The Civil War

 I am not one to trust easily. Nor have I ever been one to consider the willing and open surrender of your heart to another human being an easy task. At least not fully anyways. Sure I have friends and family that know me. I have best friends and people that have walked through the mud with me. People who know parts of me that are not so glorious... parts that aren't pretty. I think it's safe to say that there are a few... a select few... who truly see me... in ways that I probably don't fully know. Time will do that to you.... spend enough time walking through life with someone and you will inevitably see them in all types of moments. Good and bad.

If you stick around long enough and if people are genuine a bond is formed, a sort of intimacy. I think I always knew it.... actually, I am sure of it... that despite the incredible amounts of wonderful people in my life... people who have true depth to them... people who know me and who have history with me... despite the circle of friends and family around me... there was a sort of lacking that I did not quite understand.

Maybe it was the lack of family because surely it was not the lack of friends. When I made the decision to join my life with Chris I did not expect that it would be in this way. I don't think I ever could understand what it truly meant to trust someone in a way that required so much of myself. Mainly because I never could. I have spent so much of my life... if not all of it... building up walls and barricades... a fortress... a safe place to hide behind. It was easier that way. Painful maybe... but safe at least. Because true intimacy requires trust... it requires vulnerability... a risk of being damaged... again.... and again.

It means believing the best in that person more often than you're inclined to. It means admitting that you are not perfect... and that whether you want it to be true or not...  that you need the other person and that your life is so much better with them in it.  In these past months I have struggled with that... an internal war of sorts.

A civil war with the woman I once was and the woman I am still learning to be. A result of the love and wisdom and grace that being in a relationship with Chris has given me. There have been a lot of tough moments. A lot of tears and a lot of hurt. The growing pains of two people learning to trust and rely on each other in ways neither of us have done before. It has been difficult. Difficult... and completely worth every single moment.

I have never known a love like this. I have never known trust in this capacity. What I do know is that I love this person in a way I have not loved before. I know that I look into my future and I could not imagine it without him there. I know that this is a greater thing than anything I could have ever imagined for myself. Today I am happier than I could have ever imagined because today I said Yes.

I'm getting married!!