a love(ly) story

A funny thing has been happening to my heart the past few weeks, and by funny I mean pretty amazing.  I still haven’t found the perfect words to describe it, but it is some combination of

 joyful, overwhelming, excited, humbled, grateful
(*if you happen to have a word for this, do share)

This season of my life has been a lot of different things.  It has been full: I finished a master’s degree and went to South America alone and said goodbye to the east coast and hello to the northwest and found a big girl job and got engaged.  It has been good: a little boy named Trey was born and is turning in to the cutest little guy on the planet and has an “I can make auntie Katie’s heart melt” smile that never fails and my blessing of niece of Bayley came into the world at the most perfectly unexpected time and I celebrated with some of my oldest friends as they married their soul mates.  It has been painful: I have let down people I love and jumped to the wrong conclusions and been ashamed of my attitude and had my heart broken.

And here I am, the week before I get to marry my best friend, and I am thinking about all the fullness, the goodness, and the painfulness, and again I feel that emotion that I can’t wrap up with my words and name with any accuracy.  And I get uncomfortable when my words aren’t sufficient, because I love words, and I feel more in control when they are enough. 

I seem to always want to write my own life stories.  I like dictating who the characters are and what the endings will be.  I like knowing what’s around the corner in suspenseful moments, and if I could place all the right people in all the right places at all the right times I absolutely would.  The setting would always be beautiful, and even though I might throw in some unpredictability here and there just to keep it interesting, I would make sure nothing pushed me too far out of my comfort zone.  But that is not how this all works.  And if I am honest, I don’t fully know how to let go of that- how to say I trust in Someone bigger and yet still feel like I want control.

Right now, I am living a love story.  It has been all those things that this season of life has been: full, good, and sometimes painful.  Saying that I am imperfect might be the understatement of the millennium.  And while at my very best I may have some redeeming qualities, at my worst I am opinionated, insecure and therefore judgmental of others, anxiety-ridden, and full of false pride.  And God very literally gave me a better half.  I promise you Alex would disagree.  As he reads this he will probably think “No way.  I got the better end of the deal here.  I did this and this and this, and I am that and that and that.  This is backwards, Katie.” But I know Alex, and I won the lottery with him.  He has been honest when it was the hardest thing in the world to be.  He was vulnerable when many other men would have run.  And he loves me so well.  It will be the greatest honor of my life to put on a white dress, come around the corner arm in arm with other man in my life- mi Padre- and walk into a lifetime covenant with God and Alex. 

I would love to know exactly what the rest of our love story will bring us.  It would be amazing to know when we will have kids and if they will be healthy and strong and grow up to love Jesus.  It would also be great if we could predict the financially harder times to come so that we can prepare better.  And if we could add some foresight into jobs, homes, moving, serving, extended family, and all of that other stuff that would be just splendid, too.  But again, that is not how this all works. 

My security in not knowing what is coming over the next horizon is this: We are all living a love story.  It’s the story of a man who lived and died on this earth about 2000 years ago, but has never not been there.  It’s the story of infidelity and betrayal from the bride, and forgiveness and grace from the one wronged.  It’s the story of persecution and mocking, then justice and redemption.  And it is the only story we already know the ending to even though we haven’t seen it yet.  This story is full and good and painful, but it’s a love(ly) story.  Putting my faith in the ending while living in the craziness that is today, well, it is the hardest thing to do.  But the only way to embrace my own little love story is in light of the big love story—the one I am not the main character in and that is not even written for my sake.

If I would have been writing my story the whole time, I probably would have left out a lot of things that happened—skipped the painful chapters completely.  But I know now I would have missed it, that thing God has been trying to teach me since the day he knit me together: that my story, even my little love story, is all for his glory.  He is the only writer who can turn ashes into beauty, pain into healing, death into life.  When I believe that, I don’t even want the pen anymore, because I know I can’t even begin to fathom what He is writing- but it definitely is a joyful, overwhelming, excited, humbled, grateful feeling knowing that He is writing me into His love(ly) story.


A wedding ring is the sign of a covenant, a never ending, continuous promise.  And it is a beautiful thing, that covenant, a forever thing.  But we have a more beautiful symbol for an even more amazing covenant, and diamonds and platinum can't compare to it.  It's dirty and blood-stained and made of wood, and it was carried for miles on the back of a beautiful man.  Jesus gave us more than a ring to promise us forever, he gave us his life.  His covenant is part of his love story with us, and it's how we live daily with all that is full, good, and painful.  If his story can overcome anything, even death, our little stories can, too.  


Alex, I love you with all the love I have today.  But my prayer is that tomorrow, in light of the cross and the beautiful covenant Jesus left us, I would learn to love you even more.  Your Bride, Katie.  

____________________

Oh what love, no greater love...

Grace, how can it be?

That in my sin,

Yes, even then

He shed his blood for me...