the blessings of waiting
As of tomorrow, April 6, 2007, I will have been married for 11 months. Yep, you guessed it, I’m just ONE MONTH from celebrating my first wedding anniversary. WEDDING anniversary! Are you getting that? I’m married, and have been for almost a YEAR. How did that happen? I feel like it was just yesterday Caleb and I had only been dating a month! The day after that we were planning a wedding. Two days after that we had begun living happily ever after in a two-bedroom condo in Fullerton. And now I’m to believe its time to celebrate a year of marriage, even though by my calculations we’ve only been together four days!And yet, so much has happened in the last two years, I suppose I couldn’t possibly have gone through it all in less time. A year ago I took on a new name, a new home, a new job, and a new roommate. All those changes left me a bit off balance for a while as I tried to make sense of my new surroundings. But as I look back, even over this relatively short period of time, I find myself rather amazed at what’s transpired.
I cook at home now, regularly, and more than just macaroni and cheese or instant noodles. I get up at 5:45 every morning to work out (though am still not what they call “a morning person”). I weigh 16 pounds less than I used to. I’ve learned the names of every player on the Anaheim Angels baseball team. I’ve climbed mountains and combed deserts. I’ve been to Canada. I’ve discovered its OK to buy gifts right off someone’s Christmas wish list. I’ve learned to respond to “Mrs. Weston” and I’ve almost gotten used to the shiny rocks on my finger. I’ve learned more about the financial industry than I ever thought I’d know, and really ever wanted to know. I’ve decorated a Christmas tree with someone else’s ornaments, and found it still felt like home. I’ve made friends I didn’t have two years ago, good enough friends to hang out with at Denny’s on a school night. I’ve learned more about myself and my own shortcomings than I have in a long time. Its hard, but its good. And along with that, I’ve had the opportunity to experience being loved in spite of them. I’ve learned there are desserts out there that are not chocolate, but still tasty. I’ve learned that playing games can be fun. I’ve continued to learn how expensive life can be and that a budget IS freedom, but also that the important things in life aren’t really for sale anyway.
This past year has been a big year. It ranks up there with that first year in China, when everything was new and strange and fun and adventurous and stressful and unknown. I feel like I’ve spent this whole year getting my “sea legs,” so to speak. And the transition alone has left me regularly exhausted. I can’t say I’ve arrived at a state of total normalcy yet, though the surroundings are starting to feel familiar. I am getting used to waking up with a man in my bed, a man who drags me OUT of bed at 5:45 in the morning and makes me go to the gym. (He gets abused at first, but I’m always appreciative once I’ve woken up.) I’m getting used to my new job, though there’s still so much I don’t understand. There are people in my life who never even knew me as Heidi Hammer, and its weird, but helps me adjust to my new name. And it didn’t take me any time at all to learn to LOVE coming home at the end of the day to the one man who is even more the man of my dreams today than he was a year ago (in spite of his early morning cheeriness).
Maybe that’s the best part of this whole first year of marriage. I have learned and grown and been stretched and challenged. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve stared at the wall and wondered how I’d get through another day as tired as I was. But between the ups and downs, the one thing I have not ONCE done is doubted my decision to marry Caleb. I think that might be the best blessing of all. I waited a long time to get married (though not as long as some). I’ll celebrate my first anniversary just a month before I turn 32. And there were many times in those single years I doubted God’s goodness, I wondered if anyone would find me beautiful, and I could have made some hasty and wrong decisions about my future. But I love that I can say I waited for God’s provision. I love that I waited for Caleb and he waited for me. God did that. I know I am still very much a newlywed, and I have only begun to learn the volumes of lessons marriage will teach us. But I imagine the coming years will be infinitely better because I waited for Caleb, God’s choice for me.
Besides, how else would I ever have learned just how important Vladimir Guerrero is to the Angels?
