i guess this is growing up.

i want the things that most would find incredibly irritating to cause me to only love you that.much.more.

the goofy smile you give me when you want to speak something to my heart and not out loud. or the way you get so excited about goofy things. your fake laugh. the way you want to always be right. oh, the snoring.

BUT-
to see you in the moonlight, the moonbeams streaming through the shades we have been meaning to replace because they are breaking and dusty, but we keep forgetting. cause that's how we are.
imperfect & broken & messy.
in spite of that, we are who we are.
and we love in our own messy kind of way.

i want to feel your kiss in that moonlight, the way you tug my bottom lip and then look into my eyes and just smile...i can tell you are smiling even in the dark. the way you tuck my hair behind my ear and whisper "you're beautiful."
to fall.

head over heels.

to give up my heels and trade them in for my converse just so i can take more walks with you. this is what i want.
i want to be the one to kiss you good morning and make you coffee and know exactly how you take your coffee.
to feel your hand intertwine with mine as we walk down the street and feel my heart sigh in my chest in relief that it has finally happened. you are here. you're in this chapter in my life and i never want you to be just a supporting actor ever again. you're the lead.

You want love like this to last forever. the everyday simplicities that weave joy into life's tapestries. Today I got an earth shattering email from one of my precious girlfriend's that she has to sign divorce papers today. Her husband wasn't being faithful to her and just...mess. a large mountain of mess. My heart started to rip at the seams reading her email, reminding me of the familiarity of going through this as a young adult with my parent's divorce. The brokeness.

The time spent laying on the bathroom floor trying to figure out how to keep my mother from crying another tear.In my anger, my throwing all of my dad's stuff out into the trash can because he never came back for it and my mom refused to throw it away for so very long. It just sat there haunting me, "Cool Water for men" seemed to laugh in my face everytime I would open the medicine cabinet. It seems to scream with glee, "He's NOT coming home." I wanted to scream back with tear filled eyes, "I KNOW!!!!!!!!!!" I probably seemed like a lunatic as I threw everything out, but I had to do it, had to help my mom in any way I knew how.

Trying to take care of my little brother and put myself through college and swearing I would never ever want to get married. Swearing there was no point to wearing that white dress and having a sparkling ring on my finger because he would probably end up leaving me anyway. How could I bear to go through it a second time in my life? I knew I would crumple and just not be capable of living normally if it happened a second time. Then I remember, as I would sleep at night and tears would soak my pillow because I never knew how we would get through this...I remember, God would begin to say, "Meghan."

That was about it.

Said my name, or so it seemed. I wanted to shout back, "YES??!?" wondering where he had been with all the brokenness surrounding me. For awhile that is all He would say. Now looking back, I see that was enough to remind me that He was there and He knew my name. He knew me. He wanted me to trust that He had a plan in all this.

even when i didn't want to. even when i fought Him tooth and nail til i no longer could fight.

i had to surrender. the following words were, "Trust me."
ok? really? trust Him after everything I had been through? How could i trust him (an unseen being) when I couldn't even trust my own flesh & blood? how would i ever begin to trust a man with my heart ever again? i just wanted my dad to come home.
"trust me."

my mind would wander to a memory of me blowing out the birthday candles on my 8th birthday, my eyes lit up wide and sparkling with happiness, wearing a party hat...my dad across the table looking at me so proudly, laughing as I tried to blow out those candles...

my mind would wander to him cooking me a breakfast burrito in the kitchen, barefoot and listening to dean martin or harry connick jr or maybe good ol frankie sinatra. nobody made eggs like my dad.

or the night i literally tripped over his nikes he had left behind. they were covered in dust. i stared at them in disbelief and thought, "please come home. don't you need your Nikes daddy?" to this day, I only train in Nikes. i run in them like no other shoe and that is one of my reasons. the little things that will always keep my dad in my life.

all this to say. i trusted God. for the past 6 years since all this. and He had brought me to today, May 13th, 2011. He's had to carry me much of the way. but that's okay. i am not afraid to trust a man with my heart. i know trust is always part of the equation. if what i fear most happens again, so be it. i will look it dead on in the face and say, "you again?" "My God is bigger. He is mightier than you ever will be."

I will pick myself up off the ground and take a run in my Nikes.

Good things are on the horizon... and pray for my sweet friend today and her loss, that she would be filled with peace and not a sense of defeat. that she would have joy in spite of it all...maybe not today, but in a day to come. i won't reveal her name on my blog, but let's call her N.

Valentine's Day in May

I remember distinctly a Valentine's Dance in the gym at my middle school when I was in 7th grade. It was the awkward phase of braces and still learning to put in contacts without letting them get dried out and look like you are winking at everyone. My mom took me to get a special dress for this dance because it was at night which was unusual for middle school, normally that is reserved for Highschool prom. Well I got the dress I remember to this day, a little short sparkly navy blue number. I was so proud of it, especially the sparkles.

Well I liked a boy. A whole lot. He took another girl to the dance. I remember getting there and thinking, okay, this isn't SO bad, someone will ask me to dance. At least one dance. Nope. The hour dragged on and I went outside the gym to sit on a bench as not to appear to be such a wallflower. I sat on the bench and smoothed my sparkly little dress over my skinny mid-school legs and the tears began to sting my eyes. I had spent so much time getting dressed up like a princess for a ball I didn't feel invited to.

Fast forward 12 years and sometimes I still feel like that. Life is a ball and I'm all dressed up, but I'm not being asked to dance. My friends are all married with babies & minivans & mortgages and I'm still sitting on that bench. Sometimes I am okay with that. Most days I am okay with that. Some days I want to sit on that bench and just cry.

This past week the Lord has been teaching me about waiting. Because he doesn't work under time restraints like we do, (He doesn't need an alarm clock or a blackberry reminder)his timing is absolutely always flawless. I need to rest my "princess" self in that. Trust in him. He tells me that daily, whispers in my ear in the mornings, "Meggie, my precious daughter, my princess, I am here. Hold onto me and trust me. I have a plan."
Okay God.

But you've been telling me that for so long, some days I want him to wake me up with a shout and say, "TODAY IS THE DAY!" I don't even know what I'm waiting for.

Princes are the work of fiction. But isn't our Lord bigger than fiction?
Yep. He is.

So he can write a story more beautiful than anything ever crafted by Shakespeare. The ink is still drying on the pages of the story of my life. I'm only on the precipice being asked to jump and TRUST. Leap & trust for He's got me covered. I don't need to concern myself with anything but preparing in being the most beautiful princess I can be: ON THE INSIDE. :)

What a relief, cause today I didn't feel like wearing the sparkly dress or even putting on a stitch of makeup. ;)