when you say yes

Maybe you've heard a time or two from this blog post or that Facebook status update or a tweet or two, that I'm getting married and moving to Texas. Maybe you've heard something about graduate school, about me and philosophy and these three little letters that will (Lord willing) go after my name in about five years, letters that symbolize the working and wondering and the mind-boggling amounts of reading I'm going to try and do in those years.But here is the thing, the thing I never knew I would be writing: before I said yes to Baylor, before I said yes to learning how to properly say, "Sic 'Em, Bears" (it's more complicated than you think) - I said a different yes.I said yes in a library of love letters.I said yes in the haze of an August afternoon, in the haze of falling into love, realizing ourselves already in it, maybe some of you who read all those letters were wondering about it, yourselves.I said yes to this, the ache and ark of marriage (that's Denise Levertov, in a poem called, "The Ache of Marriage").It was the best yes: that day, moment after moment of driving along a highway and to the grocery store, of kissing him in the parking lot, thinking, you're it, you're my fiancé now, you're the person while we looked around helplessly, chose strawberries, I think, feeling our way through the rest of the day the way that the blind trace the edges and shapes of the world and so see it better.Saying yes to Preston, now almost seven months ago - that was my best yes.It was the best yes, and no, I don't mean that in the way of comparing one person's choosing, moment, realization of God's calling loud and bright in their life versus another. Because God calls as God calls, and for me, in this season, the lesson is that the calling is presented only to you. Others may confirm it, see it, strengthen it, slow it down -but God is calling you. You are the hearer, you are the listener. You are the called.We are so quick to worry and to wonder if God is speaking, but I keep thinking these days, He must be speaking all the time but I have no ears, or no time, or no patience enough to sit still and hear. I run up to God's door this Lent, over and over, begging for a word and God looks at me:Hilary Joan, have I not been singing over your life? Have I not been calling you, August haze to March frost?Am I so quick to forget how loudly God is singing, whether or not there are big moments of yes or no, big choices, big afternoons with big promises?God is still singing after I say yes to Baylor, God is still singing after I said yes to Preston, after the big moments and the big decisions and the feeling of momentum and moving forward with things.God has always been singing out over us, over these waters we walk on, calling out to us to come a little closer.Love,hilary