and breathe

I feel like my life is out of control. Like I am spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and if I don't just stop for a minute, I'm going to get dizzy and pass out. I feel like I just need to take a brief moment to catch my breath. The last month has been one moment of unbelievable joy after the other, it has been great, it is great but I just need to take a moment to check out of it and into me. Don't get me wrong my life is wonderful, glorious, amazing and I only have good things to say about it. I am so happy, so very very happy. I don't actually remember a time in my life where I have been this happy but the joy of this season comes from something other than the romance of it all, it comes from discovering me.

I just swirled naturally into this new life, this beautiful magical world of romance and joy, the ease of the transition from single to couple surprised me, he surprised me. It was like one day I woke up and there was this amazing man in my space and he just wanted to love me, all I needed to do was say yes. I thought it would be hard, I thought it would mean losing myself in him, in our relationship, I thought he would want something from me that I couldn't give but it wasn't like that at all. I thought I would feel trapped, stifled, bound, like the freedom to be the woman I was created to be would be taken away but it wasn't like that at all. I thought I would need to put on a mask, to play a version of me that suited him, to pretend I was happy but it wasn't like that at all. I thought I would have to compromise who I was and what I believed in, that my relationship with God would suffer, that all of my relationships would suffer but it wasn't like that at all. It's so different, so strange, so far removed from anything I have ever known and I LOVE IT!

I love it. I love this life. I love this man. I love the woman that this relationship allows me to be. I don't pretend here, I don't pretend to be something I am not, I don't pretend that things don't matter to me when they do or do matter to me when they don't. I don't try to create a space for myself to fill in a life that I don't belong in. I just turn up and be me. It's like there is a different space here, a space that belongs to me, space in his world that only I can fill and space in my world that only he can fill. Everyday I am learning something new about myself, about the way I care for people, about the way I love, about the way I think, about the things that are important to me, about the woman I am becoming. Everyday he shows me another part of myself that only he can see, it's amazing. I love it.

It is extraordinary to watch as your dream comes true. To sit inside the middle of the biggest prayer on your heart coming true and to watch it unfold around you. I have almost been afraid to look in case it wasn't real so instead I have been spinning and swirling and twirling but now that I have stopped and can breathe, I am fascinated by what I see. I see a man who is my best friend, a man who cares for me, who cherishes me, a man who at the end of the day just wants to love me, I see a man who is seeking God, a man who loves God, who honours God. I see a man that I am learning and growing with, a man I want to keep learning and growing with. When I look some more I see myself, I am a woman coming alive, letting my heart be free to love, a woman allowing myself for the first time to fall in love with a man who will love me back, giving myself permission to be happy. I see our future and I see me and when I see all of this I am happy and free...

It's amazing what you can see when you stop to catch your breath. We all get lost in the twirling and swirling of life, whether it is good or bad, our lives are so busy that we can get lost in the stuff, we are so busy trying to live that we forget to take time out to breathe, to sit and stop, to be still and look at the dance we are in, to check whether the life we are dancing in is real, to see if we are being ourselves or poor versions of someone else.. I think it's important to stop, to sit and to look, to take time to appreciate this season, to look at the lessons you are learning, to see whether the dance you are dancing is helping you to become the person you were meant to be.

I pray that this week, as Easter approaches we take the time to stop and look at all we have been given by God. Time to look at the dance we have chosen, to see whether we are dancing closer to or further away from the people we were created to be xx