I’ve mentioned Jennifer here before, after I met her at Blissdom. She’s a Texan, wife, and working mother of two (a boy and a girl), and writes at Jennifer P. Williams. She’s a smart, hilarious, won’t take crap from anybody southerner, and she doesn’t pull any punches. She tells it like it is, with sass and grace. She writes creative fiction as well, and has started a summer series that I’m excited to keep reading.

Jennifer is also the co-author of Mom and Mommer, a real, relatable weight-loss blog. Here, Jennifer and Jodi talk about the good, bad, and ugly of trying to get and stay healthy.

Thanks for sharing with us today, Jennifer!

I’m a planner. Events, work schedules, potential conversations, arguments that will never happen… You name it. I plan it. Most of my plans never see fruition. Because most of my plans are based on expectations of what may happen.

When I was fourteen, I expected to never get married. To me, love was not a real thing. Then I met David and he changed all of that.

When I was 20, I expected to finish college and start my career within a couple of years. It was a four year degree after all. Real life got in the way of that plan, and it ended up taking me six more years to finish school.

I never expected to move away from our small home town area. Oh no, I expected to stay right where I was and find a good job. Graduation found me accepting a job offer in Houston.

I never expected to forgive my dad for all of the pain I blamed him for growing up. Maturity and the toll of carrying so much emotional baggage weakened my resolve. I found myself not only forgiving, but hoping to be forgiven as well.

With school behind me and well on my way to a successful career as an auditor, I expected that I would finally be able to have a baby. Seven years of infertility taught me a lot about unfulfilled expectations.

I always expected, in some part of my mind, that my marriage wouldn’t last. Not because I didn’t love David or because I didn’t want to be with him, but because that’s what people do. They get divorced. Thankfully, I married a man that was able to flip my expectations completely around. In July we will celebrate 23 years together.

Throwing myself 100 percent into my career for a large accounting firm had me traveling all over the world, which is something I had for sure never expected. But after it happened, I never expected that I would do anything else. Then I became a mom, and everything I knew about life changed in an instant. All of the previous great expectations I had for my life were flipped on their head overnight.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the road to an unhappy life is one focused on unmet expectations. As I’ve gotten older, and left my well-laid plans in the dust of a full life, I’ve learned that God has so much more good for us than we could ever anticipate. No expectation I could ever dream of will measure up to what He has planned for me.

If you are mired in a list of unmet expectations, I have one life lesson I want to pass along. Focus on what you’ve been given. Not what you’ve missed.

You can follow Jennifer at her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter, and “like” the Mom and Mommer Facebook page while you’re at it!