You can't plan your life...

I had a strategic life plan at age 18 – I would go to college, get married and a job as soon as I got out of college and four years after that I would have a child. That's the way things work, right?

Not so fast. Things didn't quite go as I planned. I went to college and graduated and got a job and I watched as one-by-one my high school friends got married at 20, 21, 22, 23. etc.

In the rural Mississippi, women are made to believe that if you aren't married by the time you are 25, then you are bound for "old maid" status and if you don't have a child by 30, then you must not like children or you just don't want to have any.

I was two months shy of my 27th birthday, when Paul and I got married in 2004. He was 36. Sometimes you just have to wait and waiting is the hardest part.

I say all this because my cousin/brother Grey and his fiancee Mandy will be married February 16 and oh my goodness, they are both in there 30s. I'm so excited for them and wish them many years of happiness!