It’s a surreal feeling to look in the rear view mirror and see life flying by at 120mph to only look ahead again and know that you have no regrets over the last few years of your life. A lot has happend over these few years for both of us, but the joy of our friendship and now marriage has been completely worth it. Megan and I have been moving and warp speed and once we finally landed in Maldives it felt like shell shock, I didn’t know what to do with myself, I was crawling out of my skin not having anything to get done, I almost had a panic attack (not joking, and yes Megan is a saint). I knew it would feel weird to slow down as it always does for me but I hadn’t expected this feeling to be so strong. I knew this was a lack of balance in my life and this abrupt stop was just what I needed, so chose to fully embrase it and slow down to the pace I was intended for as uncomfortable as that is for me.
We spent the beginning part of the day trying to figure out how to relax and what to do or in this case not do. Once we figured out how to relax we checked out the island, read a lot, and basically just hung out all day and night. We went to bed last night and for the first time in I’m not sure how long I ended up getting 8 strait hours of sleep without waking up multiple times in the night. We had been traveling for about 2 and a half days up to that point last night. This morning I woke up to the sound of birds squawking at 5:30AM. (I actually thought they were monkeys, but apparently monkeys don’t live on islands, although my argument to Megan was that they could row themselves there in a small boat with their opposable thumbs, but I digress.) I had thought I was going to sleep quite a bit longer but it’s incredible what 8 consecutive hours will do, so for the first time since maybe Christmas day when I was 6 years old, I got out of bed with expectancy and excitement. I remember thinking how shocking that was to me as I am not a morning person and waking up has always been a bit of a painful experience for me. Even Megan thought I was crazy and insisted on me needing more sleep, but I just couldn’t go back to bed, I felt too good and was too excited to see the sun rise.
That’s the funny thing about answered prayers, they almost always come (at least from my experience) in natural unexpected ways that are easy to label as ‘coincidence’. A daily prayer for me over the last year was that I would change my sleeping schedule to somewhat of a normal person and not routinely go to bed at 2AM or later. Part of that is my work, but the other part is I just can’t fall asleep at night and I can’t wake up in the morning. I knew this needed to change and as dumb as it sounds I have been on my knees really asking God our Father to help me change this, but to no avail regardless of all the different things I tried it just hasn’t happened. But this morning it did, now the easiest thing I could do is say it was the time differences but the moment that I remembered what I have been praying for that was the moment all things came into alignment – thats the key, remembering what we pray for. Father is quite a bit more faithful than we know, we just have to remember what we have asked for. Because of the time differences and travel I actually should have been more tired, etc. etc. But that’s the thing I had to first remember what I had prayed for in order to see that it was answered. Because to my experience, that’s how Father usually answers prayers, he uses people and our natural circumstances to answer our requests. Yes it has only been a day, but that alone was an answered prayer and honestly miracle. Getting to watch the sun come up and have my quite time in an incredible place was amazing. It looked a little something like this.
Once Megan woke up we both read for a bit, then had a good run around the parimeter of the island, had an incredible breakfast and then went snorkeling twice.
Again we are both extremely grateful for everyones helps, support, and prayers for the wedding, it was truly amazing and we continue to remember and be blessed by how special it all turned out to be.
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