To tell you the truth, I never thought that much of Joanna Gaines at first glance.

I was introduced to Joanna through, you guessed it, watching Fixer Upper on HGTV while getting a pedicure in a nail salon.

To me, she was the bossy wife who redesigns hot-mess houses for a living, and then her cute, adoring husband Chip builds them for her. EVERY. DAMN. EPISODE.

Here’s the plot of every episode of Fixer Upper: Husband and wife super team Chip and Joanna Gaines take these pieces of crap houses, fix them up to the delight and wonder of their clients, and then buy their 5 kids a dog. (Seriously. Don’t they have like 20 dogs at this point?) They reflect lovingly on how wonderful their life is in Waco, Texas. Naturally, they live in a massive, perfectly curated ranch-style house on acres of land on which their big family and seemingly infinite animals roam. You can buy their home goods on Magnolia.com and at Target. The end.

Smash cut to me in the check-out line at the grocery store the other day. A quote on a magazine caught my eye: “Trusting where you are today matters for who you’ll be tomorrow.”

I look down to see a copy of the Magnolia Journal, with you guessed it, Joanna freaking Gaines on the cover, looking oh-so-perfect in a soft peach-colored jumpsuit.

Suspicious, though intrigued, I picked up the magazine and threw it onto the conveyer belt next to my White Claw.

A recurring self-help theme is, “Trust the journey, and it will all work out.”

I’ve never been great at trusting it will all work out. If you know me, I’m a planner. A “decider” as George W. Bush would say. I make a plan and follow it to completion.

Plus, there have been a lot of times I made a plan, and things DIDN’T work out.

I look to the past and ask myself:

– Why should I trust others when I’ve been let down?

– Why should I trust myself when I’ve fallen short?

My inner skeptic is very loud, and her BS-detector is keeping it 100. Sure, she’s kept me safe and out of trouble (mostly), but she’s also not an early adopter when it comes to having faith in new people and projects. Which is a constant bummer.

You know the kids in class who would do the entire group project themselves because they were too afraid that the other kids wouldn’t do their parts, and they’d get let down (and — gasp– a bad grade)? Yeah, that kid was me. Even as a kid, I didn’t trust other kids.

When I get together with my friends, a constant question we ask is: Shouldn’t we be further along by now?

We have no idea what “further along” actually is. Is it more money? A better job? A life partner? A house with a white picket fence and two golden retrievers?

We are in our mid-30s now, and it seems like we should be further along than… WHATEVER THIS IS.

Should we be doing more? Making more? Being more? And that’s when the insecurity and self-doubt start creeping in, overshadowing our accomplishments, and obscuring how far we’ve come.

I grew up in the school of “work hard, and good things will come.” Which is actually pretty good advice. No one is more in charge of your destiny than you. The Judeo-Christian theme akin to this is: God helps those who help themselves.

But we get older, and we all face some form of disappointment:

– We didn’t get a good grade on the test we studied so hard for.

– We didn’t get the job promotion we wanted after years of dedicated work.

– The relationship we put years of work into didn’t work out.

– The person we wanted to show up for us didn’t.

– We didn’t lose the weight we wanted after avoiding every carb ever created (EVEN VEGETABLES! HOW?)

You get the picture. We inevitably become disillusioned and conclude that trust is for chumps.

This brings me back to JFG (Joanna Feaking Gaines,) and the quote “Trusting where you are today matters for who you’ll be tomorrow.”

Note: This quote is on an embossed leather sign on the Magnolia website, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have managed to commoditize EVERYTHING. Second note: I bought this sign last night at 2:30am.

I begrudgingly open the magazine thinking: Can’t wait for Jo to brag how perfect her life is, how she always knew it would be perfect, and how she can’t wait to see how perfect her future is!

“Chip, build me a house!”

“Turn the space under the staircase into a reading nook!”

(I DON’T EVEN HAVE STAIRS, OKAY, JOANNA! MOST FLORIDA HOMES ARE A SINGLE-STORY SITUATION, DUE TO THE OLD PEOPLE AND LAZINESS.)

But what I found was an article that felt authentic and moving, “The purpose of today.” She talks about going away to college to become a broadcast journalist, hating it, and returning back home to Waco, Texas to work in her father’s tire shop while figuring things out.

She says:

In that season, time moved in slow motion. I watched as friends moved on and into careers while my own life felt like a piece of luggage left behind on an airport conveyer belt, going round and round, waiting to be picked up for its grand adventure. I questioned often — to my friends and even more to myself — what is the purpose of my life? Then I bided time waiting for an answer that never came.

To summarize the rest of the article: You may not be where you want to be, but there is a purpose for you here in the present. To learn. To work. To create. To take care of others. There is always purpose wherever you are. Even if you feel like your life is in airport purgatory, waiting for a flight that keeps on getting delayed, changing its gate, or being canceled completely.

I’ve never been a religious person, and I struggle with the concept of faith. The notion there is a cosmic plan. I don’t trust what I can’t see. I don’t trust what I can’t validate.

But I can create. And write. And learn. And know that the present moment is meaningful because it will bring me to the next big thing.

So if you feel like you’re just waiting for the next thing, or the thing you thought you wanted fell through, don’t worry. No one has it all figured out. Just keep on doing you and finding purpose in the present moment.

And if someone says they have it all figured out, they’re either lying or in a cult. DO NOT GO THAT MEETING, EVEN IF FREE DINNER IS INCLUDED. (Oh hey, Skeptic is back! And her BS-meter is still keeping it 100.)

Because we are all just out here, taking it one day at a time, and doing the best we can. And hopefully, that best can lead us to something better.