A Dream Realized

This will be a more personal than theological entry and I thank you in advance for your indulgence. My scarce writing on this blog is largely because I’ve been busier than usual. In addition to the usual school, work, parenting routine I’m preparing to marry my fiancé, Josh Clark, in just two months! (http://www.joshandkarlene.com/) I’ve been single for over 8 years now with only a couple of less-than-wonderful dates in all that time, until meeting and falling in love with Josh a year ago. This weekend marks the anniversary of when we attended the Off-the-Map conference in Seattle and “it all started.” We’re leaving tomorrow to attend this same conference, and I guess I’m feeling reflective about how much things have changed this year.

I worked hard at not being a desperate single person, at not putting my life on hold to find a man, at not indulging in much self-pity, and in making a good life for my daughter and me. But even so, I remember poignantly how alone I would feel in my bed at night, exhausted from a long day’s responsibilities, longing for someone who could just help with the laundry. So many years of singleness after years of an empty marriage made me wonder sometimes what love was really like. I would watch my friends co-parenting their children in the way I might look at a National Geographic magazine portraying some foreign culture. And sometimes I would dream of meeting someone who would be the right fit for marrying a divorced-single-mother-pastor-church-planter with a pre-teen daughter, realizing that such a man might not exist.

So it was a year ago that I looked with wonder into the eyes of Josh Clark and started to realize that he just might exist after all. And I discovered with even more amazement that I could be the woman of someone else’s dreams too. As our lives are coming together I am finding the daily joy of watching a dream unfold – the dream of loving and being loved in return, the dream of sharing life with a wonderful person who makes a great partner in the daily working out of life and faith. I’m filled with gratitude and thankfulness that this dream has become reality!