Bring Him Home...

Nothing can truly prepare you for deployment. No number of pep talks, encouraging words from other people, or even coffee dates with friends can prepare you for the lonely days and nights, the anxiety felt when waiting for those phone calls or even a text. But the truth is, that's ok. Deployments are hard, it's hard to be away from the person you love for months on end, especially with so many unknowns staring you in the face. There are scary moments and happy moments, but it is all worth it because in the end he comes home.

Through the first two months of 2016, I dealt with the love of my life being over 2,000 miles away from me in a foreign country. We fought 14 hour time differences, sleepless nights, and long days. Skype and Facebook became our confidants as we messaged and talked as often as we could. Finally, the day came that he would fly across the water and come home to me.

On the day of Tyler's homecoming, I was a nervous wreck. It's true what they say, you spend hours that day trying to look like a perfect lady, but the minute you see him walking towards you, you're willing to drop-kick anyone who gets in the way. While he flew 17 hours to get back to North Carolina I drove 6 hours up the coast to a new place and a new culture that was totally foreign to me.

When I arrived at Camp Lejeune the sights of miles of fences decorated in colorful "Welcome Home signs greeted me. The guards at the main gate had o doubt what I was there for and as they waved me through I couldn't help but stop breathing for a second. The reality of the new world I was about to enter terrified me and excited me, all at the same time. Driving down the long and dark road that entered Lejeune I breathed and thought about the fact that in only an hour I would finally be in the arms of the man I loved and have waited months for.

My best friend and I stood in the dark, shivering from the cold and excitement of everything going on around us. After what seemed like forever, we finally heard excited cheers as other wives and fiances met their men in uniform. I frantically searched the crowd for Tyler, but couldn't find him. You would think that I would have no problem picking out the 6'5" cowboy from Arizona in a crowd of Marines, but they all looked exactly the same. As I looked to the left and my friend looked to the right I felt anxious and afraid. And then I saw him.

He stood on the end of the sidewalk and we stood there for a while and just looked at each other. Then he walked towards me and wrapped me in his arms. There is nothing, nothing at all, like that first embrace. All of the tension and anxiety and sadness that had been building up over the months that he was away melted off of me.

As I sit here writing this I am, once again looking forward to another one of those wonderful embraces in just a little over a month when he returns home again. Nothing prepares you for the man you love being away. The days are never easy, and the goodbyes will always be the hardest thing that you will ever have to do. In the end, though, they are so worth it, because, in the end, he comes home.

Update

The past three weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. The past three weeks have also been three of the best weeks of my entire life. Over the next few days I will slowly be posting updates and sharing with you all about the events of the past three weeks. Thank you so much to everyone who has continued to check up and look for new posts, I promise that in the next week you will not be dissapointed.

Impossible...

Boy. Girl.
Country. City. Desert. Ocean.
Cowboy. Musician. Athlete. Adventurous.
Dancer. Singer. Actor. Nerd.
Digging trenches. Riding bulls.
Playing with dolls. Drinking Starbucks.

A summer.
A camp.
Horse. Desert.
A glimpse of the future.
Exchanged smiles.

College.
Dating.
Introduced.
Friends.
Brother and sister.
A bond.
A feeling.
Wondering. Feeling. Thinking.
Relationships ending.
Friendship lasting.
Inseparable.

Possibly? Maybe?
Only thoughts. Never words.
Impossible.

Days. Months. Years.
She. College student.
He. Military bound.
Phone calls. Text messages.
Surprise visits.
Hugs. Conversations.
Feelings. Dreams.
Impossible.
Tears. Prayers.

Trials. Support. Protecting.
Graduation.
Re-united.
Smiles. Hugs. Realization.
Knowing.
Only thoughts. Only desires.
Impossible.

She. Finishes school.
He. Deploys.
Late Skype calls.
Wishing. Dreaming.
One night.

More than friends? No
Maybe. Could we?
Yes.
Like? No. Oh.
Love.
Best friends.
Soulmates.
Impossible becomes possible.
Reaching out. Taking the chance.

Best friends. Lovers. Soulmates.
Answered prayers.
Smiles.
This is forever.
Impossible. No. Possible.

And Lord, Make Him My Best Friend...

If someone had told me six months ago that before the year was over I would fall in love with my best friend and end up dating him, I definitely would have laughed at them. I've been in a few relationships since high school and if there is one thing that they have taught me it is this, don't get your hopes up.

For quite a while I had felt like I was weird or out of place. I was never asked to anything, I didn't go out on dates, and I was actually ok with that. I fought with the discontentment and the feeling of worthlessness for most of my college career, but when I returned to school this fall those feelings were long gone, and I found myself seeking contentment in the plan that God had for me and not what I wanted.

Here is something else that I have been learning lately. When you ask God for something...He listens. It doesn't mean that He will give you what you want at that exact moment, it may take weeks or months, sometimes even years. In my case it was years. Years of praying for God to bring me the right man. It wasn't until I learned to be content in my singleness, though, the God decided to make my dreams come true.

I would love to say that my love story is different and unique, and in some ways it is, but the basic story line is similar to many others. Despite that fact, it is still the most beautiful love story I have ever read, because it is mine.

I met Tyler on a crisp October afternoon. He was hanging out with friends and I was introduced to him by the young man I was dating at the time. When I first met him I thought he was a rough cowboy who was too full of himself. Looking back, I can't say that I would change my mind about my first impression of him. But, despite popular opinion, people change and first impressions can be wiped away when relationships develop. Through our many conversations about how we met, i've come to learn that Tyler's first impression of me was fairly similar to my first impression of him. Funny how time changes people.

Tyler and I stayed very, very close through college, even after he left to join the Marine Corp during our Sophomore year. We were like brother and sister, but we had a very special bond. He was one of my best friends, always there when I needed him. Willing to give advice and protect me. There was not one day that I did not thank God for our friendship because he was a constant in my life when many other things were falling apart. That is something that now, looking back, I see as a huge sign.

I had always asked God to let me fall in love with my best friend, someone who was always there for me. I guess God doesn't just listen to our prayers, He follows through with them too. Maybe not in the timing that we had wanted. Maybe days, months, or years. For me, it was years. Years of praying and searching and waiting until one day God told me to look up in a room full of people and I noticed Tyler in a way I never had before. It was in that moment that I saw God's answer to prayers. That was the day I fell in love with my best friend.

Sending the Letters

If someone had told me six months ago that I would be at the stage in my life that I am right now, I would have laughed in their face. Never, in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that I would graduate from college, go to Disney, and fall in love with my best friend all in the same week.

They say that your whole life can change in the span of one second. I never realized how true that was until December 16 after my last final exam was done and I drove off of campus. The whole world was laying in front of me, I had limitless opportunities. Little did I know that they were about to get better.

2016 is going to be the busiest, most exciting, happiest year of my entire life, and I really can't think of a better way to record the memories from it than by blogging about it. With college behind me and many adventures ahead I want to dedicate this year's blog posts to the things that are going on in my life right now. This year I will be sharing stories with you of job hunting, vacations, and falling in love.

This year, the letters are getting sent.

The End of Another Chapter

This week I will graduate from college...

Those words still seem so unreal to me.

I've been asked so many times this last week how I feel about graduating, what my plans are, what do I want to do with my degree. I'll be honest...I have no idea.

I really don't feel anything quite yet except for complete shock that the day I have waited four and half years for is just in front of me staring me in the face. I want to be excited and happy, but there are butterflies in my stomach. I want to be anxious or nervous, but it never comes.

I am sure that on Wednesday at 11:35 it will all finally hit me. I'm sure that I'll cry, happy tears, and take a moment to just walk around campus one last time. I'm sure I'll feel relieved and happy all at the same time. Those feelings just aren't here yet, and that's ok.

This week I was asked one very interesting question, though. One that I did have a definite answer to.

"So, you're graduating in a week. What have you been thinking about lately?"

The question hit me. The fact that someone would ask that blew me away. What was I thinking about? So many things, but there was one thing that had been on my mind for weeks, something that I had never told anyone about.

Right after graduating high school I came to college a very different person than I had been in high school. I had been through several trials and been saved, and God was constantly teaching me new things. About two weeks after my graduation I was living in California working as a nanny. One day I received an e-mail from someone I had gone to high school with for a while. Most of the e-mail didn't mean anything to me, but being the kind of person who lives to prove people wrong and accept any challenge that I am given there was one phrase of that e-mail that has stuck with me to this day.

"So you're going to college in the fall. Good luck. You'll never make it."

I took that as my biggest challenge yet.

I shared with that person that the phrase from that e-mail was what had been on my mind. Not because I was thinking of giving up or giving that person the satisfaction of what they had told me, but  because I knew that on a week I would prove that person totally wrong.

In four days I will graduate from college and receive my degree. The road was not easy, but no one ever said that it would be. I have overcome many obstacles and trials to get where I am today, and I am thankful. To the person who told me I could never do it, thank you. Thank you for motivating me to succeed, go to college, and finish strong.

The Beauty of a Story...

As many of you may know November is National Adoption Month. I didn't want to post this until after Veteran's Day in order to not take away from the profound importance of the holiday.

Adoption is a very very close and personal thing to me. Without adoption my life would have been very different. I can say that my adoption story is different than most, but I believe that it is a story of God's grace and providence. I was not adopted from a broken home. I was not put up for adoption because the money was not there and there was just no way. I was adopted because the Lord put a burden and a love in the heart of my biological mother to give me opportunities that I would not have had in a single parent family. I was not given up for adoption, I was blessed to have the opportunity to have a Christian two-parent home where I had opportunities that many kids my age did not have.

Growing up I never doubted that I was loved. I never felt abandoned, but I always knew that there was someone out there who loved me unconditionally and I was determined to meet that person someday. I would write stories about what it would be like to me my biological mom and how excited I would be. As an 8 year old I wrote about how we would go to lunch and take lots of pictures and go shopping, simply because those were the things that my family did quite often.

When I was a Senior in High School I turned 18, and the door to be able to find my biological mother opened, but I was nervous and scared and unsure. I was also facing a lot of changes with graduating and transitioning to college, along with spending a summer away from home working as a nanny. I put it off and continued to do so through my first semester of college.

On the weekend of my 19th birthday I returned from a trip with my family to find a Facebook message waiting for me, from my biological grandmother, and so began the amazing experience of connecting with my family. The emotions that were packed into those months that led up to our meeting for the first time are impossible to put into words. The night before I flew to Seattle I didn't sleep a wink, I was so excited and so nervous.

The day that I met my biological mom was the best day of my entire life. Seeing her for the first time was amazing. Of course there were lots and lots of tears. The few days that we had together were so special and so amazing. We went to lunch, and we did take lots of pictures, well Grandma did ;), and we went shopping. It's been almost four years since I met them and they have been the most wonderful years of my life. Having a connection with my biological family is truly magical.

Sadly, many times adoption stories are very heartbreaking to begin with, I am incredibly blessed that mine is so beautiful. Mine is truly a part of my testimony of God's goodness to me. I am beyond thankful for the HUGE family that God has given me. It is so fun to try to explain to people how it is possible for me to be the fourth of ten kids. The love in my heart was never split, it has grown immensely over the years.

During National Adoption Month I always encourage people to ask questions and get answers. Ask people their stories, get connected, and become educated. Most importantly we must pray for children who are waiting to be adopted. Maybe the opportunity for you to open your heart and your home to a child in need is one that God would desire for you to have. Adoption doesn't always have a happy beginning, but it can certainly have a beautiful ending.