“This place reminds me of Santa’s Workshop. Except it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me.” – Elf

If there is one nugget of Truth I have learned from going through a divorce and the number of other unexpected things I’ve gone through this year…something I want every man, woman, and child to hear or read, it’s this: Don’t settle.

I’ve learned this in 3 different ways over the past year, and if you want to really know how I’ve learned this lesson in more ways than one, then keep reading.

1. I married the wrong person.

I know what you’re thinking. You just said you’re divorced. Isn’t the fact that you married the wrong person kind of obvious?

Hear me out. This is important.

I knew my ex-husband was the wrong person very early on in my relationship with him. It wasn’t quite immediate, but there were plenty of red flags that I did not heed.

I was rather enamored with him at first. He was charming and handsome and is one of those men that you feel could have any woman he wants. And he chose me. Out of all the women in the world, he picked me. Wow. I felt so lucky. He was everything I had ever wanted. I told all my friends that if you could take every quality I ever wanted in my husband and blew it up x10, you’d have this man that I was so lucky to be dating. And he wanted to marry me. Life was beautiful.

But it wasn’t.

We had been dating less than a week when he told me I was too skinny. It was a really small comment he made off-handedly that, “we have to get some meat on those bones.” I did not care for it, but I ignored it. Well, I ignored it at first.

Then he came to visit me at Thanksgiving 3 months later and it grew worse. I could see we weren’t compatible in the food department. It scared me. I had worked hard to change this issue that had been plaguing me for nearly 10 years. I was almost done losing weight when I met him. I had changed my habits and I was just waiting for my weight to bottom out to its happy point.

Over the 2 weeks he spent with my family, it threw me for a loop. We argued about food. I couldn’t make him see that eating healthy and going to the gym and being a healthy weight were important things to me. I didn’t want to spend my life with a weight issue.

Something in my gut told me I needed to break up with him. In fact, I almost felt bad that my family liked him so much because I was trying to plot out exactly how I was going to break up with him.

But your parents love him so much. If you break up with him, who knows if you’ll ever find someone this good to love you again. What makes you so special that you think you’ll find better? Is food really that important? You’re being so vain! It’s just food.

But it wasn’t just food. Food was the surface of it all, but I knew deep down there was something wrong, and I knew if I didn’t take care of it, the day would come when I would be sitting on my couch wondering what had happened to my life.

Now, let me just say I am not blaming him for what happened to me. I am not blaming him for the pounds I packed on during the 6 years I was with him. I have no one to blame but myself. However, these incompatibilities and ignoring this gut feeling that we were wrong for each other were things that were occurring to me early on.

Things escalated and the day came when I had a meltdown in a Nordstrom dressing room trying on my wedding dress a week before my wedding. I was with my mom and she knew it was more than just the fact that my dress didn’t fit. I blurted out all of the things that I had been feeling that let me know he was not the one. One of them was that we couldn’t agree on how to treat money – one of the leading causes that leads to divorce.

My mom looked me square in the face and said, “Then don’t marry him.”

I should have listened, but I swallowed my feelings and let the fear of cancelling a wedding we had been planning for over six months and the 160 people that were coming to it take over my better judgement. I married him the next week.

Then life became dark. Fast. I felt neglected. I was unhappy and I didn’t know why.

Christmas came – my favorite time of the year. It was time that was always filled with magic for me. I remembered the way I used to feel looking at the decorated tree and listening to Christmas music and taking walks with my family and just feeling that wonderful, child-like goopy feeling in my stomach that filled the holiday with magic. The first Christmas I was married, I had never felt so empty. I didn’t feel the magic of the holiday. Holidays were just days to get through. What was wrong with me?

I remember sitting in my apartment. Alone. In the dark. I would close my eyes and hope and pray that maybe…just for one single solitary glistening moment that I could feel like myself. Even if it were just for one second.

It didn’t come.

I had one small glimpse of it when my mom came to visit. It was Mother’s Day and we were in church. The final hymn that morning was a hymn she used to sing to me when I was a little girl. At that moment, singing the hymn in this big church with hundreds of people backed by a huge organ, I suddenly felt like myself. And I cried. I didn’t just cry, I bawled. My mom tucked my head beneath her chin, held me close and sang me the hymn as though I were 5-years-old again.

It didn’t last very long.

5 years went by and I finally found out that my husband had been unfaithful for the duration of our relationship. It took all that time to get to that morning in late October for me to finally pull off that bandaid I should have pulled 6 years earlier to finally break up with him.

I tell you this not to scare you, have you take pity on me, or have a hate-fest on my ex-husband. In fact, if you know him, please do not blame him for what has happened to me. Don’t let those facts taint your view of him. Like the rest of us, he’s a person with things to learn. I say this only to tell my story and to say that it took all that time when I should have followed my original instinct.

The truth is, I didn’t understand my worth, but I will get to that at the end.

Let’s move on to part 2.

2. My Parents’ Marriage

After reading the first part, you are probably wondering how there is any more I could possibly have to say, but stay with me. It’s only just getting good.

I would write a whole sentence instead of just, “My parents’ marriage,” but there are so many things to fill in the blank that I have learned from it, that I just had to use it as a heading.

When you get married, you never know what life will throw at you. You only know that you have committed to spend your life with someone else. Watching my parents over the years has let me know how important it is to marry the right person.

My parents have been through a lot over the years. My dad’s first job was not the best and my parents constantly buoyed each other up that first year. My dad made a 4-figure salary that year and at the end of the year – just 9 months after they arrived in this new place – my parents drove back home without a job in sight knowing that what they had just been through was not something they were willing to return to.

My parents have moved 5 times. Three of those times could be counted as cross-country moves. They’ve raised two children. They have gone through the moment of finding out that their first child had Down’s syndrome just moments after he was born. They figured out how to raise a child who didn’t speak and found the joy and glee that he brought them every day.

And then they went through the pain of him passing on. Now, I lost my only sibling. It was hard and painful. However, my parents lost a child. No parents want to outlive their child. I know I’m not a parent, but I know that is one of the most painful things you can possibly go through.

My parents went through it with flying colors. How? They put each other before themselves. They put their relationship above the other person. Their marriage stays at the center of it all, and they nurture it every single day. They respect each other. They don’t yell at each other. They always want to help the other.

My parents are whole and complete people on their own. Beyond that, they both know that and act accordingly. As such, as a team, they are unbeatable.

I have never seen two people love each other quite the way my parents do. It’s a different kind of love. It’s a love that sees through all else. Because they meant their wedding vows, those vows have taken them through everything that’s been thrown their way, and their relationship has weathered the storm.

Okay…let’s move on to part 3.

3. I watched two whole, complete, beautiful people marry each other this year.

You are probably wondering how I could possibly learn the “don’t settle” lesson any more than I already have, but there is one last example that brought it home for me.

So, I have two friends that I will describe separately.

The first person is a very dear friend of mine. I’ve counted her as one of my best friends for over 7 years. She’s beautiful and artistic and compassionate and full of life. She’s one of those people that you treasure every second you get to spend with her. She’ll spend hours listening to you if you need it, but she’s got an awesome sense of humor that could easily bring you to your knees laughing. I could gush even more, but I should probably stop.

I will also say that she’s the first person who knew I was going to marry my now ex-husband, and she’s also the first person besides my mom that I called to tell I was getting divorced. It’s a friendship that easily picks up where it left off when we get together, and I really couldn’t be more grateful to have such a beautiful person in my life. She’s really the cream of the crop in more ways than I can even begin to list.

Long story short, she’s pretty incredible.

The other person is someone I more knew of than someone I have known well. We lived in the same city for 2 years and though we knew each other a bit more through friends, from the times I had met him, I was well aware of the kind of person he is: thoughtful and a deep-thinker, but he’s fun and easy to talk to as well. He has a humble confidence that would let an outside eye know that he knew his own worth and God-given purpose.

On my final day living in the same city, he came over to the apartment I shared with my ex-husband to say goodbye to both of us, and the three of us had a long talk about marriage. As I sat listening to him, I realized that he completely understood what it was all about. He talked about the qualities that go into marriage, things he wanted for his own marriage, qualities he was looking for in his wife, but most of all, he talked about the things he wanted to bring to the table for his marriage.

For someone who wasn’t married and was just being quiet and letting his desire for marriage unfold, I was so impressed with the things he was looking for and what he knew he was bringing that I blurted out, “You better marry someone good.”

Now, both of these people have had relationships with people that were great. For various reasons, those relationships ended, and as an outsider looking in, I was in awe at the wisdom that led to those breakups.

And then these two incredible people began dating each other.

I still remember scrolling through Instagram and seeing that first picture of the two of them smiling at the camera – two gorgeous smiles, I might add. I immediately texted and asked if they were dating. I have never been so over-the-moon to find out two wonderful people were dating each other.

A few months later, I got to see them together during a girls’ trip with my mom to visit friends and family, and my heart exploded even more. Their relationship was blessing everyone they came in contact with, and I just felt so grateful that I was able to see it first-hand.

And then the email came that they were getting married. I was so happy, you would have thought I was the one getting married. Later, as I sat there watching them say their vows, I thought about how great God is and how wonderful life is when you let God take the reins of your life and let Him lead you where you are supposed to be.

Neither of them settled. They waited for each other. And though it may have taken some time to get together, it happened for them. I can see that they understood their worth apart and like my parents, they make an excellent team together.

So now the finale.

At one point in my life, I didn’t know how beautiful I was on my own. I didn’t know that I was whole and complete on my own two feet. I didn’t understand that I am enough all by myself.

But I am enough. I’m more than enough, I have something to offer the world. I find that out each and every day in my relationship with God, in the people I meet, the job I have, the family I love, the kitten I care for, the general things that matter to me, and the kind of relationship and marriage I know I will one day have.

I just wish I had known it then. I’m now happy and complete on my own. That is something that you must know before you ever begin to think about marriage.

Once you know that, know that you deserve someone else who is whole and complete, too.

I now have the patience to let myself find the real me – even if that means cutting myself off from dating while I find out exactly who that is. I know how to appreciate her and to build her up because the world needs her.

The world needs you, too, in the same exact way. If you don’t know that yet, start learning it, because it’s true of every being on the planet. The world needs you and the best version of yourself that you can give.

Let’s start living, shall we?