Full disclosure…it took me nearly two years to figure it all out, and it hit me in a flash of certainty yesterday: I’ve loved her for ten years. Since the very beginning: the first beach trip, both of us feeling all the uncertainty for very different reasons, neither of us really ready to even acknowledge any of it, bonded over shared tears and burdens of our hearts that didn’t feel safe enough to say out loud. A Facebook friend request would make sure we kept in touch, a casual friendship that always felt…more than. Life threw its share of curve balls our way…definitely more her way than mine, at least at first. I sat in awe, a thousand miles away, watching her handle all of life’s challenges with the most unlikely strength and bravery…caring for her kids and their hearts, raising these amazing little humans mostly on her own, not having any idea that someday those kids would be ours and I’d get a front row seat to her strength and bravery. That she would love me the way I’d always needed.
I loved her for years without even knowing it. And at the second beach weekend a decade after the first, finally realizing that I would love her forever, I told her. “I love you. I mean, I loved you before, but…” and we both laughed because…how ridiculous and crazy and impossible. But here we are, and I’m more sure than ever that this has been God’s plan for us all along. That nothing about any of this is accidental, none of the relationship casualties or magic and wonder the least bit surprising to the One who has always known since forever that we would find each other and that life would have already perfectly prepared our hearts to know…
xoxo, k
marry me kara 