I put the "working wife" part in brackets because that's what describes me. You can insert your own title there. Working mom. Single college student. Working single mom. Stay at home mom. Single professional. Married person. Parent. The title isn't what matters.

I'm happily married. I've been married for 478 days. That's almost 16 months. It's 1 year, 3 months, and 22 days to be exact. I've wanted to be married since I knew what marriage was. I had a chronic dating problem in high school and a chronic crush-on-every-new-guy-I-meet-in-college-because-he-might-be-THE-ONE problem in college. Eventually, after 3 years of middle school crushes, 4 years of high school dating, and almost a full 3 years of college crushes/dating, I finally had a crush on the right guy. I'm not proud of how desperate I wanted to find MR. RIGHT, but even in my weakness, the Lord was faithful and He led me to Jason, in His way and in His time.

Even after we began dating, said "I love you" for the first time, and knew that we wanted to get married, I was still was desperate to be Jason's wife. I didn't understand why we had to wait to be engaged, why we couldn't just go ahead and get married. Thankfully, I had a level-headed boyfriend (and now husband) who knew that God's timing is key.

Where am I going with all of these details (that quite frankly, make me cringe)?

Well, there's a lot of talk on the social media pages about getting married young, and it seems like everybody and their sister getting engaged. Not to mention, soon, there will be lots of chatter about getting a "ring by spring". Yep, that's right, the infamous "ring by spring". I went to a small, baptist, liberal arts college - "Ring by Spring" was all anyone could talk about when we came back from winter break, AND I was in a sorority, so, you know, the pressure was on for me my senior year when Jason and I had been dating all of 6 months.

Thankfully, like I said, Jason is way more level-headed than I am, and he proposed the following February after I'd been out of school for about 8 months.

Getting engaged in college IS NOT a bad thing. Getting married immediately after graduating college IS NOT a bad thing. That's not my point AT ALL! I have many friends who have gotten engaged in college and married the summer after who have lovely marriages that I respect immensely. My parents did that. I wanted to do that. So I am not against it at all, whatsoever.

So, my point is this: God's timing is worth waiting for...in all things.

God's timing is best. God's timing is perfect. God's timing is totally and completely better than ours could ever be.

God ever so gently reminded me about His perfect timing over the weekend. Of all things, I was cleaning our toilets. Obviously, that's when I am closest to God. Just kidding. But really, I don't like cleaning toilets that much. Who does? I actually don't like cleaning anything much at all, but you better bet I enjoy a clean house. So I clean.

My husband is SUCH a hard worker. He works more hours than I can even count on all of my hands and toes, his hands and toes, and our next door neighbor's hands and toes. He works multiple jobs, so many weekends he's not lounging with me at home, he's working. This past weekend, we had one day off together - Saturday. Since I work a full-time job too, I really needed some help cleaning our house. So Saturday morning, we slept in a little bit, and then put on our cleaning clothes and got to work.

Jason's job is always the floors. I deep cleaned the kitchen (I don't want to even think about the mess we've been cooking our food in) and the bathrooms. Like I said, I love a clean house, but I'm not much a fan of the actual cleaning process. Thankfully, I have a husband who doesn't mind helping me clean when we have a day off together. But most of the time, I clean the house alone when he is working a full weekend.

After we finished cleaning, we went to go pick up some lunch. As we were driving in the car, I started thinking about how much nasty stuff I touched while cleaning the bathrooms. I thought I might gag a little, but then I didn't. That's when it hit me - I find JOY in doing things like this, like cleaning our home on our only day off together.

I realized in that moment that there's no where else I'd rather be on a Saturday morning than down on my hands and knees cleaning a toilet, with music blaring through our new-to-us home, and with my husband in the living room sweeping the floors.

You know why? Because as gross as it may be (I'm really making us sound like slobs, and I promise we're not), I know that I'm right where the Lord wants me. I know that it was absolutely His plan for us to get engaged on February 4, 2012, married on September 22nd of that year, buy a home the following September, and grow together in Him through our covenant of marriage until we take our last breaths on this earth.

Getting married young isn't a bad thing, at least in my opinion. I got engaged when I was 22, and married when I was 23. We bought our house when I was 24, and I'm pretty sure I'll be a mom by the time I'm 27 or 28. That was God's plan for me.

However Jason was 24 when we started dating. He was 25 when he proposed, and 26 when we got married. He was 27 when we bought our house, and he probably will be in his 30s when he becomes a dad. Although he's still young (but I like to give him a hard time about being "older"), he had a few years of singleness before getting into a serious dating relationship that led to marriage. He had time to grow in the Lord as a young professional. He has time to build a savings account that has served us well. He had time to travel the country multiple times and pursue dreams that he may not have been able to pursue if we were engaged or married then. That was God's plan for him.

Wherever you are, however old you are, whoever you're dating or not dating, whoever you're engaged to or married to, wherever you're working, whatever you're doing, embrace God's timing for you life. His will may be for you to work there or marry him, but His will and His timing are not mutually exclusive.

When we obey God's timing and follow after His plan for our lives, we can find joy in all things, even cleaning toilets on a beautiful Saturday morning. Or waking up from a dead sleep because your wife is screaming and you have to kill a spider in the bathroom at the crack of dawn on a Monday morning, which is exactly what happened to Jason today.

May we be believers who seek to find the Lord's timing in our lives in all things. May we find joy in those things. And may we praise Him each day for being the Great Author of our life story.