for the crazy days of engagement, 135 days left edition

time moves on & pressure builds & decisions have to be made & i'm just not cut out for this planning thing & will it come together & this is not our day after all & all of the stress

My brain's a muddled mess.  I have always known I'm not really a wedding girl.  The wedding is often thought of as the bride's responsibility (which is ridiculous and in my case does not reflect reality) and I really only want one thing, no, two things out of the wedding:

1) I want to marry my love.
2) I want all of the people we love to gather in one place to celebrate family and new beginnings and love.

That's really it.  I don't have a clue how to decorate or how to do invitations or how to register or what we should really be spending money on and what it's okay to scrap.  I'm afraid of disappointing people, afraid that I'm not enough, afraid that if I don't throw a cool enough party that I'll be cast out.

I've had so many people offering me advice, some wanted, some not-so-much.  It's not that I have it all together or that I don't need help, it's that when people barrage me with lists of things that they did for their weddings or that I shouldn't do or that I need to make sure to do or everyone will be pissed, I am reminded of how much I don't fit in this world.  I am a simple girl, with simple ideas about what makes life tick.  I'm the girl without a whole lot of furniture (I do own some and would probably have collected more if not for the fact that I won't need it 4.5 months time).  I'm the girl who lived off of $900 a month with $700 of that going to rent/utilities during my first year in Bellingham.  I'm the girl who'd rather just spend time with people than watch a movie or go somewhere.

I refuse to apologize for those things.

However, I feel like I need to anyway, because suddenly my personality conflicts entirely with what is expected of me.

Do I want my wedding to be amazing?

Yes.

Will it be?

Probably not.

I'm a people pleaser, so that last bit is a hard pill to swallow.  I'm just not cut out for this.

I'm gonna pull out all the stops, even the ones I don't possess, because really and truly, I want to do a good job at this wedding thing.  I want this to be a happy day for my love and I and for the dearly loved people who will travel from near and far to attend our wedding.

I am so very sorry if I fail.

P.S.  My love is the one who's really pulling most of the weight in this wedding planning thing.  I'm so thankful for him.

for the crazy days of engagement, 140 days left edition

I'm engaged.  Such a wild array of emotions accompanies that two-word statement: bewilderment, fear, surprise, joy, hope, sorrow, impatience, giddiness, uncertainty.

Several people have told me that I seem surprisingly sane for a soon-to-be bride.  I think it's because I'm not afraid to be brutally honest about my feelings, about the hard realities of the adventure on which I'm embarking, about the fear I feel, and about the uncertainty that I'm equipped to love this man the way he should be loved.

As a teenager, I dreamed of getting married to my "built-in-best-friend."  My husband would be someone who'd never leave my side.  We'd make our way through life hand in hand, parting for only hours at a time.  Certainly we'd never live apart.  These weren't things I thought through, necessarily, just assumptions I made.  Married people do life together.  They depend on one another.  If they're Christians, they serve God together.  They're a team.

I came to the point a few years ago where I was relatively content with my single-hood.  Sure, I had crushes on guys that made me want to throw my single-hood to the wind, but for the most part I enjoyed my life as a single person.  I had absolute freedom over my life and my choices.  My life was mine and mine alone to mess up.  I moved around the country.  I learned about myself, I asked the hard questions, I wrestled with God and with myself and with those around me.

And then, Justin.

With Justin came a massively unavoidable stop sign.  I was suddenly stuck here in Podunk, Georgia, waiting to see what would happen.  My priorities shifted slowly but irrevocably as I came to love him and want forever with him, and then the moment of truth.

Will you marry me? 

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

But you see, in many ways that yes was only the beginning of the yeses, of the choice that I have made every day since and will continue to make each day for the rest of my life.

You see, my love is a sailor in the Navy.  My love won't always be there for me.  That childhood dream of a man who would be my rock, my support, my built-in best friend?  Well, there's some truth to that, but there's also a lot of not-so-true.

I've done so much processing over the last two weeks of my life.  I've felt so much, traveled such long emotional distances.  Grown so much, mourned so much, changed so much.

I've felt bewilderment and surprise.  There's a ring on my finger.  My finger.  I'm engaged to be married.  When did that happen?  In so many ways, I still identify with single people more than I do un-single people.  This change of the attitude of my heart and priorities has happened so quickly.  I often feel detached from myself, as if I'm watching a stranger make this commitment to forever, as if there's no way that could be me.

And I've felt fear.  Will I be able to handle it?  What if it hurts too much to lose him?  What will I do?  Will my life just suck while he's gone?  If so, will I also hurt him?  I don't ever want to hurt him.

I've felt joy.  I love this man.  In under five months we'll be one.  This is the one of whom I've dreamed, for whom I've waited, to whom I wrote those cheesy letters in high school.  I didn't know someone so good could be mine.  We make such a good team; I am blessed beyond words that God would see fit to place this man in my life.

I've felt hope.  Maybe I can pull this deployment thing off.  Maybe my twenty-five years of single-hood were good beyond just being stinking awesome (and let me tell you: no regrets - the things I got to do and the people I got to meet and the places I got to go because I wasn't tied down to a person were amazing).  Maybe they taught me to be independent, a skill I'll certainly need in this new life of mine, this life where the person I depend on the most will not always be there for me.  Maybe I'll learn a new level of independence and dependence on God.  Maybe God will refine us through this (and I know He will, He has already refined me so much).  

I've felt my share of sorrow.  I've mourned dreams deferred, I've mourned Justin's departure months and months in advance.  I've cried, I've been angry, I've panicked from the stress of just thinking about losing my love, even if only temporarily.  Why, God?  Why me, why us, why him?  Why would you ever allow this to be my life?  However it is that your will works, God, please be with me through this.  I can't do this.  I need You.

I've felt impatient.  I wanna just be married NOW!  I hate weddings and dresses and planning and making phone calls and dealing with all this stupid crap.  Can't we just get married now, love?  Must this be such an event?  It's all such a waste of time and resources.  And, yet again, I'm so excited for everyone to arrive, for the party that will ensue.  It'll be a big party with all the most important people in my life present.  Doesn't get much better than that.  But why is it still so long from now?  Why aren't we getting married in June or something, at least?

I've felt giddiness.  I love this man, I get to marry him.  Yay!  Woot!  *jumps and twirls and squeals in joyous abandon*

I've felt uncertainty.  Why so many conflicting emotions?  Shouldn't my engagement be solely joy-filled?  Why this doubt?  Does that mean it's all a bad plan and I should jump now?

Through it all, I've been forced to yet again closely examine my heart and our relationship.  Why are we together?  Why should we stay together?  Why should we commit our lives to one another?  What does it mean to work as a team for the rest of our lives?  What does it mean to stand before God and these witnesses and pledge ourselves to the other for a lifetime?

Are we cut out for it?

Of course not.  But God's with us.  And that's enough for always.

140 days left.

for all the single ladies

But for a total of two and a half weeks split between two relationships, I spent my first twenty-five-and-a-half years single.  For the first eighteen years, I was contentedly single.  Then I hit college, and the rush to find a husband hit.  I failed at that endeavor, and was crushed.  And then I went to graduate school and discovered my independence and the joy that came from adventure and travel and truly living life to its fullest.  I never completely stopped hoping that some day "Mr. Perfect" would come along, but I reached a place where I truly wondered if the single life wasn't for me.  I liked the ability to uproot myself, to replant myself, to have my own opinions that didn't have to affect anyone; I liked the chance to live boldly and without concern for another.

And then things changed, so unexpectedly that I've got a bit of emotional whiplash (in the best of ways, though).  I've met a man with whom I hope to live out the rest of my years.  He is my love, my "better half" in the least cliche way possible, my best friend.  I am my happiest when I'm with him, and he makes me stronger and more humble, better reasoned, and all of those other good things.  He both leads me and lets me lead; we balance one another so well.  When I'm with him, my world is right.

I want you to know, though, that my life isn't better than it was when I was single.  It's different, yes.  Am I happy with him?  Yes, in ways I almost didn't dare to hope I could be.  But my life was happy before my love came along, just in different ways.  My struggles are different now, the things that make me sad different, the ways in which I often find myself lonely different, the things that I fear different.  I don't want to lose him, not now, not ever.  I'm marrying a man who I don't want to live without.

But I don't ever want to forget those years I was single.  I don't ever want to forget how formative they were, how I learned to be strong.  I don't want to write them off as somehow inferior to my life with my love.  Those years made me who I was.  Those years were valuable beyond preparation for marriage.  They were valuable in making me me.  

To engage in "what-ifs" is so useless.  I am engaged to the man of my dreams; I'm getting married soon.  I'd like to think, though, that had I never met Justin, my life would still be happy and fulfilled.  I'd still be serving God, still be loving life, just in a different way.

And that, my dear single friends, is what I want you to know.  Single-hood is not a curse.  It may be what defines you, but it defines you, not as husband-less, but as a person with limitless possibilities.  Possibilities for mobility and freedom and travel that are not possible when you're connected to another.  Possibilities for service and relationships not possible once you're married.  I don't have to tell you that, though.  You know that.

As humans, we're never satisfied.  You might always long for a mate and never find that longing satisfied.  My heart breaks for your pain.  But know that although my longing for a mate has been satisfied, longings have not ceased.  They've just shifted.

In July I'll be marrying my love, and I'm marrying him as a strong woman, a woman who learned to love life without him and before him, a woman who will be able to carry on with the business of life during his deployments [but I'm still terrified for him to leave because I can no longer imagine my life moving forward without him in it], a woman who can be strong at least as much as I am weak.  I'm marrying him as an equal, not as someone who needs a man to be strong.  That's what makes us strong; we pull together, equally yoked. [we should get jerseys, 'cause we make a great team...]

I'm thankful for my single years.  I don't miss them, but they were good in and of themselves.  They made me who I am.  Some of us marry young, some old, some never.  May we all live our lives to our best ability.  May we all serve God in the situations in which he places us.  May we love another.

And may that be enough.

for the manipulator in me

The tendency toward control is always wrong.  I have always feared and avoided manipulative people, but in the end, I am the most manipulative of them all.

When I am tempted to exert my feeble control over situations in my life, may I always trust Jesus enough to give Him control - to trust that no matter how the people in my life may fail me, He never will.  In the moments when I most want to hold my life circumstances with a clenched fist - these are the moments I need most to open my hand and die to my desires in order that God may be glorified.

When people run away from me, I tend to fight to bring them back to me.  May I learn to love them always, and that sometimes loving them means letting them run to the arms of Jesus.

When people betray me, may I turn the other cheek.  May I allow myself to be humiliated and not lash out.  May I learn submission and meekness.  May I look always to Jesus for my sense of self worth.

Everything in me fights against this principle.  The human in me wants people to do things that make me happy.  The human in me wants always to be wanted, always to be valued.   The human in me insists that life revolves around me.

And God insists quite the opposite.  Life revolves constantly around my neighbor.

God forgive me.