“Meeting you was fate” ….. the very beginning

I call them my Cinderella Slippers, because I wore them on the day that I met my Prince Charming, that cute guy with the slow smile who walked me down the aisle in the wedding of my childhood best friend and one of his brothers.

I suppose every girl has dreams of the day that she meets the man who will sweep her off her feet and carry her away into happily ever after. I hadn’t thought a lot about mine, but I definitely didn’t arrive at the wedding in my sparkling silver and glass-looking sandals and pretty dress expecting to fall in love. And I didn’t fall in love. Not that day.

I nervously walked down that aisle, more concerned about not tripping over my 3 inch spikes on their maiden voyage (and my first attempt at anything more dramatic than a itsy bitsy wedge for a heel) in front of everyone than thinking about love or my escort, as handsome as he may have been, and never dreamed for a moment that I ever would fall in love with this country boy who wore boots and a cowboy hat and who had a contagious laugh and who I couldn’t help but think of as a friend.

Yes, I saw him, but I wasn’t looking for Prince Charming or anyone else. After all, the weight of recent painful but necessary decisions were heavy on my heart and love felt as if it was a faded dream, one I wasn’t ready to dream again for a long while yet, if ever. 

Perhaps my head was too wrapped up in conflicting emotions and focused on silly heels that sunk into the grass and tried to trip me constantly to really think much about this guy, but in a way it was like we had always been friends, like our hearts were kindred spirits that needed no introduction, and that day was a good day. We celebrated the love of two people close to us, we co-planned a car-jacking and decorated the formerly “hidden” getaway car with whatever we could get our hands on. We laughed at everything that tried to go wrong, we both cried when they said their vows, we enjoyed the moments with the bride and groom, and parted as new friends when the day was done.

But when he drove away, and I went back home to work again, I thought little of the country boy or his smile, except when I saw my sparkling slippers sitting in the corner of my closet or the pictures that brought back memories of that wedding day.

I wasn’t missing a shoe, after all, and I didn’t know that in the midst of confusion and pain, a fairy tale of a love story was being written. But it was, and while we went back to living our ordinary lives, both trusting our future to the great Author of  the best kind of Love Stories, He was working out the details and beginning to fill the pages in the chapters that lead up to falling in Love.