on a night like this…

… I could fall in love, I coud fall in love with you.  ~Derek Webb

That is the title of one of my most favorite, yet all too short, songs. It’s very relaxed, very lovey and very VERY romantic. And on a beautiful night like this, in a great city like this, and with all that I have to offer… I am still very alone. I’m wondering where that someone is, where that man is (man! that’s MAN. not boy, man) whom I can call my partner, my head of the household, my love. My person to take me to church on Sunday, my man to run in the mornings with, my man to go out to dinner with, my man to pray on my knees with, my man to curl up on the couch with. My man. My husband. Where is he? Where is that man I know God has made for me and only me? Has he already come and gone? I know I have to be patient and wait on God’s timing- y’all know how that is. God’s timing is not my timing- and I know I should be so, SO grateful for that because I DON’T know what He has planned. But it’s times like these that I wish I did. Darn mortal human nature…

I should be counting my blessings- I have a great job which I love that affords me the capacity to spill the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people that I meet on a daily basis, whether it’s in simple acts that bestow kindness, treating them like I would want to be treated or in actual, physical conversation. I have a roof over my head, and (most of the time) I’m able to pay all of my bills. I’m healthy, I have a God who loves and cares for me like I was the only child of His on the face of the earth. I have a Savior who will forgive me of all my sins if I simply ask His gracious forgiveness and will allow me to live with Him throughout eternity if I only declare Him as LORD and ask Him to rule my life, serving Him in everything I do and say. I have a family who is amazing and has “been there for me” throughout it all. I have the opportunity to go back and finish the degree that should have been finished in 2001. I have two adorable chocolate labs (whose pictures you will see littering this page with a frequency I’m sure MOST will tire of!) who are my children, my babies. I have really REALLY great friends, one of whom I’ve known since the 3rd grade. I am healthy, (relatively) happy, I have a car that works beautifully and gets me from A to B (with a little fun in between!). If not best of all, it runs a close second…I live in the South. Birmingham, Alabama to be exact, where some of the most friendly, true-to-their-roots Southern, Bible-believing people on the earth call their home. We have great weather- albeit so riDICulously hot sometimes we can’t stand it-awesome football (WAR EAGLE!) and some of the best places to eat in the South, if not the nation.

The past few years- almost 3, to be exact- have been times of change for me- and not just every-day, ”that’s-life.-it changes.-if-it-didn’t,-it’d-be-boring change”, but topsyturvy-completely-turn-your-life-upside-down kind of change.  It’s not what I could have EVER pictured- or wanted to picture- for my life, but it’s exactly what God had planned for me. He knew the decisions I’d make and what twists, turns and bumps (read: MOUNTAINS) my life would encounter. And yet…had I continued the life I was living, I’m fairly sure I would not be where I am today…walking daily with the Lord, learning more and more about people literally every day and finally going back to finish my degree. (By the way, if anyone has any ideas on what to finish in, career paths are now being accepted with open arms!) Had I continued down that road, there’s a good chance this child might not have been singing the praises of a loving, living Savior.

    There is SO much to learn- still. I still don’t understand why things have happened the way they have- why friends have fallen away, why people don’t get along, why pets die, why life is…the way it is, why people can be so mean just for mean’s sake, why so many times it seems like I just can’t catch a break- of course, I could go on. But it doesn’t matter. It just…doesn’t…matter. That’s not what I’m on this earth for, and thankfully- GRATEFULLY- this mortal, dying world is not my eternity.