Pardon my French, ladies and gentlemen, but I feel it incumbent upon myself to inform you all that the shit has indeed hit the fan.

Once upon a time, a redheaded girl in Alabama dreamed about her wedding day.  The white dress, the colorful flowers, the friends and family celebrating. And most of all, the man who would be at the end of the aisle.  This girl would steal her Sis’s blankie (Pinky, if you must know) and drape it over her head, looking more like a nun or an old-school nurse than a bride…but no matter.  The dream was instilled, the meaning of it growing with each year.

And how many years there were!  Some of them really good, some largely forgettable, some altogether painful.  But the dream held, even though it may have been battered and bruised along the way.  Largely due to its deferment and the ensuing fluctuation of hope.  And maybe some really, really questionable dating choices.  But like Oscar winner Sandra Bullock and non-Oscar winner Harry Connick Jr. will tell you, hope does indeed float.  In this case, it floated along for a good decade past its assumed realization.  And it turned out that the reality was even better than the dream.

In regard to the man at the end of the aisle, at least.  The rest…well, the rest has been interesting.

As predicted, Saturday morning’s walk to work was terrible.  But I had no idea that it would be the single worst walk I’ve ever endured in the city.  I entertained the sane notion of taking the bus before I defiantly remembered that New Yorkers do not negotiate with terrorists or weather.  So I set out for my mile-and-a-half journey, rain jacket zipped around me, sunflower umbrella in hand.  Once I hit Second Avenue, I was met with the troubling vision of umbrella carcasses lining the street. Torn nylon and splayed metal warned of those who had gone before me and failed.  Ahh, I thought, but they likely weren’t half-marathoners or Christians or women in the throes of wedding planning. I haughtily considered myself up to the challenge before me.

I was wrong.  Pelting rain and twenty-five-mile-an-hour winds left the half-marathoner struggling for breath within minutes; the Christian was throwing the F-bomb around like beads at Mardi Gras (to be fair, I directed it at the devil, but I doubt that’s the best way to engage in spiritual–or weather–warfare).  And as for the wedding planner, we’ll get to her in a minute.  By the time I darkened the door of my office, I was raw with anger and heel bruises from too-small rubber boots.  My mood had taken a terminal beating and the day had barely started.

If who we are is best revealed in the storms of life, then Jesus and I have a little independent study to do.

Cut to Sunday night, when I was sitting on the BF’s couch with the computer burning in my lap, engaging in the seemingly enjoyable task of picking out presents for other people to buy for us.  Known as The Registry.  Within twenty minutes, my shoulders were stiff with anxiety.  It was all beginning to get to me: the hundreds of choices that have to be made, both for the big day and for every day after (nylon-coated or metal measuring spoons? six or three-quart saute pan? aaarrrgggghhh…); family issues that have nothing to do with the wedding cropping up because of the wedding; childhood dreams and expectations (and no, I am not talking about MINE); coordinating multiple schedules.  I felt my sanity and patience, both of which are already in short supply on a good day, being whittled down with every minute in front of the screen.  With every email and phone call and schedule change. With every implication that my dreams are all nice and fluffy and good, but someone else actually has a better idea of how this day should be handled.

I know my options at times like this.  One: sit in a corner in the fetal position, alternately crying and yelling about the frustration of it all.  Two, disconnect from the whole thing completely, let everyone else run the show, and act like I don’t care about the details of the biggest day of my life thus far.  Three…shut up and look up.

Planning the big day has forced me into a kind of prayer boot-camp.  Who knew?  I need more grace and help during these few months than I ever imagined.  During the Two Worst Years of My Life, prayer was easy.  I was desperate.  God was the life boat on an obviously stormy sea.  But this storm is different.  This storm wears the guise of Greatest Day Ever, Happiest Time of My Life, Moment I Will Treasure Always. This day has the white dress, the colorful flowers, the friends and family celebrating. But in our preparation for that celebrating, our humanness is all too apparent.  We arrive at this moment with luggage sets full of our own emotional baggage and expectations that determine the role we think we should play.  Mine, I have realized, is Bride Who Gets Everything Done the Way She Dreamed Because This Is Her Day and She Has Waited FOREVER, dammit!

Meanwhile, in their respective forms of healing and brokenness, the other players gather and plan for a day that looks varying degrees of different from my dream.  And somehow, we have to come to an agreement.

We need help.

Good thing I know an expert storm-calmer,  a walking-on-water sort.  Because I honestly don’t know how I would get through a day, much less a season of rain, without a Rock beneath it all or the assurance that Yes, Virginia, there is a wedding day and no, dear, it is actually not the most important day of your life.  Every day is, it turns out.  Because every day is the day when I have an opportunity to realize that perfection does not exist this side of heaven and there is a provision for that disappointment.  And that provision doesn’t come in the form of a fake smile or trite cliche or temporary Band-Aid.  It comes in the form of scars and weaknesses just as much as triumph and joy.  It comes with dreams deferred and long waits and room to grow.  It comes with the confession of, “I’m not there yet and neither are you, so let’s do the best we can with grace.”  It comes with letting go and watching to see what the rain has washed away, and starting from that place…not so much Perfect, but most definitely Real.

Last week was a whirlwind. I had planned a Tour of the South (and my past) so that the BF could meet more family (Extended Edition) and friends (College Edition) and so we could prepare more for the wedding.  It wasn’t until the trip was over that I realized how much of an undertaking it was, particularly for the BF, who had to deal with all of the following in a span of six days: Southern eccentricities (read: rampant racism represented most symbolically by the militia-guarded, size-of-Texas Confederate flag waving over Interstate 65); family politics (I mean both the political persuasions of family members and the tangled web of who is and is not speaking to each other today); cake and florist meetings; a gaggle of loud women who haven’t all been in the same room in quite awhile; and a premarital counseling session that I had described as a “getting-to-know-you” session with our minister but actually involved the question “Tell me about your childhood.”

The inauspicious start to our week involved one cancelled and one delayed flight to Atlanta.  Because it was “snowing” there.  Meaning ice flecks flew around the sky for an hour before evaporating.  But since the BF and I would rather sit and do nothing in a large space with magazines and a food court than in either of our apartments, we went ahead and caught a cab to LaGuardia.  Immediately upon arriving there and approaching the ticket counter, we found that our formerly delayed flight was now leaving on time and–surprise!–about to board.  Cut to us running Home Alone-style toward the gate.

We landed in Atlanta and picked up our snazzy Civic rental, then proceeded to put the first couple hundred of several hundred miles on it.  The Atlanta-to-Montgomery drive is a memorable one, filled with a Kia plant, a super speedway, and names like Tallassee (the BF asked if that was misspelled).  The next day was an even more scenic route, the Montgomery-Troy-Elba-Samson-DeFuniak Springs path to Florida’s Gulf Coast–a route filled with more cows than other cars.  I did get to introduce the BF to Southeastern celebrities/radio DJs Rick and Bubba and was further encouraged about our upcoming union when he pronounced them “funny.”

Then came the 30A-98 back-and-forth Civic-traversing over the next twenty-four hours.  We covered Sandestin’s Baytown Wharf for lunch, then hit Grayton Beach to meet the cake designer, who graciously provided dessert in the form of five heavenly cake tastings. This glory was quickly snatched away; the BF suffered through an hour-long conversation about flowers next, and even did a stand-up job of pretending to care!  Then we headed to our wedding venue.  As fate (whom I refer to as God) would have it, we arrived right before sunset and walked into a room bathed in golden light and overlooking the ocean.  And there was a bar. Basically my vision of heaven.  So we picked the menu with our wedding coordinator over a glass of wine and a beer, then we walked onto the beach and its cold March sand and looked around the scene that will be the site of our promises to love and honor each other as long as we both shall live.

Of course, people must consider certain information before making such promises. Like, for example, their childhoods.  So after some more meals with the family, we headed to Birmingham to meet with our minister.  Who is really my counselor from My Dark Age, a.k.a. the two-year period prior to my New York move and during my residency.  This man and Jesus walked with me through a rough period and saw me through to the other side.  He talked to the BF and me about our story, about our strengths and weaknesses, about our fit for each other.  He even got emotional as he observed what a different place I am in now than the one to which I was headed then.  And all I could think was thank you. Thank you, God of fate, for people who know me and still love me.  Thank you that the boat You’re in never capsizes in the storm.  Thank you for second chances and redemption and twists! For stories that read differently than my proposed outline.

At this point, the BF had provided an expenditure of emotional and physical energy that would have left the average man in a coma.  But he soldiered on to what might have been the scariest part of the trip: a reunion of my college girlfriends.  Talk about knowing and still loving me: these girls have seen me at my best (still trying to find an example…) and my worst (hungover Saturdays my entire junior year).  We have an unfair and uncalled for amount of background material on each other, and he sat patiently and pleasantly as we rehashed all of it.  And as many of their children zoomed around us, The Shining-like on their tricycles with their tiny Southern accents reaching our ears.  Fifteen years’ history and we can all be in the same room and fill it with laughter.  That’s saying something.

The rest of our week was spent in Atlanta with siblings and their crazy, fun, and potential (!!!) kids.  And Steve the dog, who didn’t bark as much at the BF this time but may have left a hole in the leg of his jeans.  And though we were more tired by the end of the trip than we were before we left, I was impressed by how much the BF and I encountered in our ever-overwhelming process of taking two separate lives and uniting them into one: three trips to Chick-Fil-A; multiple gas station stops and refuels (Diet Grapico, I will love and honor you forever); family ish (since when is this wedding about anyone but ME?  Oh, and him); and a small but steadfast band of people who know all the goods on me and are still here.  Not to mention a man who is brave enough to promise to walk through all this and more.  Becoming known is terrifying, fun, and full of surprises and blackmail-worthy information. But with the right person, it’s called marriage.  I’m so ready.

Saturday night was a perfect New York City date night for the BF and me.  I had booked us a reservation at one of the restaurants on our bucket list, Quality Meats in midtown. But that was the prequel to the event I was really excited about: the ballet.  I figured that if I could start out the night with something he was excited about, then the something he was not excited about wouldn’t seem so bad. I even stopped by Buttercup Bakery after work (second time this week) and got us a couple of chocolate-focused desserts for after the show.  So good foods were the bookends to an experience that, were it not for me, the BF would skip at all costs.

But a bit of background on this choice of event.  When I was in eighth grade, I decided to take dance in school so that I could avoid P.E. and the purple shirts and smelly locker rooms.  After a few weeks, I learned to love the graceful movements of ballet.  I tried out for and became an apprentice with a dance company in town.  I performed as a Ginger Snap in the Nutcracker.  I bruised and bloodied my feet in pointe shoes.  I loved it.

And I was only okay at it.

Most of the girls I danced with were younger than I was; they had been taking classes since they were three.  But my extracurricular activities had been limited to studying for the state spelling bee and watching Saved by the Bell.  Now my world opened up and I had to work at something where natural talent failed me.  I felt the effort in my sore muscles and blistered toes.  Once, in a rehearsal, I fell. And what followed were weeks of some serious balance and faith training.  Unlike school, ballet did not come easy to me.  But because of the room there was for improvement, I constantly grew.  In discipline and ability.

Then high school came and I had to get serious about grades and scholarship potential.  And, let’s face it, I wasn’t going to be a professional dancer.  So I stopped taking classes, but I continued to love the art of ballet.  And when I moved to New York City, home of the New York City Ballet, one of my favorite solo activities was to take the subway (get on the 6 at 28th Street, transfer to the shuttle at Grand Central, hop on the 1 and get out at 66th Street) to Lincoln Center and catch a performance. Sometimes I would meet my eighty-three-year-old colleague from NYU, Dr. L, there. (He’s from North Carolina so we hit it off immediately as fellow Southerners when I began teaching.)  But mostly, it was a night I treated just myself to.

As we walked to the theater Saturday night, I thought about this pre-BF period in my life.  There was an aspect of loneliness to it.  But there was also a measure of proud independence–the kind of independence that only a trip to a world-class ballet performance and a walk home across New York City can  provide.  And there was the expectation, the hope, that life would not always consist of these solo Saturday nights.  That one day I’d have someone to share them with.

And how.

Now here we are a few years later.  I sit next to the love of my life in the nosebleeds watching dudes twirl below us with their parts on display (fitting that this performance was entitled Jewels), and can barely contain my joy at getting to be with this man, who loves me so much he will endure people frolicking around in frills set to old music with no talking or plot!!! And then another feeling creeps in…and with it, a realization.  The feeling being a mild anxiety at putting the BF through such a twisted form of entertainment.  And the realization being that there are aspects of being with my perfect match/best friend/soul mate/gag me I’m throwing up-happy times partner that will be…well, challenging.

When we’re praying/hoping/consulting crystal balls for our Special Someone, all we feel is their absence.  Now that mine has shown up (and how), I’m beginning to understand the complications that come with melding two lives into one.  Here is one such complication, experienced by me in the nosebleeds: It turns out I’m not completely happy if he isn’t completely happy.  He experiences discomfort, so do I. How inconvenient.  And though he did a truly admirable job of hiding it (refusing to leave when I offered, making me cry with laughter when the dancers kept came out for repeated curtain calls as he looked at me with shocked eyes, open mouth, and furrowed brow, all expressing the thought, “Seriously?”), I knew there were other things he’d rather be doing.  Like, for example, anything.  And just like that, the ballet lost its luster a bit as I compared it side-by-side in my mind with desserts on the couch in front of an episode of Dexter with my man.

When I prayed Isaiah 54:2 pre-BF, in hopes of a BF, to the only other One I fully share my heart with, I thought of all the benefits of coupledom:  security, like-mindedness, love.  More stuff.  And now I get to see how love changes my likes.  How some things get bumped after compromise.  How our lives together include not just enlarging our tents and making space for our love, but for our individual preferences, our families, our traditions, our stuff.  How we are not always like-minded, and what happens when we face that.

In this particular situation, when faced with a third act to the ballet or the option of missing the Diamonds segment and heading to that couch, there really was no choice.  It took a bit of a fight to get my way, but the BF finally caved and let us leave.  (Seriously.  He wouldn’t believe that this was what I really wanted.  He was totally prepared to endure more man parts for me.  This, my friends, is a keeper.)

We walked the whole way home, covering a route similar to the one I took a few years ago that ended with a Tiffany ad on my corner staring me in the face.  A huge diamond engagement ring, mocking my lonely left-hand finger.  I felt my heart sink, and then a voice whisper to it beyond words.  And I started laughing.  At the fact that there was Someone who would endure, had endured, everything for me, and here I was, sad that he hadn’t yet thrown in a diamond with all that.

Cut to me a few years later with space on my hand for that jewel, and room in my life for love.  And a few years after that, a Saturday night with diamonds already covered and room on the couch for two.

I have prided myself on being quite decisive thus far in the Wedding Planning Process.  And this is not a quality I possess in spades.  I agonize and second-guess with the best of them.  When, a week after our engagement, I still couldn’t fall asleep at night because we hadn’t booked a wedding venue, I knew something had to change.  So I resolved to have a new attitude: don’t sweat the small stuff.  A dress is a dress.  A band is a band.  The important thing is getting married to my best friend, the love of my life.  Everything else is minutiae.

This attitude actually worked for awhile!  I chose the first dress I tried on. I picked the location, the band, and the photographer without looking back.  I even banned myself from looking at wedding magazines, as they are full of possibilities regarding decisions I’ve already made, and the last thing I need is a catalog of second guesses. And last Tuesday, I picked the bridesmaids dresses.  I met the Roommate at Priscilla of Boston on 40th and 8th, which meant that my schedule that day was the following: work on 55th and 2nd, gym on 51st and Lex, Buttercup Bakery on 52nd and 2nd (present for the Roommate for standing half-naked in a room in front of myself and the salesgirl as we threw silk chiffon at her), Preschool of America in Tudor City to tell three-year-olds how to brush their teeth, and finally Bridal Central. And all of this through freezing rain, wearing too-small rubber boots that grind my foot bones together so hard I swear I hear them sparking up sometimes, without gloves because one got lost on the trip from the dryer to my bed (Seriously?!).  I even braved Times Square as a thruway, and it looks markedly more spastic in driving ice sheets.

So, you could say I’m a wedding warrior.  I did, by the end of last Tuesday.  Then I had to face…The Registry (cue ominous music).

If there is anyone more easygoing, anyone better to go through this process with than the BF, I’d like to meet him and his pet unicorn.  Last Sunday, walking the aisles of Crate and Barrel with him was a pleasure.  We reached instantaneous decisions.  We liked the same colors and designs.  We smiled and laughed.  We were in perfect harmony.  We looked like we were making a commercial.  We were the people I used to hate.

Then I got home and had to face someone with whom I am rarely in perfect harmony: me.  The past few nights, I have stared at the computer until my eyes blurred trying to decide between three china patterns.  Then two.  Then back to three. And I have wondered to myself, as words like Library Lane and Blue Duchesse float around my head like flies I want to swat, What the hell happened? Where did Decisive Me go?  And who is this freak who can’t pick out a plate?

And then, insight.  The elements I’ve chosen so far all have a one-day limit.  I’ll never wear that dress again, unless I want to get really serious about a Halloween costume.  The band will hit the road after I (Dad) give(s) them a check.  The venue will clean up and prepare for the next event.  But the china…that we’ll have for the rest of our lives (cue ominous music).

What if, on one random Thursday afternoon, the BF/my husband and I really piss each other off (this would, of course, assume that he develops the propensity to get pissed) and I look at that china in the cabinet and think, “If I had only gone with the Vera Wang.  Those stupid thick lines drive me INSANE”?  Or, more likely, what if, on one random Thursday afternoon, I’m sitting in my dining room, irritated about some way the world is not turning in my favor, and I look at that china in the cabinet and think, “Blue plates are ridiculous.  I hate that china.  I hate EVERYTHING!”

Oh right, I mentioned insight, didn’t I?  Okay, here it is: the china is giving me fits because of its permanence.  It will be around forever, like us (God-willing and as long as the BF’s judgment doesn’t improve).  It is a symbol of our lives joining and lasting, and for that, it matters.  And for that, it scares me.  Because there is nothing in the world I want to do right more than this marriage.  And someday, there will be nothing I want to do right more than my marriage and raising my children.  But just like plates, people can get broken.  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I don’t do most things right.  I tend to get them wrong a few times first.

But…

I did end up here.  Five years ago, if you had told me I would be living in New York City, planning a wedding to a real live good man, drawing up our life together and picking out plates to match it, I would have…well, I would have asked if there was an express train to that destination.  But there wasn’t.  It took every second of those five years for me to get here.  And every second of the years before that.  And in the process, every mistake I’ve made has either landed in my “Forgotten” bin or been pressed and molded and glazed into something beautiful.  After all of it, it’s not just the times I got it right that gave me a story to tell.

And for that, the minutiae matter.  And the mistakes need to be allowed.  But there’s no need to go sweating about any of it.  Those plates are important, but I will surely break them, or get tired of them, or burn what I put on them.  And, like Julian of Norwich said, all shall be well…because I will still have the grace that wrote the story that led to the plates.  Not to mention the good man with clouded judgment sitting next to me.

The other night I jumped into a cab after dinner with a friend and headed home, uneasiness settling around my heart.  We had just had a minor disagreement, but to a heart like mine that prefers even the illusion of peace to the reality of discord, every disagreement is major.  And though I can never rest in tension, can’t even find sleep with the slightest anxiety present, I often pitch a tent there anyway grounded by stakes of stubbornness and pride.  And the rarely wavering belief that I am right.

This time was no different, and though we worked it out later, the ride home was an encampment in that tension.  And as I watched the city scroll by outside my window, a familiar feeling hit me.  A feeling from the early days of my life in New York, when solo cab rides were a frequent occurrence.  When solo everything was a fact of life.  Before I had met and settled into a group of friends, and way before I had met the best of those friends and settled down with him.  Back then, the city and Jesus were my constant companions, but I could only see one of the two.  And so I found comfort in the sight of tall buildings and familiar streets.  In routes covered over and over: the walk from Union Square to Magnolia Bakery; the blocks between my apartment and the Central Park Reservoir; the lights in the windows along Fifth Avenue at night.  New York City is a fantastic place to be alone.

But for someone as prone to introversion and self-protective walls as I am, this can be a liability.  The solace I found in simply walking miles around the city, going to the ballet, hitting the museums, all by myself, was becoming more rule than exception.  To the point that I preferred these activities to outings with other people. I was isolating myself, using New York as my fortress.  Until, one afternoon, I passed my elderly upstairs neighbor on the way into our building.  She was carrying on an animated conversation, raising her voice and gesturing with her hands.  And she was talking to herself.  This is what happens when you stay in New York too long, I thought to myself.  Or when the city becomes your best friend.  That night, after going back and forth about it in my head for hours, I stepped out of my cozy life for one and into a (for me) completely uncomfortable scenario.  I walked down the street and showed up at one of Redeemer’s small groups.  The small group that introduced me to that group of friends and, a year later, that best friend.

Before the BF and I got together, I had gotten to a place where I admitted I may always be single.  And, as much as a girl raised on fairy tales and romantic comedies can be, I was okay with that.  To the point that it kinda became a source of pride for me: look how special God thinks I am that he can’t share me with anyone else!  I will bear this cross and do great things in this world, all on my own!  I WILL SUFFER IN SINGLENESS!

Except…we all know how that turned out.

I had embraced what I thought was the hardest thing for my heart to handle, even felt I had mastered it.  But mastery is not a tenet of the Christian faith, not this side of heaven.  My heart had new challenges to face.  Challenges that occur when one imperfect soul meets another, challenges with words like compromise and forgiveness and patience and understanding. Ugh.  These are actually the hardest things for my heart to handle, this day-in, day-out accommodation to a force bigger than my will and more important than my plans.  Showing grace, reliably, to someone who is always there.  Someone who, it turns out, has a heart vastly different from mine.  A heart that leads him to admit when he is (rarely if ever) wrong and apologize sincerely and immediately.  In a way that makes me have to pull up my stakes of bitterness, pack up my tent, and show some of that grace just as immediately.  When I’m so much better at showing punishment.  And being right. And making war.

But love is what I am called to, and it is being taught in the gift of a partner without whom I could not be who God made me to be.  Which is a little offensive to my sense of independence…but then, so is every part of the Gospel.

And there are benefits to this arrangement.  Too many to count, though this blog is one way of keeping track.  Like the other day, when the BF and I were meeting to hit up Bloomingdale’s for some china, and we were caught across the street from each other at a red light.  A cab stopped in the intersection to pick up a fare, and the guy behind him proceeded to honk, then yell, “You f***ing bastard!  F*** you, you f***ing d**k!” and raise his middle finger in salute.  Then the light changed, and the BF headed my way and we laughed together about this crazy city, my former best friend.

Today started like most Fridays seem to for me: not well.  At 7 am, the phone rang. What kind of crazy-ass vampire would be calling and waking me up at that God-forsaken hour?  Oh, my coworker.  The one who likes they way I do her job so much better than the way she does it.  The coworker who was calling to tell me (for at least the tenth time since I’ve worked with her in the past couple of years) that she won’t be coming in today. And who can blame her?  How can one possibly be expected to work WITH A HEAD COLD?

A couple of hours later, I was sitting in Health Services waiting for my yearly, NYU-mandated physical.  After having received two phone calls between 11:00 and 11:10 reminding me that my appointment was at 11:15.  The 11:10 call was my favorite–she had left a message (since I was in transit, climbing the two flights of stairs to the clinic three minutes away, without my phone) informing me it was 11:15 and I was late for my appointment.  And then when I got there I was treated to a thirty-minute wait next to the desk of a haughty woman who constantly muttered under her breath about everyone else who wasn’t doing their job.  (“Makes me sick.  Acting like they’re in kindergarten and they’re supposed to be adults.  Makes me sick!”) When I asked her how much longer she thought it would be, I was informed that everyone is human and sometimes people get backed up because everyone can make mistakes and we’re all just human.  She was a couple of feet from me, sitting at the same height as I was, but her tone conveyed that she was staring down her nose at me from ten feet above.  I thought about how, if this career didn’t work out for her, she would be perfect for the post office.  I thought this so that I wouldn’t have to think about how much I can resemble her at times.

I left a few minutes later, huffing under my breath about people who don’t do their job and wondering when Jesus was going to do that thing I asked him to do: make me permanently, constantly aware of the fact that he is bigger than all the crap details of my day and the assholes who fill it.  Winter has gotten the best of me yet again (at least that’s my excuse this time of year) and my self-righteous indignation reserves are at an all-time high.  I’ve even gotten into the obnoxious habit of, whenever something ticks me off (this can be anything from incessant horns blowing on the street to the toilet paper breaking off before I said it could), saying to myself through clenched teeth, “Seriously?” in my most sarcastic tone.  And today, for the first time, the thought crept into my consciousness that God may not love that habit.  What with the sarcasm dripping from it at near-toxic levels, and the entitlement to only good things implied in its utterance.  And a thought followed right behind that first thought: that maybe that whole attitude is standing right in the path of that prayer being answered.  And a final thought (a thought train!) to top it all off: sometimes I’m the biggest asshole filling my day.

Because then I got back down to the ninth floor, and what should be waiting for me but the most beautifully arranged dozen red roses in the history of floral arrangements, and an entire department of people hovering around them, waiting for their recipient to open the card.  My card.  Once again, the BF shows up to remind me of all that’s going right.

Let it be noted that I am well aware I am marrying out of my league here.  This is a guy who apologizes to the homeless people he doesn’t give money to; meanwhile, I’m walking down the street just daring people to step in my path so I can reach out and punch someone.  As I lugged my three-foot-high garden home, I thought about how ungrateful and hurtful it would be to the BF if I came home and thanked him briefly for the flowers, then went on at length about my craptastic day.  How much disregard that would show for his consistent, overflowing regard.  And I realized how often that same disregard constitutes the bulk of my interaction with someone who loves me even more and better than the BF does, shockingly.  Someone who, I’m convinced, sent me an arrangement of his own–in the form of the most amazing man I know–to remind me what it means to be better than what’s around you.