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.

How fitting that Good Friday is the first day of this year for a visit to my fire escape.  A few weeks ago, I was gazing out my window at snow-covered wrought iron; piles of flakes dumped from a gray sky onto my poor-man’s balcony.  And today, I grabbed my deck chair (beach towel), fuzzy socks and fleece shirt (it’s still cold in the shade!) and planted myself across from the blooming cherry blossoms.  An activity I wouldn’t have had time for had I been at work and not sick.  And then, like a gift from heaven carried across the wind, the scent of the blossoms reaches me and I am reminded that everything I have is a gift.  Everything beautiful in my life began in darkness, with Someone else’s loss.

Who has believed our message?  To whom will the Lord reveal his saving power? My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground.  There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.  He was despised and rejected–a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief.  We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by.  He was despised, and we did not care.  Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.  And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins!  But he was wounded and crushed for our sins.  He was whipped, and we were healed!  All of us have strayed away like sheep.  We have left God’s paths to follow our own.  Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.  He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word.  He was led as a lamb to the slaughter.  And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth.  From prison and trial they led him away to his death.  But who among the people realized that he was dying for their sins–that he was suffering their punishment?  He had done no wrong, and he never deceived anyone.  But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.  But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and fill him with grief.  Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children, many heirs.  He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s plan will prosper in his hands.  When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied.  And because if what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.  I will give him the honors of one who is mighty and great, because he exposed himself to death.  He was counted among those who were sinners.  He bore the sins of many and interceded for sinners.

Darkness will never look the same again…and light could never be more glorious.

I only wrote one blog entry last week, evidence of a lack of writing productivity that can be blamed on a few things.  One, I’m working on another writing project and have put myself on a deadline for finishing it.  And it’s pretty consuming.  Two, spring finally hit New York and the city has come to life as we all remember what it feels like to be outside without suffering frostbite, and just how wonderful that outside-sweaty-kid-smell can be.  Third, though, was the biggest obstacle to my blogging: I was too concerned with finding something meaningful to write.

Over the course of last week, I passed three three-legged dogs on the street.  These wonder pups are not as rare as you might think here in New York City; after all, there’s more of everything here.  But a trinity of them?!  I found that quite notable. Then, while cooking brinner the other night (that would be our Friday night breakfast for dinner tradition), I cracked an egg open to find it had two yolks inside. Whoa, I thought.  Three-legged dogs and double yolks?  What does it all mean?

Not much, it seems.  Because the week and weekend, canine and dairy issues aside, were pretty unremarkable.  As far as mind-bending symbolic analysis goes, at least. And therein lies my problem.  (One of…oh, a few.)  Life happens all around me and I’m working so hard to interpret and document the meaning of it all that I forget to enjoy it.

Winter is a great time for reflection.  Spring, however, is a great time for playing in the park.

And it turned out that last week was about just that: playing.  Any deviation from that playfulness stirred up an anxiety within me that did not match the sunny-and-sixty-five atmosphere around me.  Dwelling on tripod dogs sent me into writer’s block.  Pondering how a wedding can turn into a stage for Oscar-worthy performances of family issues to play out sent me to the Tums.  But playing…

Monday night was my biweekly dinner with AC.  Aside from Katharine McPhee sightings and face-stuffing, we talk and laugh about what’s going on in our lives. We give harmless nicknames to people who aren’t on our Most Favorite List.  We plan the faux involvement of Abby’s four-legged Yorkie, Beatrice, in my wedding (she will be wearing a tiara and a Jessica McClintock gown).  At some point, we’ll throw in the serious stuff, we’ll pray, we’ll discuss how grace ties it all together.  We basically revel in our shared senses of humor and love for Jesus, two qualities that are too rarely shared in one person, let alone by two girls in New York City.  And the fact that all this occurs not at some trendy downtown spot but at the California Pizza Kitchen on 30th and Park is just all too fitting.

Saturday afternoon I met AW at the wine bar, where we did basically the same thing over a bottle of Italian sparkling wine and a cheese plate.  I vented; she updated; we laughed.  Then I went home to the BF and we trashed our plans to conquer a restaurant on our bucket list in favor of ordering in and watching a combination program of NCAA basketball and episodes of Dexter.  After all, we had gotten our fill of outside-sweaty-kid-smell earlier in the day when we ate lunch at a sidewalk cafe and walked home from Trader Joe’s.  And one of the best things about being with the right guy is not having to always decorate your time together with elaborate plans to inject meaning into your relationship.

There’s another relationship that doesn’t need that embellishment.  The Big One. My faith is who I am, the substance of my being, and such close association with my insecure, flawed self often results in my trying to be its decorator; struggling to find the meaning of everything that happens, as if God needs me to be his Symbolism Consultant here on earth in order that his good news will spread and people will believe it.  Based on all the connections I’ve realized and documented in my little blog.

That good news is more than a philosophy or worldview, and its implications reach into every corner of life.  The very idea of a sovereign God contends that nothing is meaningless or coincidental; there is always a plan.  What wonder!  What glory! What (for a writer, pleaser, and approval-seeker) pressure!  And yet, not by design. Because I don’t have to figure it all out.  In fact, I wasn’t meant to.  And, though it often offends my sense of intellect, I can’t. And there is rest in that.  Which is good, because sometimes, all he really wants me to do is play.

It never fails.  Whenever I lose something (which is WAY too often), I only find it once I’ve stopped looking.  On Christmas Eve, also known as My Wedding Day Planning Extravaganza, Mom and I grabbed a late afternoon table at Balthazar (or, as she refers to it, Balthazar’s.  Or Bartholomew’s.  In the neighborhood where she tells people I live, Soho.  I do not live in Soho.  Now I’m starting to understand why I lose things.)  I tucked my gift-card-from-the-boss-purchased bag of JCrew goods underneath my feet as we dug into a goat cheese tart with a side of fries.  Excuse me, frites, as the waiter corrected me.  Because we’re in France.  I was so giddy with the events of the day–dress modeling, champagne tasting–that I left the bag right there under our table and didn’t realize my mistake until we were exiting the subway at 51st and Lexington.  At 4:30 on Christmas Eve.  Dad and the BF were waiting at the Waldorf so we could get our worship, drink, and snack on at St. Bart’s and Belvedere, respectively.  Summary: there was no way in hell I was getting back on that train to go pick up my fake pearl necklace and two sweaters.  So I called, they said they couldn’t find it, and I silently wished the busboy’s wife a Merry Christmas courtesy of me and my boss.

Two weeks later I’m sitting on a sunny terrace in Santa Monica and E. from Balthazar calls to tell me they found my bag.  Seriously?!  Even for me, this is a lag-time record.  I had grudgingly given up all hope, determined to focus on what Christmas really means (Jesus, family, wine) and let go of my material loss.  And now!  I got to have both!  The real meaning of Christmas and the other one that I also really like!  I drank my coffee, looked at my fiance, and thought about how much my life rocks.

Then I got back to New York and felt the fifty-degree temperature drop.  And I threw on my bubble coat and wrapped my head in an itchy scarf and hat and headed to a doctor’s appointment at Beth Israel.  And I was reminded once again that things don’t always go how we plan.  There is nothing like a doctor’s visit, even a routine one, to remind you of your own weaknesses and mortality.  And though the little things that go wrong with my body don’t even come close to comparing with what some people I know are enduring, they feel like glitches in a system that, in my mind, should be running perfectly smoothly.  Not sure where I got that idea, especially considering this world and my life don’t offer past precedent for it, but I still view the negatives as anomalies, as things to avoid or fix.

So I headed across Union Square to Barnes and Noble, where I attempted my years-old, tried and true method of buying my new planner after the new year and therefore at a new, low price.  But someone beat me to the punch because they were all out.  As was Borders.  And I thought about how much we assume just by writing in those planners in pencil, let alone buying them at all.  How blessed I am to even have a year to look forward to.

Yesterday I was looking at the BF’s new Bible, which is a different translation than mine.  I read Psalm 46:10, which is familiar to many of us for the phrase “Be still and know that I am God.”  I often wonder what that’s supposed to look like, being still.  The translation in front of me read, “Stop your fighting.”  Which reminds me of what George Macdonald wrote and TK quoted last night, that the one principle of hell is, “I am my own.”  I know what that looks like: pushing my agenda at all costs, demanding that life turn out according to what is written in my planner.

Today I went to Balthazar and picked up my bag.  And as soon as I got home, I pulled out the necklace and watched it break in my hands.  Which is perfect, because the Sis got me a better one for Christmas anyway.  One that she picked out.  Funny how that always turns out better and means more.

When I make my way upstairs, I find my noisy group of friends gathered in front of a massive window watching the sun set against a cloudless Pacific in a wilderness of blue. The sun blisters the waters with a seething gold, then a flare of red, followed by a pink-fingered, rosy exit left.

Betty says, “Sunsets make me believe in God.”

Pat Conroy, South of Broad

I’m thinking today of the things that remind me of God.  The simple parts of life that feel like a love letter from on high, or a hug from Jesus.  Like turning the bend in the path around the Central Park Reservoir and looking to my left to see the midtown skyline propped against the dimming sunlight.  For all the parts of my story that I didn’t/don’t understand or like, for all the times I’ve cried out to him and wondered, Why is this happening?! or Where are you?!, there is a skyline and a sunset and a run that makes him real.

God, I love Him.  What a gift in itself.