.: on choosing to love...

i should be in bed falling asleep right now next to my already gone husband. but i was writing in my journal and now have lots of thoughts running through my brain that are keeping me awake. in an effort to stem the flow and go to sleep, i'm sharing them.

over the past year i've had a few people ask me at different times how i decided, or knew that i should marry matt. that's a very good question. very good indeed.

choice. that's how.

choice, you say? yes, choice.

before meeting matt or really dating at all, i always wondered, how on earth could you ever love someone enough or know that you wanted to marry and spend eternity with someone?

how would i know that feeling when i felt it? could i even feel that feeling for someone?

it seemed so bizarre and foreign to me. it's not like i didn't love people, i love a lot of people. but i had never felt that kind of love.

then i met matt. he was sweet and silly and kind and had more patience than anyone i had ever met. from the beginning it just kind of made sense to me. i resisted for a while, and patient matt waited for me to get my stuff together. {thank goodness!} a few months into knowing him, talking constantly, and only a month or so into dating exclusively i told him i loved him.

he made me feel special and beautiful and happy. he was strong and genuine and faithful and good. love wasn't something that just happened to me. something out of my control that i couldn't stop. i came to know the kind of man he was, and i grew and chose to love him for those things.

besides family and close friends, most people don't know the anxiety i went through in choosing to marry matt. and when i say anxiety, i mean anxiety. as in non-functioning, not able to work, focus, eat etc. all of the sudden my twitter-pated, lovey-dovey summer had come to a screeching halt. my life came to a screeching halt.

i've always leaned toward the more worrisome side of things, and been prone to be anxious about decisions, events, changes etc etc etc. but i was soooo not prepared for this. i would wake every morning to a tangible flush of anxiety going through my body. i could barely make myself get up out of bed and go to work, where i was totally useless. i pretty much just cried all day. i told matt about my anxiety, feeling even more anxious that he was going to be experiencing my "crazy" very soon, see what he was getting into, and take his cue and exit stage left for good.

but bless his wonderful heart, he didn't.

i had been praying about what to do before. do i marry him? do i not? is he "the one"? all that good stuff. and of course, still not knowing. making such an important decision i wanted to know FOR SURE, that this was the one for me. you know, i needed an angelic visit with rainbows and butterflies and harps and birds carrying a banner across the sky that said "yes, marry matt! he is the one!"

hello...that is not life.

a very wise and close friend of mine has always told me "life is a choice". happiness is a choice. sometimes it realllly drove me nuts. i just wanted to be annoyed and ticked off, but then it was my fault?

this is exactly what i'm learning over and over again.

who i married was my choice. just like i got to know matt so well and chose to love him...i chose to marry him. just like he chose to not give up on me when my crazy side reared its ugly head. we made a conscious, deliberate choice. to love each other and marry each other and spend eternity together. that may not sound romantic to some people, but it's so romantic to me.