All my life, I’ve felt like I was constantly having to yield to someone else’s timeline. A selective history:

1989.  Seventh grade, Baldwin Junior High.  Every afternoon of the fall, I headed back to my parents’ room and sat on their king-sized bed, spread out my Bible and journal, and got to work on praying for a date to the upcoming dance.  I timed my thirty minutes on their bedside clock and would not stop praying until the last second was up.  The weeks went by and Glenn never called.  I went to the dance with friends.  Now the BF and I watch my preteen crush every Thursday on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

1995.  Applying to colleges.  I set my sights on places around the country, secretly hoping for an Ivy League-covered four years.  The scholarship letter comes from Birmingham-Southern College, the school my parents attended–and where they met.  Once I get there, I have a couple of boyfriends and am convinced that I will graduate from college engaged, just like my parents.  Four years later, I am newly single. And the best of friends with some people whose friendship has not wavered in fourteen years.

2003.  I am applying to residency programs in pediatric dentistry.  I rank Chicago’s Children’s Hospital first but end up matched with my second choice, UAB, and my education there is extended from four to six years.  Now I know that had I moved to Chicago, I likely would have gotten my big-city fix there and never headed to New York.

2005.  I walk into my counselor GB’s office and break down in front of the man who has walked with me and provided life-giving wisdom through the two hardest years of my life.  I tell him I don’t think I can follow through on my plan to move to New York–it’s too scary and it doesn’t make any sense.  He reminds me of what I already know that has been blurred by my fear, and leads me back to the truth, my home base.  I leave his office calm, at peace and ready to head north.

2007.  A new boy moves to my town of New York City and we meet.  He quickly becomes one of my best friends and it isn’t long before I realize that I have fallen for him.  The timing isn’t right, though.  So I pray.  Not a timed prayer for God to give me what I want, but a prayer for survival.  The survival of my heart through something bigger than it has ever known.  A year passes.  I now own months of friendship with a man I trust completely and the time is right for it to be more.  My heart has been kept safe by someone bigger than I ever knew him to be until he had my brokenness to heal.

Another year passes.

Saturday morning I woke up and made a cup of coffee.  There was only one person I could imagine spending the morning with, and I couldn’t wait to get started.  I opened his letter to me and reread all my favorite parts, the ones highlighted and underlined on pages worn with turning.  I thanked him for a year beyond what I could have ever imagined; for prayers answered but just as much for those that were denied…or put on hold. I thanked him that he, in my waiting, can hold hope without crushing it.  I marveled that in the thirty years I have known him, he has never changed.  I thanked him that I have.

That night, the BF and I celebrated our year anniversary on rooftops and in restaurants around the city.  Then we headed to one last rooftop, his, and I saw this:

Then I watched my best friend and one true love get down on one knee and ask me to be his wife.  There are no shortcuts to moments like this.

I talked to GB today.  He’ll be performing our marriage ceremony, five years after that tear-soaked meeting in his office.  Five years ago, when I knew nothing of what lay ahead.  Five years later, there are plenty of things about this life that I am waiting to understand.  But enough time has passed for me to watch my story unfold at a better pace than my own.  And it has been so worth waiting for.