The after-Christmas blues always hit me pretty hard.  I think it quite appropriate that the 26th is referred to as Boxing Day by our neighbors to the north, because I feel like someone punched me in the stomach when I wake up on that morning.  All the buildup lies deflated in a heap of wrapping paper, empty boxes, and malfunctioning Keurig coffee makers on the floor.

Today at work I opened my Pandora station and was met with a final blow to the gut: the Christmas station I had created before Thanksgiving began to play.  Good thing I had a distraction: today is the day I bought my wedding dress.  (Or, technically, my dad bought it through me.)  I headed south and west to Rockefeller Center, littered with just as many people as last week.  Only now we were all bereft of any Christmas spirit–in its place was a rabid thirst for sale items.  I dodged, weaved, and (sorry, Lord and Mom) pushed my way through the crowd and the twenty-degree temperatures and found myself on the other side of the glass in Saks Fifth Avenue. Standing there among the rows of cosmetics and clothing, wrapped in my bubble coat, fake leather boots, threadbare hat, and scarf around my face, I didn’t feel like a person about to throw down the plastic that would buy her the most important dress of her life.  But there I was, maybe not dressed the part but damn sure playing it.  And I realized that I no longer worry about that disparity.  I’ve read the Bible and The Velveteen Rabbit and know from both that when you are real and loved, shabbiness doesn’t matter.

So I took the elevator to floor five and marched proudly into the bridal salon, where I made the prettiest dress you ever did see MINE.  It’s a beautiful shade of white, which my heart usually isn’t, but I’m going on someone else’s credit there too.

Christmas came wrapped in the biggest of boxes with the most beautiful of bows this year.  There was a lot to celebrate: the engagement, my parents coming to town, families getting together, our last planned holiday season in the city.

I know my parents worry about me for a variety of reasons.  Moving to New York put a huge one on their list, but over time they’ve come to accept and even embrace my life here.  They arrived last week to throngs of people and freezing temperatures, and I decided it would be a great idea to walk their asses all over midtown.  I had warned them before they left the South to bring warm coats, gloves, scarves, hats, and water-resistant walking shoes.  Mom interpreted that to mean a long heavy coat with a hood that wouldn’t stay up and suede knee boots.  Dad’s take was golf gloves, a baseball cap, and a two-inch-long scarf.  After walking from the Waldorf to Central Park, spirits were reasonably high but beginning to wear.  After walking from Central Park down Fifth Avenue, Dad’s makeshift head-wrap was coming loose and Mom had given up on the hood and the question “Are we there yet?” had forever transferred from my kid vocabulary to their New York one.  After walking from Fifth Avenue to my neighborhood, happy hour got bumped up to NOW and we settled in at the bar of the restaurant, waiting on the BF to arrive.  Which brings me to the second thing my parents (used to) worry about.

Two years ago, Mom and Dad made their first trip to NYC for Christmas.  I was fresh off the realization that the now-BF and I would be forever friends and God was tending my heart with the care its rawness needed.  I was rushing to Penn Station to meet the ‘rents, already stressed about getting them to their hotel and to the restaurant and to the Philharmonic, all through crowds of people and some of my least favorite neighborhoods (Times Square) and subway lines (1-2-3).  As I waited for them outside New Jersey Transit, I looked down and realized that I was wearing one black boot and one brown.  I briefly considered breaking down right there on 32nd and 7th, then had a better idea.  I pulled out my phone and texted my friend and future husband the details of my footwear.  It was a shot in the dark punctuated with fears of awkwardness, but it was rewarded moments later with a perfect response and the assurance of a friendship spared.  I knew things were going to be okay.  But just how okay, I had no idea.

That year, my parents and I were a trio in the city, visiting Lincoln Center and Redeemer and Soho, then trekking out to New Jersey to visit my sister and brother-in-law and his extended family.  Who have become my extended family, or my Yankee family as I like to call them.  This year the pairs evened out and my match was with me.  Except for on Christmas Eve day, when Sis’s mother and sister-in-law and Mom and Sis and I hit Saks for bridal gown try-ons, then the Waldorf for celebratory champagne.  It’s hard to imagine a more magical day, and for once in my life I’ve stopped trying.

The season, this year and two years prior, culminated in the descending of all our families upon that house in New Jersey.  Two years ago, I checked my phone regularly for texts from friends, one in particular.  I settled into my single status, perfected by years of attending church, parties, and holiday functions without a partner.  I had pretty much stopped feeling sorry for myself, had encouraged my parents that I was perfectly fine on my own and even feeling pretty sincere about it, had gotten over the early-mid-late-twenties bouts of desperation over ever finding someone and the accompanying heart-gripping loneliness.  I had reached a level of peace and gratitude with who I was, where I was, and who I believed was taking care of me, boyfriend or not.

But still…there was a bit of an ache now and then.  An empty spot that I only know now was marked “Reserved.”

This year, BF at my side, I trudged through the snow with the rest of the family across the street to the backyard of Nanny’s house and its frozen pond.  There’s something in the stillness and whiteness of snow that invokes a quiet so calm it is almost sacred, like it’s just you and your God hanging out.  Even with a dozen people around.  Even with your gloved hand in someone else’s.  In that stillness, the meaning of Christmas that I pray to realize every year descended on my heart like a snowfall.  The scene became a house of worship.  I thanked God for not letting my heart freeze over in all those years of flying solo.  Of sitting at the table as the only single save the kids and my thrice-divorced uncle.   Of worshipping him in a church with empty seats on either side of me.  Of a finger with no jewelry on it. Worshipping is always both a solitary and communal thing, and I thanked him that I have known both.  I thanked him that two years ago, I knew nothing of what would be happening now, and that I only had him to go on.  Because there is a richness and love to be found in trust that can’t be found anywhere else.  I took one last look at the white scene, said a prayer without words (the best kind), and walked with my fiance back to this year’s Christmas.

Greetings from New York, the city of my engagement.  The city where the temperature this morning was a biting seventeen degrees and is now a balmy twenty-eight (but more on global warming in a moment).  The city where I sit in my apartment wrapping presents and writing this while A Charlie Brown Christmas plays on TV.  Meanwhile, I’m just trying to stay awake because every night since that ring was put on my finger, the hamster in my brain climbs on his wheel and starts to run, motivated by questions like “When is the perfect date to have the wedding?” and “What if it rains?” and “If I get this thing planned by next week, will I be able to sleep normally again?”

I think–and write–a lot about control, especially our illusions about being in it and the truth that we never are.  About how my favorite times–plane rides, my engagement, sporting events, the New York move, and most of life thus far–have been about mystery and being out of the controller’s seat.  But for all that thinking and writing, I have a feeling that this is an area that God and I will be working on for as long as the world spins.  Because no matter what happens, good or bad (and clearly we are in a period of time marked GOOD right now), my first response always is to manage things down to my level.  To take The Container Store approach to life: a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Turns out I’m not alone.  I went to Borders today to pick up Tim Keller’s new book for a gift exchange tonight.  I had ordered it online, but in a shocking twist of irony that served as great setup for this entry, the US Postal Service does not abide by my Container Store ethic, and the book remained undelivered as of press time.  Walking around the store, I noticed that almost every nonfiction book had a title/subject matter that reflected a way to control an aspect of the reader’s life.  My favorite (sorry, forgot the author) was a book called Sh*t Happens:  The Science Behind a Bad Day. Really?!  Besides the fact that the main title and subtitle seemed to completely contradict each other, the premise of the book itself made me laugh: science can explain your craptastic day!  And, presumably, science can turn it into a better one, starting tomorrow!

Then at the gym, I listened to Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty discuss the Copenhagen climate summit and how one option on the table is a non-binding agreement to limit the rise of the earth’s temperature to two degrees celsius in the next two years.  First of all, can we all bindingly agree that a non-binding agreement is as contradictory as the book title above?  And second…REALLY?!  A bunch of people sitting around a room can just DECIDE to change the earth’s temperature?  What’s next: a treaty to make God start wearing capri pants?

If it rains on my wedding day, I can do one of a few things:  (1) Cry and ask God why he keeps picking on me.  (2) Cry, call the author of Sh*t Happens, and ask why science keeps picking on me.  (3)  Let go of what I can’t control anyway and, as the Roomie said yesterday, remember that nothing about this process has turned out the way I thought it would–and that has been AMAZING.  So go with it.  And watch to see, as Oswald Chambers says, “how God unravels this thing.”

I was talking to the BF the other day about how now I can call him my future husband, and it hit me that he’s actually always been my future husband–there was just a big chunk of time there when I didn’t know it yet.  A chunk of time where I didn’t even know he existed; a chunk of time when I thought we were destined for Just Friends status; and now…now.  I was in the dark on it for thirty-two years, but the outcome was the same.  Science we can figure out, but life and God are still full of surprises.

Letting go works.  Open hands, as in the picture above, are the way to go.  The ring goes on much more easily.

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.

I am in literary heaven right now, bounding through the pages of Pat Conroy’s latest novel.  I borrowed South of Broad from Mom last week (free contraband from the family holiday front lines is the best!) and haven’t put it down much since. Like all of his work, the book is poetic, lyrical, comforting, and Southern.  It’s like eating cheese grits while wrapped in a magnolia-scented blanket.  I remember when Pat (I feel I can call him that because reading his work makes you feel like you know him) visited my college, Birmingham-Southern, for a writer’s conference.  My sister and I bought tickets to the conference luncheon, where he was the keynote speaker, and the book signing afterward.  Pat signed our copy of Beach Music and wrote, “To the Stricklands:  a family of beautiful women.”  Sis and I swooned our way back to the dorms.  His writing adds that kind of eloquence to everyday life.  When I’m immersed in one of his books, I’m not walking down the streets of New York, oh no–I traipse along the grid of this timeless city as its streets murmur the stories of my life.  Pat’s writing gives me two unparalleled gifts:  a great story, and a day dipped in beauty.  And on top of that, he appears to know the same God I do, as I read last night:  “It did not look like the work of God, but it might have represented the handicraft of a God with a joyous sense of humor, a dancing God who loved mischief as much as prayer, and playfulness as much as mischief.”  Sounds like someone I know.

Speaking of God, my favorite person in the city to hear talk about him is Tim Keller. Tim’s words don’t have gardenias hanging off the ends of them, but they carry that rare quality of truth that unlocks my heart and challenges my soul, especially the area of it marked “Pre-Conceived Notions”.  His is an intellectual discourse:  in last night’s sermon, he cited Aristotle, David Bentley Hart, Nietzsche, Martin Luther King, Jr…and the Bible.  And yet by the end of each of these thirty-minute dissertation-level education capsules, I find I love God and my neighbor more than I did when I walked in the building.  When the truth is told by solid people, it resonates.

And there’s another dude who warrants mentioning.  The guy I heard on the phone this morning, taking a work conference call.  I listened as he discussed price points and mergers and other words I don’t understand or remember, in a voice that was confident, articulate, and brilliant.  The voice of a man who has traveled the world, obtained his own staggering education and credentials, and succeeded in the impressive and jerk-filled world of New York finance without becoming what surrounds him.  The same guy who, in a different voice, goofs off with me and tells me he loves me.  Whose humility and kindness are staggering themselves and make me want to be a better person.  The kind of person whose character surpasses his resume because he knows–despite being immersed in a culture where the opposite is true–what matters most.

I read and listen to and love these men.  And then I thank the Best Man, whose blessings to me consistently exceed anything I could ever earn.