You are an exception.

I wonder if everyone in love feels this way... if I'm experiencing the kind of love people try to write poems and books and movies about.

I wonder if everyone in love feels like an exception....

 

Because I used to wonder if love happened like it happens in John Green books, with tenacity and chance and abandon. I wondered if there was a real-life love as enduring and stubborn as Allie and Noah's. I wondered  if love as heartbreaking and soul stirring as Jack and Rose's existed....

And now I'm feeling and living and breathing this kind of love that I don't know how to describe.

It's so quiet and constant and calm, like a favorite sweater you pull over your head, and it falls into place in an instant. 

Its so loud and exciting and wonderful like the song that plays during the best part of your favorite movie, so moving and exactly perfect for the moment that you just want to rewind and replay it a million times, and find out where the composer lives so you can throw your arms around them and thank them for the beauty they so eloquently captured.

It's so awful. It's truly terrifying because you try to imagine your life without this person and you actually, literally cannot do it. 

It's so absolutely wonderful, because as you're trying to imagine your life without this person, and you can't, you realize that you are an exception. You realize that this thing you're experiencing, this beautiful give and take with another person that you hope and pray never ends, is an exception.

And at that realization, you're left with this feeling of awe...you feel so small and so incredibly blessed, and the words "thank you" bubble up inside and before you know it you're down on your knees saying it over and over to the God who saw fit to write you the most perfect story, more perfect than you could have ever written for yourself. You look around at your whole life and despite everything, all the heartache you've felt and the brokenness that comes with this life, you're struck by the beautiful exchange that Jesus made, and you wonder out loud how He is so good when you are so not.

And you realize that all along, it wasn't about the people in John Green's books, or Allie and Noah, or Jack and Rose that you so desperately wanted your life to be like. You realize that the composer, the author, the creator of your story is so present and so intimately aware of what you need that He provides it for you, that He makes an exception for each and every one of us, in absolutely every part of our lives.  

And maybe I'm a hopeless romantic. Maybe this is just white noise. But maybe, I am an exception. And maybe you are too. And maybe there is a perfect "one" for all of us. And maybe sometimes there's not. And maybe there's a reason for absolutely everything that happens to you. 

Whether you're falling in love, or working, or waiting, or learning, or travelling, or just being still....remember that you are so fully  known and loved and that He is working in you, and through you and for you. 

And when His hand holds the pen, there is a story being written that is worthy of all praise.