I spent all week putting my things into boxes and marking them with labels like dishes, lamps, decor and stuff.  Watching my apartment dissemble and then working through the way my walls looked when they were empty.  Usually I like help but this time was different.  There was something in me that needed to find the sort of understanding that lurks inside cardboard and packing tape and piles of things to keep and things to toss and things to think about tossing.

And even though I knew that this time around packing meant something very different from past times, I don't think I was ready for it all to sink into me quite yet.  I am almost done with a large part of my life.  I am almost at the beginning of something new.

I am in the middle of huge change.

And I am not one of those girls who mourned my single years, not often.  I listen to them now and while I hear their sadness and their great desire for the boy, I want to say Stop.  You treasure this-- He does big things in these years, good things.  


My church threw the most beautiful shower.  Seventy women stood around my sister and I and prayed us through what is to come.  Seventy women who love my God and who are making it-- struggling and breaking, but laughing too, really enjoying love.

My father and I went on our last ride.  I watched little E take his first dip in the pool.  Had a movie night with the sisters who saw me through my roughest time.  Watched my sweet boy drive away with all of my pretty things.  I swing from being ridiculous, stupid excited to very sad.

I am repeating Ruth's promise over and over in my heart, Your people will be my people, where you go I will go and your God will be my God.  I am thinking about the dying that happens when you give yourself to another person.  I am thinking about how hard that is, how often I fail at dying and how I also feel deeply honored by the challenge.

I am most confident in Him and the work He started in us.  I have never been so tired, never felt the weight of goodbye so heavily, never mourned so openly.

But I have also never loved another person so much.  Never felt the urge to connect so strongly.  Never been more proud and honored to be along another human.  I cannot wait to grow in new ways.  So exciting.