I stood and spoke with friend about love, and hope, and what to do with a broken heart. As I did, I thought of my own winding road along love’s highway.
We first laid eyes on each other when I was just eighteen and he was nineteen.
We were at a mutual friend’s apartment, our freshman year of college, a few months after I met my First Love. He was sitting by his cute girlfriend, playing guitar, and thinking nothing particularly nice about me.
It was more disinterest at first glance than love at first sight.
But friendship grew, he broke up with his girlfriend, and somehow, we became favorite friends for six years.
There are many reasons and factors that added up to six years of heart blindness. But the truth of the matter is that waiting is easy compared to choosing forever.
It takes courage to look at another person and believe his words that say “yes” when your insecurity fears there is a “no” lurking around the corner.
My mind knows he loves me, he will never leave me, and he is my forever love. But it takes time for the dull, dusty ruts in my heart to sprout and grow with the seeds of love.
A ministry that no one thinks can survive, a campus no one thinks will be reached, a church that is limping after a long history of trials, a girl who fears she is not worthy of love. These are the kinds of things he chooses. It is a mercy that this man of mine has an eye for a lost cause, a diamond in the rough, and a massive challenge all rolled into one.
I will always be glad I waited for the best person and the right moment to let love bloom. And when life brings long days, difficulties, or disagreements I remember the value of the lesson.
We still wait on love at times, even after almost twelve years of marriage. We can hope for it, and have faith that God will fill us with it, because love wraps itself around and fills to the brim the very purposes of God.
I looked at my friend and said the only things I knew to say: Love never fails. There is always hope. Just wait and see….
