This is going to be my last post for a while. I am marrying my Nathanael, my Funnel, on Saturday.

The two things I am looking forward to most about our wedding day are seeing him for the first time as I walk down the aisle with my dad, and our first dance as together to “The Luckiest” (which is what I am.) It will be neat to see how all the planning from the last nine months comes together and makes something that’s beautiful and special. And I am thrilled to have so many of the people who are most important to us at the same place in the same time (We have friends and family coming from Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia). But as excited I am for our wedding, I am most excited to be his wife and for the years I will spend with the sweetest, most romantic and most perfect guy I have ever known.

Looking back on the 2½ years that I have known him and the almost 2 years that I have been his, I can see how perfectly everything happened with the timing that only the one who created us could orchestrate. Our love story is so sweet and so intricate and I thank God every day for it. I feel like my heart has so many new layers now and it has made my life fuller and my experiences and feelings thicker. It’s like how a tree gets rings as it ages. My heart has been getting rings. Slice it open and see how big it is.

((In the beginning, before it all began))

I was just thinking about it from the beginning, from when we first met. It still give me goosebumps when I think about all the time I liked him and he didn’t know it, and all the time he liked me and I didn’t know it, and when we finally discovered it. When he told me, I was so happy. I told him, “My heart hurts.” And it still does. My heart literally hurts, sometimes.

Here’s an entry I wrote in my livejournal on January 23, 2005, a little bit after Funnel and I started dating:

I remember having a long, drawn-out conversation with my dad last spring on the subject of relationships. The one thing I remember clearly was that he told me, “If you ever have to question being with the person you’re with, then they aren’t the right person for you. You’ll just know it in your heart and the idea of being with anyone else will be simply unthinkable.”

I remember thinking yeah, right. I had no idea what that felt like… just knowing… it seemed like such a far away, out of reach feeling. Because with everyone I had ever dated, I constantly questioned whether it was the right thing or not. I always doubted. I was always searching. There would be little annoyances that I felt like I had to overlook. We’d clash. I settled a lot (not meaning that I was better than anyone, but I settled for qualities that I didn’t want in a boyfriend.)

Over the last few months, I have finally experienced what he was telling me about.

And here’s a secret – it’s much better than any movie or book or song. The funny thing is, a couple of years ago, one of my guy friends told me that he hated romantic movies because it gave people false impressions of what love was like, and then they’re disappointed when they experience it for themselves. That couldn’t be more untrue.

Every day, in the smallest little ways, it hits me how lucky I am. (like tiny, little fireworks)

I love how the places we have been have become “ours” and when I go back there, it’s like re-reading my favorite chapter of my favorite book. I love that I can look at him and know what he’s thinking and that he can look at me and tell something is wrong, before I even say anything or start to cry. I love that we are just the right height that when we hug, we fit perfectly together. I love that he never lets me forget how much he loves me. I love that he started praying for me when I was thirteen. I love how small my hand feels when it’s inside of his.

October has come.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 4:48 am and is filed under love + some verses, the two shall become one. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.