Promises Kept

How things happen so quickly! When God moves, he moves big! So many promises kept over the past 90 days, so many answered prayers. He is a great God!

Amidst many of His promises kept, He reminded me of one I made long ago…

In 1997 I promised my children’s father to not be against loving again. At the young age of 19, I loved him with all I had in me. He was to be my forever, yet for reasons I will never understand, he knew his time in this world was to be shorter than it should have been. So one cold February night, after yet another discussion about him dying, he made me promise to find love again, a promise that came with the stipulation that whoever he was to be, we had to be friends first.

Don’t get me wrong, I have tried to love like that again. I put years of effort into it on multiple occasions. But for whatever reasons, no love compared. Then I found one that I thought might, but for my own selfish reasons, discarded it for a much lesser kind of love. Never realizing that until I found a true love for myself, no other love was going to be enough.

Enter Shad…

He and I have been good friends for about four years. He was my neighbor for 17 years, but we were bad neighbors and didn’t converse those first 13 years. My best friend, who went to school with him, introduced us and we became fast friends. We are a lot alike. Not just in life, but in our values and our value of others. We maintained the line of friendship as we got closer.

Then I moved… The distance between friends can often seem lengthy so we would say I miss you every once in a while. But then one evening changed everything. He changed everything.

We had been conversing via text and he told me again that he missed me. I replied the same. He responded with ‘I hate it’. So in a moment with little intention behind the words, I text him ‘then change it’, thinking maybe we’d meet for lunch or dinner in the following week or so. But he made his intentions crystal clear when he unexpectantly showed up at my door 20 minutes later.

His love showed itself softly, sweetly, and without any conditions. He offered me a life of love I have never known before. A love I did not allow myself to believe could exist. A love founded in friendship. I allot what we now share together to that one courageous moment.

And 47 days later, he asked me to be his wife. One of my greatest friends… I have the honor of being his wife!

I get it now. I get why the stipulation came with the promise. My children’s father didn’t want just any love for me, but a love that will most surely sustain itself over time. And with great joy, I declare I have finally kept my promise.

And now I have an even greater one to keep!