I never thought... (5 years of marriage)

I had no idea.

Though it seems to happen in books a lot, whenever I've met someone for the first time, I've never had a foreshadowing feeling of whether they would be just a fleeting presence in my life, or whether they'd end up a lifer.

I've moved plenty. Many people have come and gone in my everyday life. I'm not the best at keeping in touch, but I'm not the worst, either. Sometimes you can stay in touch with old friends even if you go a decade without seeing them in person. Sometimes you can't.

I never could predict who would end up being part of my life for the long haul, and if I could have, I would have predicted it all wrong.

{Definitely not a wedding photo. If you saw my annual anniversary photos post, these are a couple extra shots from that day}

Because I never would have picked Angel for a lifer. A once-upon-a-time college buddy, yeah. The kind of person you might look up on Facebook every year or two to see what they're up to these days, sure. Of course, that's less likely when their last name is really hard to spell, as Angel's is.

We're from different worlds. Different generations. I started college with the idea that yeah, I had to get married someday, but I was 17 and not really interested in boys in general, and had been severely warned by my grandfather to stay away from all of them. But I needed friends, and I couldn't afford to be too standoffish, so I baked cookies, and went to Bible studies, and played board games.

Angel could have so easily been a fleeting presence. He could have been just that one guy who stalked me a little bit during freshman year and told me he didn't want me to leave...and then after I left, he could have moved away and disappeared and never been seen again.

He did move away. He had no reason to come back. I didn't expect him to come back. I expected that gigantic white smile and those fierce black eyebrows and the smell of CK One cologne and his habit of walking up behind you and saying, "Excuse me, Ma'am." in a scary deep voice to fade into distant memory.

That could have easily happened. All the stories I've told you of him through the years--they could have so easily never happened. Except for the fact that he didn't find the life of a bachelor living with his parents and eating all the Panda Express he could possibly hold quite as fulfilling as he'd always thought it would be. And a teenage me who when faced with a guy who started talking about marriage seemingly out of the blue...suddenly didn't find it so unthinkable.

And suddenly the guy who I thought would turn into a distant memory of a long-ago college friend turned into the guy who carried my baby sister on his shoulders when she was a toddler and the guy who tells her creepy stories now. He teases my other sisters about boys and talks about computers and bills and boring stuff like that with my dad.

I don't know what happened. I don't know what gave me the guts to say "Yes." I don't even really know what made my parents like Angel so much in that infamous Skype interview. When I think about it, I can't really figure out how we, of all people, ended up together--the awkward, gangly genius and the funny guy who gets along with everybody.

I don't often get all mushy, but I've been married 5 years today and I'm allowed to. What I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that we make each other better. Both of us are more courageous and more diligent and more passionate than we would be without the other. To this day I miss him like crazy during the hours he's at work, and I run to kiss him the minute he gets home. I never thought I'd be the kind of girl to fall head over heels in love...but we've already established the fact that I'm pretty bad at predicting the future.