Epilogue

Being married to the love of your life is not like dancing on clouds, or running across the milky way galaxy, in fact, I have no idea what to compare it to, because it is incomparable. The beginning, the literal honeymoon period is like heaven on earth:

Chillin on the beach with my sweet huz

chillin on a boat with my sweet huz

chillin at a waterfall with my sweet huz

chillin before parasailin with my sweet huz

chillin at sunset on the ocean with my sweet huz

We had the perfect honeymoon. And we had the perfect first few months of marriage, because we still believed that we could do no wrong. We stayed in bed all day on Saturdays and laughed when people said that the first year was the hardest. And then it was. And six months into our marriage I freaked out. I suddenly realized that I was tied to one person for the rest of my life and he was not at all the same person that I started dating. That person bought me flowers all the time and wrote me love notes and laughed at everything I said. This new person in my bed was so different; he farted all the time and we argued over who would do the dishes in our sink. At that point, if our commitment was to eachother and not to God, we would have failed. I would have run away from the situation, like ive done in so many others, and he would have drowned himself in some substance or another. Because God was working in our lives though, He taught us how to treat eachother with love and respect. He renewed our love for eachother, and made us see eachother through different eyes. See, I don't think that you can love a person until you can see them inside and out. Until youve seen them at their weakest, most unimpressive state. Until youve woken up next to bad breath and tried to go to the bathroom in the night only to find that they forgot to flush. Once youve seen all of that, and can still say that they are the most lovable human being on the planet, then you can have an accurate perception of where your life together will go. Until then, its only small talk.

Omar and I are learning to love eachother unconditionally, and in situations where other relationships would fail, we flourish. Weve chosen to be gentle with eachother's hearts, accepting of eachother's faults, and willing to work to change the parts of ourselves that are taking away from the whole of our relationship. We have gone from the deep infatuation of our engagement, to a lifelong commitment, centered around our authentic love for eachother and for God.

I wrote this in January of 2007, and its more true now than ever:

in song of soloman the beloved (the woman) urges her friends three times to "not arouse or awaken love until it so desires" and i completely understand why she is so persistent about it. all i want to do is tell all of the people around me in my loudest, boldest voice to WAIT FOR THIS, wait for the plan that God has for you, DONT WASTE YOUR TIME on anything else, it will come when both hearts have been prepared. and it is SO worth waiting for. but i know that this is one of those things that you have to figure out on your own, and when you do you'll want to shout it to everyone and no one will listen because they are still figuring it out on their own. conundrum.

To the many sweet souls who took time out of your lives to read this: Thank you.