Five Years Ago I Would Never Have Guessed...

(Me and my lovely friend Valeria... almost exactly five years ago.)

I had curried chickpeas for dinner the other night. And as I was eating I thought, "If you would have asked me five years ago if I would be making myself curried chickpeas for dinner, I would have said 'curry what?'" This tangent in my brain got a little deeper and I thought, "Man, things have changed a lot over the last five years. There are a lot of things that I would have never guessed..." Five years ago I was starting my junior year of college. I had just turned 21 and I was thinking at that point that I would be a Spanish teacher or a missionary. I had plans to study abroad, solidify the whole Spanish thing, get married somewhere along the way, and be on my way to what I envisioned to be a "normal life." Things didn't quite turn out the way I expected... and I'm actually pretty ok with it.

So what did I do? I made a list. Why? Because that's what I do.

Things That Five Years Ago I Would Never Have Guessed I Would be Doing Today

1. Eating curried chickpeas.
2. Working at JPMorgan.
3. Being able to speak intelligently about 401(k)s (and not being able to speak much Spanish).
4. Preferring to wear dresses to work over pants.
5. Being interested in management.
6. Living in Prairie Village with two lovely girls that I didn't even know existed five years ago.
7. Living with a cat. (Not to be confused with owning a cat... I doubt this will ever happen.)
8. Having a completely new set of wonderful friends. (I have some of the coolest friends ever and the majority of them I didn't even know five years ago... which is crazy to me.)
9. Loving to cook as much as I do.
10. Going to church in Independence and actually wanting to live there. ("Independence, Missouri? The only good things there are the mall and Fazoli's." That's what five years ago Abby would have said about Independence.)
11. Still be blogging.

Sometimes I get frustrated with life...  because it isn't going the way I planned. But looking back at this list I see all of these wonderful things that if life had gone according to my plan... never would have happened. I'm convinced yet again that God's plan is better than my plan... every. time. And I'm excited to see what these next five years have in store.

(Thanks to curried chickpeas for bringing me this deep moment...)