I remember sitting in the pink-carpeted room of my childhood and wondering what my future husband was doing just that minute.  I wondered how far away he lived, or if he was only blocks down the road.  I considered the possibility that I had even met him already.  Then I went back to practicing words for the spelling bee as a boy in California won blue ribbons at county fairs for his prize pig and headed to the gym for a basketball game.

As I grew old enough to date and consequently have my heart broken, my hope in Prince Charming, or even a younger version of Tom Hanks, dwindled.  Then I became an adult and it all but disappeared.  Many of the guys I met were not very nice.  A few acted like they had never known a woman worth respecting, and I wondered where their mothers were.  I moved to New York just as a nice guy was leaving the city after a two-month internship.  As I adjusted to my new life, he hopped around the globe: Hong Kong, Singapore, London.  After a couple of years of messy dating, I quietly admitted the possibility to myself (and my parents, who vehemently disagreed) that I might not end up with anyone.  I came to an equally quiet peace with this statement, as if all the years of disappointment and brokenness and tears had exhausted me of any more emotion on the subject.  From here on out, I said to Jesus, it’s just you and me.

He looked around the next corner of my life and, I believe, laughed delightedly. Around that time, the nice guy moved back to New York.

I had never been in love before, though there were a few times I would have sworn I was head over heels and vowed that this guy was The One.  Secretly, I hoped I was wrong, because if this was the best love got, then…well, it kind of sucked.  Then I went to church one night and met a nice guy.  A couple of weeks later, we ran into each other again at a bar.  That night, we became friends.  And after a few weeks of talking and emailing as such, I realized that I was a little too excited to see the bold letters of a new message in my Gmail account if this guy was just my friend.  But I had to wait a year…something about perfect timing, I think God said?  Anyway, I learned in that time that while I could live without this man, I would rather not.  And we became friends, and I trusted him.  And one night we crashed a party and made out on a couch and the rest is history.

Part of my earlier surrender to singleness had involved the realization of just how rare it is to find someone who matches you without being identical to you; who really gets you and decides to embrace you rather than run; who, with one look, allows you to both take yourself seriously and laugh at yourself in equal and appropriate measure.  Who has seen you without your makeup (literally and metaphorically) and stays. I never really believed, not deep down, that I would ever feel as at home with someone else as I did on my own.  I wanted to–but I didn’t think I would.

But I did, with him.  The man I walked toward two weeks ago, this man in a tux waiting at the end of an aisle and thirty-three years.  This is the man I am willing to entrust with my vulnerability, with my future.  When I question the idea of having children (and this may sound shocking, given past statements…like calling them assholes), I know that I just can’t miss meeting the little people who will be half his–endowed with a mixture of his kindness and good sense and maybe just a touch of my passion (this is how my kind husband refers to my temper).  This man understands and reciprocates my inability to get through our first non-honeymoon week without getting Mexican takeout three times.  He gets silly with me, a desperately underrated act in this world, and indulges my propensity for made-up words and apartment dancing.  He keeps a level head when all about him (read: ME) are losing theirs.  He holds his arms out for me first thing in the morning and as soon as he walks through the door in the evening, a ritual I plan to keep even when I have to wheel toward him and bump our chairs together rather than be spun around in the air.

When the monotony of daily life threatens to loom larger than what’s really important, I will remember walking down the aisle to my husband, both of us sweating profusely in the August humidity but he–as ever–grinning past it.  I’ll remember a few minutes later, when we stole away to grab a quick dinner by candlelight and I felt like we had just pulled off the coup of a lifetime.

Sally groaned, but she couldn’t help but smile.  How on earth had she managed to attract a man who loved life and never seemed to worry?  She hoped she never forced that purity out of him. –J. Courtney Sullivan, Commencement

How, indeed.  For all the reasons I believe in God, here is another: the convenience of having someone to thank.  Because there are some coups that I am just not capable of pulling off myself–and I am living one now.