A Year Ago

"Live well, laugh often, and love with all of your heart!" ~ Unknown

One year ago today, April 22, 2012, something happened that changed my life... it has yet to be determined what the final outcome of that change will be... but whatever comes from that day, wherever the road from that occurrence will lead, it has already been a day that I will always remember, that I will always cherish and that I know God ordained... C. came into my life.

I don't talk so much about C. anymore because, as you know from reading this blog, things between us haven't always gone so smoothly. But when you allow your heart to be as open as it can be, you take a chance as to the consequences of what that openness will lead to: the greatest of heartache or the the greatest of ecstasy (with your heart that open there is usually no middle ground!). But either way - through the loss of heartache or the finding of love - you are no longer the person you were and you will never be that person again; you will have grown... and always, always, it will be for the best.

Right now C. and I are doing well with one another, but he is still deployed thousands of miles away, and his date of release from his military service though just months from now, seems like an eternity. 

I don't know what,  if anything, our future with each other will be, but I do know that through each peak I have reached with him, and through each valley I have walked alone, I have learned what I didn't know until he came into my life: the art of loving - to love oneself so fully, so completely, that you can give of that love to another with no expectation of it being returned, it is given because it must... your heart won't allow for anything else.