Twenty years ago this coming Sunday, Bill Clinton was president, Seinfeld was the show of choice, Spice girls were all the rage and this man kissed me for the first time.

It began what has become this whirlwind life that we share.  This man…he can make me laugh harder than anyone in the world.  He is ferocious in his beliefs and his character makes me analyze every decision I make to ensure that I am sticking with the values I say I posses. He is who he is…anyone who knows him well knows that.  There is no vague understanding of him and I’ve found that you either love him or…you don’t.  I’ve had  family and long time friends of his tell me I softened him in our years together and that makes me chuckle…because he is far kinder than I am, gives people second and third chances in a way that I never would.  He forgives easily and trusts without reason. He reminds me that people are human and that sometimes I need to cut them a break–not my strong suit.  I see him get teary-eyed rarely but always during three things:  Watching his children experience big JOY-filled moments, most times when Bill Snyder speaks, and on every single Christmas Eve when he reads to his kids about the birth of Jesus.

Now, to detour just a bit. I started this blog promising myself a couple of things…that I wouldn’t make it a burden to update and that I’d always be real.  No one needs fairytale BS that doesn’t tell the other side so please hear me when I say…he has his downside.

For example, he will shove 182 extra things in the already full garbage can to avoid having to take it out–there is ONLY SO MUCH trash bags can hold–it’s simple physics, why can’t he get this?

He says things that make his daughters and I roll our eyes in pure exhaustion such as…upon walking into the house at night after being gone all day…

“GIRLS, why is every goddamn light in the house on?!?!  I didn’t have to use headlights when I hit our neighborhood because this place is a freaking BEACON OF LIGHT.  Our neighbors had negative electric bills last month because they simply lit their homes with the overflow of the massive amount of lumens radiating from ours.  Are you all BARBARIANS?!?!? And why are there 54,000 hair ties and random pieces of trash on the floor?  (side note: actual number is 2, but 54,000 seems reasonable) We basically live in a hovel.”

Also…

“How is this hard??? Everything has a place and there is a place for everything!”

Or…

“I’m going to try saying this one more time…slowly… YES THERE IS A CORRECT WAY TO LOAD A DISHWASHER AND APPARENTLY I AM THE ONLY ONE IN THE HOUSE WHO KNOWS THIS SECRET CODE!  LET ME SHARE IT WITH YOU AGAIN! People, you are all BARBARIANS!”

(are we all seeing the BARBARIAN theme he likes to run with?)

If ANY of us get sick he will say the following.  Every.single.time:

“oh yeah…I think I had that last week.  I just didn’t say anything.”

Side note to all women:  Who really believes a man got a cold and “didn’t say anything?”  When you get done laughing, please keep reading.

Now that I feel like I’ve been clear that I’m not holding him up to some perfect image I’ll get back to that kiss 20 years ago. It was horribly timed at a very tumultuous time in my life and although he will swear that he is the only one in this marriage that possesses an ounce of sentimentality I will tell you that I vividly remember it.  I remember it because I literally begged God  “NOT YET.”  I had prayed for a future with a man that was everything I knew this man would be but at that moment I wasn’t ready.

Which is why I’m certain God brought him because I probably had some extreme stupidity heading my direction that I would have, most likely, walked through willingly.

“Not yet.”

I love it when we try to get all bossy with God.

“Hurry up. Slow down. Not yet. Please! Why? Why not?”

And He simply requests for us to trust.  Trust that He sees us, knows us and loves us. That He has our best in mind. That He is walking with us and that the timeline is what He wants, because, well… He kinda gets the BIG PICTURE in a way we can’t.

My best friend Jolene once told me that more than two decades after she first met her husband Jeff, she STILL gets all giddy with excitement when she hears him walk in from work.  Nobody tell him…Jeff gets a big head about stuff like that…but anyway, I loved that so much and I remember thinking….”ME TOO.”

That emotion alone could lead someone to think that God had heard my prayer and answered it.

BUT again: God didn’t just hear me ask to be giddy in love…God heard me ask for a MAN.  A man that would teach me what it looks like when he serves his family on a daily basis. One that willingly puts us first and would do anything to protect us and provide for us.  God knew what I meant before I did and He knew that, timing be damned, he had that man for me.

And for that, I am so very, very, thankful.