A Letter to India

I recall gazing longingly at photographs of your color and culture long before I knew we would one day meet.

The tiny humans, cloaked in colors bright and captivating; brown eyes smiling at the face of a camera they will likely never see, again.

I think I wanted to know you long before I knew to want it.

I recall the decision that was prayed over, talked about, stroked through with a fine-toothed comb so as to lessen the lingering fear and concern. And now I face you head on, merely four months standing between us.

I have come to think on and daydream about you as though a woman might regard her lover off at war -- I imagine the smells that will infiltrate the senses, the conversations I might have, the way my heart will feel and react to our initial meeting.

Only I do not know what to expect -- I am told there is darkness that permeates the air there; that the colors, the smells, the noises, they are all vibrant and bold. I sit before an empty journal page and try to wrap my head around how to prepare for you, how to pray to prepare for you, and I am left with a pen slick with sweat.

I am waiting with breath that is bated.

Of all the things I am unsure of, there are these things I know with certainty -- who I arrive as will likely not be the girl that leaves you; I will understand what it means to have the heart broken and poured back into simultaneously at the time of our meeting; you will wreck me, change me, transform me. Because it is not a coincidence that I decided on you. It was not happenstance that I prayed over you specifically. Your name was not whispered into my ear, breathed into my heart, by accident.

I have a feeling you will find me wholly overwhelmed, shedding tears, and wondering just how I went this long without getting to know myself in a place such as yours.

I look forward to being courted by the girl I will grow in to while in your company.

I am genuinely trembling at all the ways my eyes will see differently once I've resided in the heat of your embrace, listened intently to the laughter of your small humans, and come to understand life outside of the small radius of my current universe.

He picked us for each other, I feel certain in that.

Here's to the time between now and then, to the charged emotion, to the prayerful anticipation, to just a few short months.

Here's to obedience.