This Year's Love...Three Years Ago

"This year's love had better last..." I was driving home last night when my XM radio started playing David Grey's Song. "Heaven knows it's high time," came the hopeful melody. I drove blindly and was taken back three years ago...

Under the Hawaiian moon, he and I danced barefoot in the sand. He had been training in missions and I impulsively hopped a plane to visit him. It was romantic--the whole day was. He picked me up at the airport, complete with a fragrant lei for my neck and love songs strategically placed on my seat. As we stared at one another over fresh sushi on the beach, my stomach was a sea of butterflies. I had never been romanced before. This was all new to me.

I was going to marry him. Or so I thought. I remember we prayed fervently to God for our impending nuptials. We did everything right--we prayed, we abstained, we churched together. This was it, wasn't it? What I did not expect when I prayed for God's Plan was a big fat "NO" from God. That's not the way it's supposed to work...or is it?

Looking back, I can see what He was doing, though I did not understand at the time. I was devastated for weeks after we broke up. The dream that we had built was gone. There was nothing in it's place. And so the Proverb goes, "Man makes his plans, but it is the LORD who guides his steps."

I see him from time to time and I always come back dazed. Dazed at the reality that there is no feeling, no love lost (if there is none lost, was it there to begin with?) nothing. I think about how devasted I was, and for what reason? I think about who I am now and was then, and I am taken aback that we ever dated to begin with. God guides to what He has planned for me, even though I make my plans. I rest comfortably in that thought.