I'm grateful for the people who wistfully remember that I use to blog with some regularity and then entreat me to try again. That happened just yesterday with my friend Marta, and so today I will write, with her particularly in mind.
As always, I have a plethora of reasons why I haven't blogged, and yet many of them are reasons that I should have continued to blog, even in the midst of the busiest season I've ever experienced.
I should have blogged after Jessie and I went to Puerto Rico together right before a Lifetree Adventures mission trip there back in February. We enjoyed four glorious days together, full of plantains, rich conversation, and maybe a pina colada here and there. It was a much needed time of connection for both of us, a recalibrating and looking with anticipation to all that the future was brimming with in both of our lives, sprinkled with a twinge of sadness that we are now separated by 1200 miles and not able to be more closely involved in all that's going on in life.
I should have blogged about my time in Haiti at the end of March, about the countless miracles we witnessed, and the raw closeness of life and death that go hand in hand each day there.
I should have blogged about seeing Farah again while I was in Haiti, and about getting to meet sweet Alora in Toronto the following week, a little girl whose life I prayed for while she was still a tiny little baby in her mama's womb.
I should have blogged about trusting God in midst of upheaval and change when my leader at work gave his resignation a couple of weeks ago, on the same day that I heard about the tragic death of a young man whose family is forever etched in my heart.
I thought about blogging about all of those things, but I've been trying to just stay afloat in the middle of way too much traveling, and blogging was a luxury I haven't quite been able to get to.
But mostly, I should be blogging about Eric. In His mysterious ways, God chose to give birth to a sweet and unexpected relationship during a time when I barely seem to remember where I live, in the middle of coming to terms with the likelihood that I would just be single for the rest of my life and feeling pretty content about that.
I even told Penny when she dropped me off at the Vancouver airport on Jan. 16 for my flight home that I loved my single life and that a guy would just wreck it.
10 days later, Eric changed my mind.
Let me back it up a little.
At the end of last summer, I realized God was clearly telling me to stay right where I was (I had been praying about moving overseas) and with that came the thought that if He was keeping me where I was, maybe He would let me fall in love.
The problem was that I had very little access to quality single men. With my traveling, I'm usually gone at least 1-2 weekends a month. I go to a super small church. I haven't clicked with any of the single guys where I work. These factors make dating a bit tough. I've tried eHarmony throughout the years, so I decided I would give it one last go. I had just seen two of my friends find their husbands through eHarmony, so it seemed like a reasonable outlet to try yet again.
Two months later, after countless mini-heartaches and dead ends, I remembered why I hate eHarmony and internet dating in general. It's an awful lot of investment of time and money with very little return. While it's a great idea in theory, it can be incredibly disappointing when you invest and then come up even more empty-handed then you did trying to find someone in person.
So I decided to quit trying. On a Thursday, I put a little note in my profile that said I love to play Words with Friends and invited my matches to start a game with me. I knew I wasn't going to renew my subscription and I didn't want to put my email address in my profile, so Words seemed like a good alternative to meeting someone. I gave my username and decided to just see what happened.
The next day, on a Friday, I was matched with Eric. A few hours later, he started a Words with Friends game with me. I was matched with dozens more guys after him, but he was the only one who took me up on the invitation to play Words. He was equally fed up with eHarmony, and even more than I was, because he deleted his profile the day after we were matched. He probably subconsciously knew he didn't need to look anymore after he found me :)
I look back on those three months where we played Words with Friends and got to know each other through the chat feature of the game as an incredibly sweet gift. We were both so worn out by the search for a romantic relationship that we just needed space to be ourselves and have a like-minded friend.
I learned about his job as a rural pastor in Nebraska and his 4 year old daughter from his first marriage, his thoughts on God and faith and the messiness of divorce when you're in full time ministry, and he got to learn about my new niece and all of the places I was traveling while playing Words with Friends with him (I've played games with him from four countries, one US territory, and five states over the last 7 months).
We had three months of no pressure, no strings attached time to get to know each other through the wonders of modern technology. And when he finally asked to meet me at the end of January, I was nervous but also felt like I was going to see an old friend. We clicked immediately, and while he had to wait 7 weeks between date 1 and date 2 because of my hectic travel schedule, we both agree the wait was worth it.
Eric far surpasses anything that I could have ever dreamed up on my own when it comes to a significant other. I told him on our second date about the guy who broke my heart just over a year ago and how much I felt used by him even though he was only in my life a couple of months, and Eric took me in his arms and whispered in my ear, "You are a treasure and you deserve to be cherished." And cherish me he does.
I have never once had to question or doubt his heart for me. He has made it abundantly clear from the beginning (when we finally met in person) that he was serious about dating and he was serious about me. He goes out of his way to do little things like open the car door for me and leave me little love notes around my house for me to find after he goes home. It's the little things that make a man great, and he is a great man.
I'm grateful that for the most part, I've been spared the landmines of premature romantic relationships. I haven't dated much and I have very little baggage when it comes to the opposite sex, but I still wish that I could go back in time and just tell my younger, impatient self to just calm down, that it would all be ok, that there are more important things in life than just finding a mate, and then when the time was right, it would be well worth the wait.
I wish I could talk to the Robin who spent many hours in tears, convinced that God had forgotten her, and just tell her that was so far from the truth that it's laughable now. God absolutely remembered her and had a perfect plan that He would unfold when the time was right. That God saw the unspoken longings of her heart, and in His time He would be faithful to meet them.
I think if I had had that understanding of God and His timing and understood how magnificent He truly is in all that He does, I would have lived the last 34 years with a bit more abandon. I would have been more daring with the free years and invested in those around me with greater depth instead of worrying about where I was going to meet my husband. I had moments and even weeks and months where I lived life like that, but for the most part, I didn't.
And now Eric is here and it seems as though life has blurred by very quickly and the one thing that I thought would never happen is going to happen and life will be forever changed. And I couldn't be happier at the thought.
I remember telling him in one of our first chat conversations during a Words with Friends game that I was really worried that a guy would wreck my life. He told me that you know you've met the right person when they enhance your life and help you to thrive instead of wrecking things. He was absolutely right. I wasted a lot of energy pining over guys who would have just wrecked things instead of getting to know the God who formed my heart and trusting that He had a good plan.
So what I would say to you, Marta, and to all of the other single women out there who may read this - I have no clue what God's plan for your life is. I don't even know what His plan for my life is, although He seems to be giving some fairly significant indications of what He's doing. But I do know this - He cares about your heart very much. He cares about it way more than you give Him credit for. He sees every tear you've ever cried about being single and He's been present at every moment as a single woman that you've loved and enjoyed. He is constant even when you go up and down. He is patient when you are impatient. He is steady when you are conflicted. He is worth your full devotion as a woman, single, dating, or married.
Trust Him. Take each moment that you have as a single woman and learn who He is. Invest in the people around you. Travel. Enjoy rainy and sunny days. Laugh. Laugh some more. Cry. Be fully present in each moment you're given and don't reach impatiently for a future that is not yet here. If it's meant to come, it will come at the right time and it will be well worth the wait. And don't give your heart away to someone who will not cherish it. The man you are meant to be with will come looking for your heart and he will win it. You don't need to throw it at someone who is not going to treasure it the way God intended for it to be treasured. You are much better off living your life as a single woman than you are living with someone who does not treasure you.
So, that's the tip of the iceberg of all that has been in my heart and mind these last few months as I have been traveling the world, savoring all that God has put before me, and falling in love. I'm slowly but surely getting caught up on life again and hopefully will be better at blogging. I love to write about life and life is finally getting back to a pace that I can follow.
Thanks for asking me to write. I pray that God touches your heart today in a way that reminds you of how precious you are to Him.
