Funny Valentine

The year of twenty-seventeen has been a whirlwind. I certainly never would have conceived, when I resolved to 'put myself out there more',  that I would have found and fallen in love with the man I've been waiting my whole life to meet and fall in love with before Valentine's Day. It's a testament to a Gracious Father, whose provident care is omniscient and so far outside the realm of our understanding that His great gifts are better than what we ever could have imagined. This is saying a lot, because thirty years of hopes and dreams can feel like a heavy burden and an unrealistic measure to keep towing around. However, I have experienced the overwhelming proof that we have a Father who listens to the tiniest whispers of our hearts and desires to fulfill them to overflowing.

It's not that I had some running checklist of traits that I was looking for, but an unquenchable desire for a whole-person unknown; until now. Over the years in lamenting my single-state with close friends, because even when you've surrendered this part of you it does not dispel loneliness, I have received the feedback that I needed to find someone who could "keep up with me." (Perhaps this seems less prideful when you put it in quotes?) Essentially, we're all looking for someone to run the race with, and if you're me, you're "running so as to win!" To have found someone who can not only merely keep up, but who challenges me and calls me forward with him is nothing short of miraculous. 

I asked Rob if I could publish a blog post featuring him and his response was, "Only if there was a picture of me literally in the center surrounded by a block of text because I can only stand to exist from now on wrapped in your love."

My Rob's stoic nature affords not only a sounding board, but a grounded rock upon which I have found the freedom to be more myself. He steadies me in a way I have never experienced, and has
essentially softened all the once hard edges of me and brought me into a new understanding of my capacity for love and loyal friendship. He is a kindred spirit, one who can communicate volumes with just a look. This friend; this love; this partner in crime has ushered me into a brave new world in which I am fully seen as I am and valued as such. 

To write such words, after a lifetime of waiting to have someone with whom I feel safe expressing my deep reservoirs of love is just very humbling now that I come to it. Rob is utter gift. I could never have imagined him to be as he is, and since he is now before me, I want nothing more than to cherish and nurture this great gift of our relationship. It is a new era for me, full of firsts, and I am incandescently happy to be sharing them with my Rob Stange, who has conquered the battlefield of my heart. 

So for the first time in my life, I have my own Funny Valentine.