I am beginning to think that the best answer to the question “Why do you believe in God?” may be, “Well, you know what a jerk I can be now?  You should have seen what an asshole I was five years ago.”

The Mom emailed me a proof of the wedding invitation today.  When I opened the attachment and saw the words printed in their pretty little script, something happened: it became real.  Which prompted two responses within me: a throat-thickening urge to cry tears of intense joy and relief…and the thought, Oh shit.  I am getting married.

Being convinced as I was just a short while ago that God had planned me to walk this road with just him as my Significant Other, the idea of blending my life with someone else’s (one plus one equals one) offends both my mathematical and independent sensibilities.  I mean, he brought me all the way to New York–the Look Out for Number One capital of the world–where he has been steadily and lovingly undoing all sorts of unhealthy attachments, anchors I’ve relied on instead of him. And now he wants to share me?  His redemptive plan is, as always, different from what I envisioned.

But he will not stop redeeming me, and I’m starting to think this marriage thing may be his best method yet.  Because, when I’m getting married at the ripe old age of thirty-three (anything above twenty-five in the South qualifies you as a senior citizen bride), I’m bringing more than just the armfuls of books and clothes I lug over to the BF’s each day.  I am bringing all the vestiges of my independence, the entrenched habits and ways I try to manipulate and control my patch of the planet that I will from this point forward be sharing with someone else.  Every decision gets two votes now.  Consults will be required, compromises will be drawn. I will have to (gulp!) give.

It’s so much easier to just have it my way.

Then again, if I’d had it my way, I would have missed this little detour called New York.  I would have missed all the life that came with the failure of my plans.  If I even had one, my blog would be called “Everything Happens for a Reason” and would be followed up by my pocket-sized devotional book, Snacks with Your Savior.  Each would be teeming with triteness and bursting with bullshit–entries like the top ten ways to be a better Christian and chapters on why other people are wrong.  There would be no bad words or mentions of wine, no candor about how I screwed up today.  I would write like one who has it all together, but inside I would be angry all the time and not understand why.

Instead…

Instead, I just read an email exchange between three of my best girlfriends from college and the BF analyzing the latest episode of Lost, and I glowed with pride at how they immediately counted him as one of their own, and at how he makes them laugh.

Instead, this weekend the BF and I will take the train to Bucks County, PA where we will check out The Sis’s new baby-gut, eat pizza, and drink champagne with the Yankee Fam in my second Northeast home.

Instead, I come home to a man who bought flowers because I’m sick, not because he has something to apologize for.

Why do I believe in God?  Because I’m not where I was, nor am I where I’m going to be.  This here is a path we’re on, not some aimless wandering in time.  There is room for messes when Someone has the ability to create beauty out of them.  Good thing, because the world is all stocked up on cliches.