Screw Hollywood.

I don't like sappy romance stories.

There's a lot of reasons behind it, some of which are logical and some of which indicate that I have not been the most secure in my femininity in the past. That's Living Waters stuff right there, and I'm not even going to dive into that. But rest assured, I don't like romance novels and I don't like chick flicks. I do like Titanic, but only for the destruction scenes.

I didn't think too much about it until several months ago, when I was basically told that because I didn't want to watch The Notebook, I wasn't a real woman and that I couldn't appreciate a real man. Ooooooh, that fired me up. I stewed about it for a long time, and I still get a little streamed when I think about it. How in the hell is a woman not a woman just because she chooses to not watch a movie? How does that lessen her appreciation for good men?

The person who told me this also didn't know that instead of watching the movie, I opted instead for holding a long, deep, intense, relational conversation with another woman for a good two hours.

Come on. You can't get more feminine that that!

My point to this memory is, while being told I wasn't a real woman stung, it did also make me question why I choose to not delve into Hollywood romances. And I realized I don't like them because I WOULD like them. I would watch or read them all the time. I would get hooked. I would start thinking all the time about what I wanted my man to look or act like. I would think about how I wanted to look or act like. And I would end up completely distorting myself, my friendships, my marriage, and my perceptions of what romance is like.

I would set unrealistic expectations on my future husband, on myself, and on my life. And I would think that a love life is the most important part of life. Face it... IT'S NOT! It's a wonderful aspect of life that's supposed to make things a little brighter and a little more beautiful to look at. But your love life is NOT your entire life. Romance movies don't show you that. Romance movies are only about romance, and life is not at all like that.

However, I do like romances in books or movies where it happens during an adventure. When it's part of the story, not the actual story in itself.

Well, this is my first blog post in a couple of months so I'll catch you guys up to speed here. For those of you who have read a lot of my previous blog posts or have known me for a while, you know that I've been going through one hell of a time for the past, oh, year and a half. I held nothing back in my writings on here about the pain being felt, but I did hold back many details just because... well, you know. The internet isn't exactly Vegas.

However, I'm feeling the freedom now to be much more honest about things. There's still some things I'll hold back, but that's merely because it's not time to reveal those things yet. But the things I can reveal, I will.

So my whole struggle was over a man named Joseph.

Specifically, my future husband.

It's a long, crazy, painful, rewarding, amazing story of a long, crazy, painful, rewarding, amazing journey. One day I'll have to write out the whole story and have been in a slow process of doing so for the past couple of months. One day it might even be on here. But I didn't come here today to write out all the details, just the nutshell of it all.

It's quite simple. Boy meets girl. Girl thinks boy is too nice and pays no attention to him. Boy continues to be nice. Girl suddenly realizes boy is hot. Girl likes boy. Boy eventually likes girl. Boy and girl ask God if they're supposed to be together. Girl hears an almost immediate "yes". Boy hears "no". Girl furrows her forehead and asks God again. Girl hears "yes". Boy furrows his forehead and asks God again. Boy hears "no". Girl gets furious at God for continuing to tell her "yes" numerous times, without telling boy. Boy attempts to move on from girl numerous times. Girl feels deep pain. Boy feels deep pain.

And this went on and on and on... for about a year.

It is indeed true that sometimes romance doesn't look so romantic, and that sometimes love doesn't look so loving.

Again, it's a long and painful story that I won't delve into now. But the nutshell in that nutshell was that God waited until both of us gave up any prospect of marriage. It took a very long time before we were able to give that up, but God is clever. He waited us out. He waited me out, anyways. I KNEW that I KNEW that I KNEW Joseph was my husband and I stubbornly clung to it for the longest time. After months of frustrations, feeling beaten down, and even feeling a sense of betrayal, I was finally driven to the point of despair and desperation and complete surrender to God. I promised God and myself that if God wasn't going to take Joseph out of my life, then I would. Literally the very next day, God very nonchalantly mentioned to Joseph "By the way, Ashley is your wife." Joseph immediately asked me if we could talk, I went to this talk with the intentions of taking him out of my life, and then God moved and spoke and boy and girl finally ended up with the same "yes" from God.

Even after that, we had to wait another two months to begin dating because I was still in the middle of Living Waters and couldn't start a relationship. That damned class. That damned, glorious class. I needed it so badly. Well, I still do, but if God feels I'm healed enough to be with Joseph then I certainly won't be one to argue His judgment. For once.

Where am I going with this? Honestly, I don't know. I guess I'm just brooding right now.

Today, Joseph and I have been together for two months, and it has honestly been amazing. It's been challenging and often uncomfortable, but it's been so much more amazing than anything I could've ever imagined. I am so looking forward to many more months with him. And I'm not here to brag about finally having a guy or even the fact that I got the guy I'd been wanting for a long time. That's not the point. That implies that I did something or that I even deserve him. I didn't do anything. I don't deserve him. God is the only one who did something (actually, He did everything) and He's the only one I fully trust to give me something/someone, knowing it's for the best possible reasons.

I guess what I'm saying is, God is so generous. He's so loving. He knows exactly how to align a heart with His, and the moment a heart is aligned with His. It's so hard to give parts of your life over to Him, but it's always so worth it that I end up thinking "Why did I doubt Him again?" I think it's the fact that God loves to make people uncomfortable. Or He just really enjoys the expressions on our faces when He does something we don't expect. He just likes to make things work in the weirdest way possible, just to prove that He is out of the ordinary and that we need to constantly be in awe of what He's doing.

Because, good God, we need the reminder.

I'm still not sure why I'm writing and rambling on at this point, guys. I really don't. I'm just such in awe of how God has been moving in my life lately that I just feel the need to share. It's seriously the most incredible feeling in the world when you finally realize just how much God has been moving in your life without you knowing it. Or how He uses the most painful of things to bring you the most bountiful joy. He is indeed much more interested in our holiness than our current happiness. Yeah, He wants us to be happy, but most of all He wants us to have the pure joy that comes from Himself and living the way He asks us to live. And I believe it's never as easy as people like to make them out to be. A lot of people will tell you the wonderful parts of their relationship because they feel it's the most romantic. I refuse to be one of them. As great as the great moments are, Joseph's painful moments are truly romantic to me, and my painful moments are what turned out to be romantic to him... or at least the most meaningful.

I used to think marriage was all romance, that everything was easy and would come naturally, and that people never had hard times before the actual marriage. Yeah right. Now I believe what you do before the marriage is one of the most important elements to your lives together after the wedding day. I believe the most important thing you could ever do is to love someone so gut-wrenchingly much that you give them the freedom to be themselves, and to have the freedom to love someone else if that's who God gives them pure joy with.

That's what gives someone the freedom to come back to you and say, "You're the one God has for me."

I feel like an wide-eyed child. Two months into this thing, and I'm still awestruck just at how well God loves me through Joseph. It's absolutely insane. There's a lot of fragments of myself that I forgot were there until God decided to dig them up, using this man. I forgot that I love written letters until Joseph wrote me one. I forgot that I love white roses with red tips from a poem I read years ago, until Joseph hauled a bouquet of those things up my driveway (he didn't know what flowers I like and decided those looked the best). I forgot that I love telling wonderful stories until I got to tell others about Joseph taking me on a scavenger hunt, or buying childhood games for us to play, or winning a toy for my little brother at the Walmart claw machine. And ironically, I forgot that I love writing until Joseph and I made up half a fiction novel via text message, and until he told me he hoped I would always continue to write.

I swear I'm getting closer to God as I get closer to Joseph, that God is courting me through him, that God is winning my heart through Joseph winning my heart. This is the weirdest, most challenging, and most beautiful thing I think I've been a part of. There's no doubt in my mind that God is in this thing. He keeps confirming His presence in it over and over again. And that's the way it should be.

God's such a romantic. And He's such a good Author. Screw Hollywood. God's plans for us are so much better than our dreams for us.

And I wouldn't trade any romantic stories for the one that He's chosen for me.