Less Than 4 Months!

I remember our second date because it's the night I truly started to like him.
It started at Dr. Bombay's, one of my favourite, quirky coffee shops in Atlanta. Nestled into a rather dark space and tucked away in Candler Park, Dr. Bombay's had rows and rows of $1 books and umbrellas hanging from the ceiling. The bathroom had pages from Grey's Anatomy on the walls.

Kris came and sat down next to me, rather than across from me. I still didn't know him well, but I grabbed his right arm to get a closer look at his tattoo.
"I'm an INFJ. Do you know what your Myers-Briggs is?" I asked him. We launched into what probably turned into an hour and a half long conversation about personality types. He talked about books and lent me Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I gave him Atlas Shrugged and a book of poems by one of my favourite poets, Sylvia Plath.
It was getting dark and I was tired of studying when he suggested taking a walk through Candler Park; it was right across the street. Say what you want about accompanying a man you've hardly met into a dimly lit park late at night, but I decided I really trusted Kris. I decided to go.
We walked through the park, the stars lit up better than I normally saw them in the city. The park was quiet - only a few passerby's. "It's really safe here," Kris assured me. We walked, and I thought about our date the night before. How we'd gotten locked into Oakland Cemetery because it was past dusk and I was scared of being caught in a graveyard after nighttime but Kris hopped the fence and raised his arms up to help me. I climbed the wall and fell into his arms. I caught his gaze before he lowered me down; it lingered for a second, and then my feet were on the sidewalk.

We got to a grassy part of the park next to a few small oak trees. We stood, we looked at each other, and I looked up at the stars, trying to distract myself from the obvious feelings I was starting to develop for a man I had thought would be just another date.
What normally might have been a typical second date conversation (Tell me about your siblings, where do you want to travel one day, blah) ended up turning into a nearly 4-hour conversation. Kris suddenly told me his entire story - his sad, lovely, beautiful story. And I did something I had never done for anyone before: Not even people I had dated in my longest relationships. I opened up and told him all of mine. I told him all of the ugly sides of me, the parts of me I hated, the secrets that ate away at me just a little and then some. I told him my thoughts on all of it. And when I finished my story, he put his arms around me, and I was okay with that.
It must have been one in the morning when we left. Way past a curfew if I still had one, but it was Friday, and I only had one job the next day, and something told me to let the evening run its course. We walked back to Kris's car and we both realized that neither of us wanted to say goodbye yet. Which is why when Kris asked me if I wanted to go home and see his cat, I agreed - either it was the cheesiest and weakest attempt to get a girl to go home with him, or it was an earnest question in an attempt to spend as much time with me as possible - regardless, I was about to find out that it was a totally earnest question on his part.

Sure enough, there was an adorable, fat, fluffy cat named Sparta waiting for me when we went back to his apartment. I fell in love with him immediately. And then Kris played guitar for me - he played me a song he wrote, and it's still my favourite one out of all the songs he played, because he wrote it.
We watched Great Gatsby until it was 6 in the morning with me sitting on the opposite side of the bed because I was shy and didn't want him to get the wrong idea (Yeah, I know I just went to some dude's apartment in the middle of the night, but that's just me, I guess.)
By the time he left me back at my car in the morning after we'd eaten breakfast at Majestic Diner,  I realized I really didn't want him to go. But he left, I went to work, and then fell into one of the deepest sleeps I'd had in a long time after I'd gone home.

2 weeks - that's how long it took for me to realize that this guy was here in my life to stay. He was different than anyone I'd ever met, and I realized that after all of the questioning and soul-searching I'd tried to do when considering who was the right person for me, knowing who the right person is shouldn't be a guessing game of pros and cons. It should be effortless. And it was.

It's less than 4 months away from our wedding, and in the midst of wedding planning, I still have to pause and look up at him from across the table in a coffee shop and have to catch my breath. He's the kindest, most incredible man I've ever met, and he gets to be in my life forever. How incredible and wonderful is that?
I look at the next 4 months ahead of us and I treasure these times: the times we are spending not only planning our wedding, but planning our lifetime ahead of us and laying down the foundation of our marriage.
I'm a lucky girl, that's for sure. I never was able to see the big picture before, but now I see what God was planning for me in the last few years - and it's more perfect that I ever could have imagined.