Clandestine Confessions

“Before we go, I have something exciting to show you!”
We had just walked out the door of his house.
On our way to a café down the street that we mutually decided a few minutes earlier would be worth trying out.
He unexpectedly called earlier that day to say we were going to do dinner.
–
I will never allow myself to stop viewing spontaneous outings as the miracles they are.
I will never stop the tears from falling when I hang up the phone after a call like that.
I will never refuse to acknowledge the privilege it is to choose this reality.
No matter how far removed I am from the life when all of it was impossibilities…
–
My original plan for the night had been to simply drop off the mushroom powder I bought him.
Along with his favorite frozen pizza and one more beloved item…
“You are going to think I am absolutely crazy or the greatest with this gift,” I said standing at his kitchen table.
“Probably both,” he replied with a laugh.
I excitedly (and theatrically) presented him with it…
A jar of pickle juice.
“Wait, this is actually like the best, most thoughtful gift ever. Thank you.”
See people.
I’ll preach that until the day I die.
–
He had just about reached his car door when he turned around to look my way.
“And what would that be?”
“Take a look at the back of my car.”
I was holding out to tell anyone else of my news until I told him.
It is tradition for all things Utah related that he knows first – when I booked my flight back in February, when I was searching for apartments, when I actually got the apartment, when I crossed the state line, when I was handed the keys.
I shined my phone flashlight on the license plate.
“What?!?! You are officially official! Congrats!”
The excitement in his voice may have exceeded mine.
Making this moment all the more meaningful.
Be selective with who you open your life to.
It has the power to hurt or heal a moment.
–
“But hold up, you didn’t get the skier.”
My laughter quickly released.
“And how did I know that is the first thing you were going to notice?”
We were now getting into his car.
Me continuing to talk through the opened doors.
“Arches was the first national park I went to in Utah after I was at your house last summer – when I chased the sunset.”
Both of us now in our seats.
The car just started.
Huey Lewis and the News playing on the radio.
He adjusted the volume as I continued speaking.
“That place now signifies the day my life forever changed. When the life I now live became real. When I became so abundantly alive. It was the day I knew I needed to call this place home. So, it seemed only fitting.”
“And, I will admit,” he said. “The Delicate Arch is absolutely majestic. It is a good second choice.”
Heavy emphasis on the “second”.
A smile escaped him as he said it.
–
I am well aware my reaction to receiving this license plate was not “normal”.
But I am also well aware my path to get that license plate was not “normal”.
And those two things are correlated.
My emotional response a result of knowing all it took to get to that moment.
The pain, the trauma, the grief, the heartache.
The mistakes, the closed doors, the endings, the disappointments.
–
Not much of my life has made sense.
I have only just recently reached a place of accepting that.
And stopped driving myself crazy questioning it all every day – surrendering the need to know it all.
Choosing to be at peace regardless of whether or not the confusion found clarity.
And not coincidentally, only after my control yielded to faith, would it come.
–
With that plate in my hands, I now understood it all.
Why things happened as they did.
Why all of it was allowed.
Why I never received what I thought I wanted.
It was a physical symbol of redemption.
It was the purpose made tangible.
It was a dream I never knew I needed.
–
And I so deeply love how this most unexpected path I took is what is being used to transform me into the woman I knew I was always meant to be.
The one a version of me so deep in her brokenness, laying hopeless on her death bed, offered a yes to.
A yes that would call a vision she had of her into existence.
A yes that has since multiplied exponentially…
–
I have never been as blissful and fulfilled than I am now.
I have never been so in infatuated with being alive.
And I have never been so certain of the truth that is Romans 8:28.