Sometimes life leaves you speechless and then in order to speak, you need to find the exact words to capture the scope of what it is that has happened to you.

I love telling stories. Telling stories is one of the things that I like to think that I do quite well and it is something I do quite often.  But it is one thing to tell a story and something completely different to explain the meaning or the feeling behind what transpired.

On September 29th, Hugh asked me to marry him and I haven’t written a blog post since.

As you can expect, I said yes and I have been a happy engaged woman since.  Surprisingly, the role of future Mrs. MacLeod has been one I’ve stepped into with no problem and I’m as happy as can be. But to tell the story of us, and what it means to me is so much bigger than any story I have ever told and I would not be fair to him or to our relationship if I shortchanged it and just said “we are engaged.”

Nearly 20 months ago, I met the someone whose work I had admired deeply for many years.  Unbeknownst to him, for years he had affected my professional life in profound ways.  He was someone I respected and admired and someone I hoped I would eventually meet, but not someone where I would think I’d find a refuge, a home, and love like I have been lucky enough to experience all this time.

Things happen for a reason…and you hear this said often, but you never really think they actually do.  I know that I went through life thinking that things just happened, and that they were things to help define you not to lead you to something. But then Hugh happened…

In my previous blog, the one that chronicled my twenties, I wrote about a lot of isolated incidents and random situations that just seemed to document the naivete, openness, and awkwardness of someone who is starting out in life.  Some of you might recall my teavels, me falling in love, gaining and losing friendships, and my ever present feeling that although I had everything I was missing something.

Though I didn’t know it then, that blog led me to this point.

Thanks to that blog, and all the wonderful people who for I long time I believed “lived in the internet”, I can map every decision that brought Hugh and I together.

The day Hugh and I met, my life changed forever. As I was getting dressed last April 9th, I thought I would go meet the thought leader who (unbeknownst to him) had been a mentor, and an inspiration. Instead, I found the best thing to ever happen to me, and began to experience the greatest love I have ever felt…one that grows and multiplies with every smile and every touch.  One that reminds me of cheesy poetry and that I hope every day will last a lifetime.

I never expected when I moved to the causeway that I would one day be Mrs. MacLeod.

Actually, I never thought I would ever marry at all…though I was blessed with the ability to love deeply and intensely, I was never the trusting kind.  Though I now live a life filled with show tunes, for most of my life I believed that love, like in love songs and in the ways I had always experienced it, was meant to be felt deeply and one day end with the soft sound of heartbreak.

But here I am.

I fell in love with someone who learned to love me despite my flaws and my reluctance to seek permanence.  I found someone who has changed me and has made me want to be the kind of person I never thought I could be.

Every road I took to lead me to what I thought would be my happy place, led me to Hugh last April 9th.  On September 29th he asked me to be his wife….

And I look forward to a giving him the kind of home I’ve only known in dreams, and am grateful for a lifetime of opportunities to make him as happy as he continuously makes me…