no one ever warned me how strange it would be, to be engaged to be married and not yet married. it is a strange, anchorless kind of limbo that i never expected. when your heart is in one place and your body in another, where do you call ‘home’? how do you sweep yourself out of the crannies of your childhood house, out of all the corners you have been drifting in to for the last twenty years of your life? what kind of irony is it that wonders how you can box up your life and fit it into a moving truck, but recognizes that your life is already there, waiting for you, needing no luggage…just the love which you gave him long ago?

all things will change
we wait for the rain
and the promise remains
(josh garrels.jacaranda tree)

the Promise remains. the gold promise that encircles the finger on my left hand…yes. but there is a Promise still more precious than that–although i confess that is sometimes hard to remember, hard to comprehend, even hard to treasure. there is the Promise of God’s faithfulness. His love, His guidance. His strength. and while the reality is that the promise of marriage results in the kind of limbo that i described above, it is also a reality that God’s Promise can only act as an anchor, which is steady. always. it is not confused or hidden by periods of uncertainty, of transition. the Promise remains, because our God remains the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

one month from today (or yesterday…it is nearing midnight and i will probably not get this posted before the clock turns), this strange experience known as ‘engagement’ will be over…the finish line (the starting line) is very much in sight. and yet, most of the time, it still feels very far away. one month is a long time to live in limbo. but i am thankful for the Promise, that God is faithful to accomplish His will in us, that He is our place not only of refuge but of habitation. wherever ‘home’ may be, my true home ought to be at His feet. i pray that, wherever i am physically, wherever my heart may be, that i will find my home in Him in the next month, and in all of the months and the years and the decades to come…