, funny almost four year-old nephew and an adorable, Peppa Pig loving nineteen month-old niece is probably my most important job in life. Especially if you know their story. When my sister-in-law passed away suddenly a year and a half ago, I thought to myself...this, this is why you’re not married. To be there for those two precious little souls and pick out clothes for them that I know my sister-in-law would’ve bought if she’d had the chance and to just love them. 

But I look in the rear view mirror and see their two cowmooflague car seats and wonder. Wonder who would be sitting there if life had gone the way I thought it would. The way it did in The Game of Life. 

I’m not sure that I’ll leave this post up or delete it later. I’m not even sure why I wrote it. Except for the fact that maybe I’m not the only one struggling with a birthday that’s coming soon and is grieving a dream that wasn’t meant to be.