I am packing up my Tiny Old Apartment and I can feel it – lumpy throat.
This is where I rebuilt my life.
I am sitting on a couch that came from Suzanne’s mom’s
friend’s basement that the 3 of us carried up stairs, loaded into a truck and
carried into my apartment. I am surrounded by an eclectic collection of frames
and inspirational quote wall art given to me by friends in the area and friends
far away. There are kitchen items that came to me brand new from my parent’s
church family that my mama drove down from South Dakota.
Laying on the couch with a glass of wine, I am staring at
the hallway where I would hear tiny feet pitter-pattering before I would see an
innocent face peering around the corner, asking to come lay on the couch and
watch American Idol with me. A bedroom full of stuffed animals that we lined up
in our tiny living room while she put on “rock shows” blasting Taylor Swift on
my pathetic laptop speakers. An oscillating fan that I put on high speed at
night to drown out the creepy noises the trees made outside. The homemade “mural”
I made out of construction paper for our bathroom wall that declares our worth
in the eyes of God. A cheap bookcase-turned-TV-stand that I bought a few weeks
after I moved in with Mandie and promptly had a meltdown in the Target parking
lot immediately afterwards, while Mandie helped me figure out how to put one
foot in front of the other just to make it home…and then how to put the dang
bookcase together. A stack of credit card statements and student loan notices
that kept me awake countless nights as I laid in bed, texting my mom in tears,
wondering how in the world I would ever be able to make those out-of-area phone
numbers stop calling my phone every day, telling me how much money I owed them.
I killed spiders on my own here. I paid the rent and the
utilities and the cable and the internet…all.on.my.own. I came home from
working all day at a job 50 minutes away, kicked off my heels in the middle of
the living room, somehow managed to bathe, feed and put a tiny human to bed,
and then finally sit down to start working for my 2nd job. I DID IT
ON MY OWN.
I missed my mom and my sister, and I cried when legal stuff with
my divorce got messy, and I got depressed on Sunday mornings when I had to drop
my tiny angel off for a week with her dad, and I drank a lot of coffee and
wine, and I cursed the upstairs neighbor who stomps when she walks and shakes
my entire ceiling.
This tiny, old apartment is where I rebuilt ME. I remember
listening to a Newsboys song that says “Jesus commands my destiny” and I clung
to that promise with every fiber of my being.
Now I am getting ready to ride off into the sunset.
Seriously. B came into my life and truthfully transformed my idea of what love
and happiness looks like.
I knew I was going to love him that first night that we met.
Because sometimes people listen to you and sometimes they really HEAR you. And
my heart was still crying a lot back then, and it’s like he knew that it was
crying, but he didn’t try to make it stop crying. He just let it cry, and let
me heal on my own. He was there to be the hand to pull me up when I was too
tired to move, and to be the voice of reason when I was confused by my own
chaos. But I liked to do things ON MY OWN, because I needed to feel capable of
being good enough for Faith and good enough for me. I needed to feel smart and
competent, so he let me have my own voice. Sometimes people don’t need their
own voices, but I do. And since he is a soul-understander, he encouraged me to
just love my own soul.
Sometimes I like to put Shakira’s “Loca” on repeat in my car
because of the line “And I’m crazy but you like it!” I am convinced that B does
not quite understand my logic 86% of the time, but I am just so PASSIONATE
about everything, so I laugh a lot and cry a lot and talk a lot and create
chaos a lot…but I think he LIKES it! Plus, I think that when I imagine myself
as Shakira, that he thinks I actually look like her, which really is a win-win.
We are renting a house together. We move into it really soon.
The reality is, my lease of my Beloved Tiny Old Apartment is up this week, so I
had to move because I need to live in a better school district for Faith. And I
need to move into a place big enough for me and Faith and B and Vader (his
Rottweiler…aka his child) because we are going to be Husband and Wife soon, and
husbands and wives live together (so I’m told). But I can’t afford a big enough
place all on my own. So that is the truth about our situation.
I am convicted about living together before we get married.
In no way am I judging anyone else’s journey or decisions. But for me, as a Christian
and as a mom, I just think it’s important that we be Husband and Wife before we
begin our lives in one home.
So. In May, we are driving up to South Dakota to see my
parents and Pastor Jeff is gonna marry us. This ain’t no shotgun wedding. There
is no baby on the way. We are just trying to honor God with our decisions and start
our journey together as a family with Him at the center. That means we
sacrifice a wedding ceremony with all of our friends and family, and all the
fun stuff that goes along with that.
But when I look back at the journey I have been on for the
past several years, I see that God has been incredibly faithful to me. Every
time I have made “sacrifices” to honor Him, His blessings are sevenfold. (I don’t
really know how much sevenfold is, but it seems like a very holy term, so I am
using it. Because I am very holy.)
Me and B’s relationship has been very unconventional and we
have had unique challenges and circumstances. And so I actually really LOVE
that we are creating one more special chapter in our story. I mean, I am fairly
certain that we are totally going to start a trend with SOUTH DAKOTA DESTINATION
WEDDINGS. It’s obviously what the cool kids do.
Packing up this Tiny Old Apartment makes me super emotional
(shocking, I know) because it was my safe place during such a
heart-ripping-open, life-altering season. But it made me ready to take on the
future with this Prince Charming fella with confidence and gratitude. I once
told B (in tears, of course…because that’s what I do. I cry.) that I really
didn’t know if I would ever be able to love him more than I love Faith. Sounds
awful, but it’s true. But the thing is, I don’t have to love him MORE, I can
just love him DIFFERENTLY, and those differences are what will allow us to one
day become a unashamedly-flawed-but-perfect blended family.
I’m gonna cry a little more and drink another glass of wine
and watch some TV (since Prince Charming convinced me that my life will
actually be truly fulfilling when I eliminate the $65 cable bill from my life)
and wait for my Fairy Godmother to come pack the rest of my boxes for me. Because
let’s be clear, if there is a Prince Charming and I am the girl he loves, I am
obviously Cinderella. Minus the great cleaning habits and I don’t wake up singing
with the birds and mice. And my sister isn’t a hag. But other than that, yeah,
I am totes Cinderella, and I am gonna love this happily ever after.
