When this year started I wrote a column called Happy New Year, and in it I made several predictions. I thought I’d re-visit those predictions and see how I did in guessing things that would happen to me in 2004.

I said:

There will be several events that will be huge and wonderful for me. Correct.

My head will get all big and swelled up with pride and astonishment with myself. Correct.

I’ll get let down a couple or so times. Correct.

I’ll fall in and out of love six to eight times. Incorrect.

I’ll get sad once, for about three weeks. Incorrect.

I’ll get a cold. Too close to call, yet.

I’ll change my hair. Both. I changed it and then changed it back.

2004 went pretty much according to plan/prediction/normal. Some things like getting a cold were a big surprise, but the year isn’t totally over (and I woke up this morning with a bit of a stuffy head, so I feel comfortable in saying I may yet get that one correct also).

The one aspect of the year that was very different from the prediction and the norm was falling in love.

“Falling in love” several times in a year was standard for me. Love, of course, isn’t the correct word – but at the time it seemed that way. This year was different. I fell in love only once and I stayed there. (Yuk! I don’t normally talk, or write, like that. This all feels so strange and new, yet so familiar).

I didn’t expect to fall in love that evening, let alone stay there. I met Jessica on the Fourth of July 2003. When I saw her again at a Halloween party over a year ago, she was dressed as Natalie Wood and was prettier than anyone I’d ever seen. I never would have believed it for a minute if you told me that evening that I would someday be engaged to that girl.

Yet, it is so.

We had our first date at the beginning of the year and we have been together since.

It has not been quite two days since the proposal and it hasn’t fully sunk in that I am indeed engaged to one of the most wonderful people I have ever met.

Finding “forever love” was always a hope, but usually something in the back of my mind. I was not out there searching for Ms. Right. Most of the time I was too busy to even think about that sort of thing. I was very content and fulfilled with the life I had; I was happy.

This happiness is different. It is a happiness that isn’t just about me and my happiness, and what I want to do and how I feel; it is a happiness which includes somebody else and her happiness, it includes what she wants to do and her feelings.

I wouldn’t say it is more complete or more full; it is just completely full, in a different way.

As this journey takes a new path, I look for guidance and advice. I have no basis for this personally untrod territory. I know that we are not lone pioneers on a voyage; countless others have been on this same passage. Some are at the same point on the trip and others have traveled farther and for a longer time. The expedition is never over; it is always continuing and changing. We will always be growing and changing. The voyage of two people in love is sometimes a pleasure walk and sometimes a hike.

For me, learning to live a life that does not completely revolve around me has been the hardest part. (And I assume along the path there will be countless other lessons and learning opportunities.)

Spirituality as it fits into a relationship has been interesting to me. While working diligently at combining our lives and learning to work together, there remains a part that is still only mine.

My spiritual course is part of the broader journey and Jessica shares in that with me, as I do with hers. We support each other, we are there for each other, and these courses affect each other; but in the end they are our own private individual spiritual courses.

We each personally have a relationship with God (alone with God). Together we have a relationship with God.

That has been the most difficult part of all. It has also been the most grounding realization I’ve had thus far.

Like the stone in an engagement ring, these relationships are multi-faceted and complex. Our personal relationships with God — through Christ — offer an opportunity to provide clarity, configuration, color, and weight to our relationship with each other. As that relationship grows, so will our relationship with God.

It’s a cycle.

It’s a ring.

Steve can be e-mailed at xersizing@yahoo.com

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