It is amazing how fast everything can shift.

At the age of 30, with no one in sight, I had more or less come to the conclusion that I’d be a loner for the rest of my life, or at least the foreseeable future, and honestly I functioned decently in that capacity. Introverted by nature, and truly trusting in a loving Heavenly Father who knew what I needed – not wanted, but needed – I had learned a level of contentment. As an adult, I had wrestled with well-intended but off-kilter promotion of marriage as the ultimate state for the Christian. Things like, “Marriage is God’s greatest gift.” (No, it isn’t, Jesus is) Or, “being a wife and mother is God’s highest calling.” (Then what about those to whom God doesn’t give that privilege? Did He shortchange those women? Some beautiful clarity from the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” Wow.)

I wrestled with loneliness and uncertainty, grew in contentment but never perfected that virtue, and grew in my trust of God, logically and theologically concluding that the “gift of singleness,” at least for the time being, was mine, and I could either thank God for it and learn to flourish in it or try to throw it back in His face like an ungrateful child. As an aside, contentment cannot be circumstantial. If a person can’t find contentment and trust in God in an undesirable state, he or she truly won’t find contentment or trust in God in the coveted state.

So I threw myself into my work, whatever it was, and after a few years of volunteer firefighting, search and rescue, becoming EMT certified and getting my National Outdoor Leadership School Wilderness First Responder certification, I found myself pursuing my paramedic education and then employed as a firefighter-paramedic for the Rapid City Fire Department. It was new and exciting, it was challenging, it was satisfying, it provided camaraderie and a level of security, and it was finally something I could picture myself doing years down the road, if that was what God had in store. I grew in physical fitness and stamina, mastered the art of keeping my head down and doing my job, and pretty swiftly earned a level of respect from my coworkers and officers.

And then everything shifted. Into my adrenaline-laced life of lights and sirens, IVs and EKGs, life and death situations where death was a key feature all too often, 24- and 48-hour sleepless shifts, a life that I was embracing but never really felt like it was embracing me back, into that life came a familiar face and form. A face and form that had caught my eye over the years. A comfortable and comforting presence, brotherly, humorous, companionable.

I think of the first handful of days we spent together. Our first date to the Gaslight Restaurant in Rockerville – I remember telling my mom ahead of time that I honestly wasn’t very excited. I’d been disappointed enough times before. But something here was different. He picked me up at my cabin, the old-fashioned way. When our meal was served, he took my hand and said a simple prayer. He treated me like a queen. And we sat in his truck in the driveway in front of my house and talked. For two more hours. This was different.

We picked chokecherries together at his place, a few days later, and he grilled hamburgers. The best burger I’d ever had. And we talked. For hours. He hugged me before I left. And I didn’t want to let go.

We cemented a leaky stock tank a few days after that. “Boy, I bet you’re impressed,” his dad quipped, when he brought out the bags of cement. “I volunteered,” I quipped back.

That familiar face and form brought peace and certainty, and within 11 days – 11 days – I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would be this cowboy’s wife.

His sweat-stained cowboy hat, snap-front western shirt, and dust-covered boots; his lanky figure and his easy, swinging gait; his wide, straight smile flashing bright in his brown, sun-leathered face; large, gentle hands that just about swallowed mine; and behind his thick glasses a pair of eyes almost too handsome that just about disappeared when he laughed. Everything shifted. I felt like I was home.

For two introverted, self-sufficient, independent individuals in their 30s to suddenly be confronted with “their person” and no shadow of doubt was nothing short of a work of God. He had planned this, and He was bringing it about. We realized and verbalized often that “we are better together.” And we both knew. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

We got married 10 months later on a beautiful June afternoon under a blue sky with just a bit of rain, after 4 months of dating and 6 months of engagement, and we are now looking back on 3 years. Three blessed years. Three tough years. Three incredibly good years. Three growing years. Three years of becoming more and more the people that God wants us to be in the life in which He has placed us. I’m not the person I was 3 years ago, thank God, and neither is he. Isn’t that amazing? It isn’t all roses and sunshine. But it has been so incredibly good.

Years of loneliness put into perspective the petty and selfish desires that are the root of so much marital conflict. Painful relationships highlighted the sweetness of what God had given us. We had been given a partner for life, and as quickly as 10 months of dating and engagement went, or the first year or two of marriage, there was a mutual feeling of “always.” Like we’d always been together. Like we’d always been married.

I left a life of Nomex and tactical boots and embraced a life of blue jeans and muck boots. I left a life of constant adrenaline and trauma for the steady, peaceful volatility that is life on a ranch. I found my person. And everything suddenly made sense.

Memories from childhood, simple longings in a little girl’s heart, an unexplainable affection for the Black Hills, strange homesickness driving past places I didn’t even know and had no idea would become my home as a married woman: everything made sense.

God has given me such a gift in my husband. He is a flawed man with a perfect Savior, who loves his Savior and loves me. He is my provider and protector, my support and best friend. He is home.

Early in our marriage, I remember Brad laughing as I trotted out of the house wearing a short little nightgown and sandals with a calf bottle in hand to feed the calf waiting at the gate below the yard. “You belong here,” he said when I got back in.

And what a life he has invited me into with him. What wholesomeness and wholeness. What a life he has given me. I am more myself now than I was 3 years ago, or 5 years ago, or 10 years ago. What a life God has allowed us to build together. What sweetness when you find a love that feels like home.

It took awhile. And it was entirely, wonderfully worth it.

“God bless the broken road, that led me straight to you.”

Happy anniversary, my love.