Just do the Things

 So much has happened since I wrote my last humble post. I feel like a lot of people say that and they usually mean that a season has changed or they took up a new hobby or lost a pet, I’ve done the same thing. And not that those things don’t seem big sometimes (not making fun of you if you’ve said it). I just really mean it. I got engaged, planned a wedding, got married, changed my name, went on a honeymoon and saw some pretty places with a husband, and came back to so much good and hard and transition and moving. And that only in THREE months, ha! I’m not entirely sure what you need to hear today, reader. But I know it’s time for me to dust off the keyboard and write. 

There’s been so many touching moments in the last couple of weeks that it would be a long post if I started to try and recount them all. I think I just want to touch on one for now. But it’s a good one, I promise. I mean, it involves my amazing man on our honeymoon, so it’s got potential:

In 2014 I started writing to my future husband. That would make me 19 then. I don’t really even remember why I started or what prompted it. But I specifically went and bought a separate journal (black and more manly than all the others :). Sometimes I was more consistent than others, some years the pages built, some not so much. I’d write prayers, thoughts, letters, maybe even just hard times, or wondering what the future might look like, or hopes of what we could do together. There were times I knew that I needed to pray for him, at other times I kinda told him “well, I guess I should go on living life as if you don’t exist.” Everything in between. At times I did despair and would think what if I never get married, what would be the purpose of all of this? But on I went. At some point probably around that same time, I started praying for my future husband whenever I noticed it was 11:11 as well. Short, sweet, random prayers. But on I went. 

I could have stopped at any point over the last 8 years, and he wouldn’t have known; I could have thought it was silly and tossed the journal. And there was a time that I did tear out numerous pages, because they had become something that I didn’t want for them to be. Now, I can’t tell you the depth that those pages hold for me. Eight years ago, my now husband wasn’t walking with Jesus yet. He wasn’t the man that I wanted nor would have needed then. But he is NOW. And I remember specifically writing about that at one point. What if you aren’t already all of this? What if these prayers actually make a difference? I wish I could go back in time and know exactly what was taking place in his life as I was praying about so many things that were happening in my own life. I can’t go back, but I can see now that even I wouldn’t have been ready to grow in the ways that were needed for vulnerability and relationship. Neither of us thought that we would be in our mid twenties before getting married, neither of us planned to move to a new location around the same time and end up staying. Neither of us could have known all that was in store. 

And neither can you. All those words, a full journal of them,  filled with all these far off unknowns for what seemed like so many years. That, I think, may still be the most touching memory from our honeymoon. The day after becoming man and wife I gave them to him. The first notebook to my “future husband”, my “Mr. Amazing”. The second notebook to him, by name, that I started after the first journal was finished and I felt was an appropriate time during our dating days to pray into him as my potential future husband(I felt pretty sure, but had to keep holding loosely). As he took them into his hands and read the first entry, both us couldn’t help but be tearful. ALLL these years, and now, finding their home in him. So many prayers answered, that only I knew about. So many coming true, through him. 

As it usually goes, and what it usually comes down to is this: Jesus is so kind. 

And I want to encourage you to do the things. Some of them may seem pointless. Some of them take years longer than you anticipated. Some of them are hard, like when you’re writing another letter to someone you feel like might not exist at Christmas time, again. Some of them are so very good. I’ve cried over and missed that man, looooong before I ever knew him. But to give them to him after I knew every word was to him, it made it far exceedingly worth it. And you know what? I wish I had done more. 

And that’s how it is now, too. I’m a wife. I’ve never been that in my life. Here I am now, though. I can get caught up in all the things that I feel like I should be better at, or know more about, or wish I didn’t struggle with, but that doesn’t really help. I just need to do the things. And often it’s the little things. If I find some small way to love my husband well today, if I just take time to embrace being a wife, if I think, ya know, I’ve stopped praying for my “future husband” but haven’t been so good at praying FOR MY HUSBAND, then I need to do that. And I’ll probably wish that I had done more of that, too.