I went to Austin
for the first time
at the end of my senior year,
before college,
before you,
before I knew
how much a city
could feel like a promise.

I remember looking at it
with the kind of wonder
you only have
when you haven’t yet learned
how difficult it is
to get everything you want.

The streets were unfamiliar,
the skyline felt like a movie,
and somewhere between
the music and the traffic
and the way the city
seemed to breathe,
I decided
I would live there one day.

I told myself
it would happen.
As if wanting something
badly enough
could turn it
into a destination.

Then I went to college
just a city over,
close enough
to see the outline
of the life I wanted
but far enough
to feel like I was waiting for it.

I grew up there.
I learned how to leave things,
how to lose things,
how to find pieces of myself
I thought I had misplaced forever.

And then I met you.

The man
who lived in the city
I had been dreaming about
before I even knew your name.

I wonder sometimes
if that was the part
of the story
God had been writing
while I was busy
trying to figure out
where I belonged.

Because I thought
I was falling in love
with a place.

I didn’t know
I would fall in love
with someone
who called it home.

And now,
after graduation,
after all those years
of saying one day,
I unpacked my life
into the city
I used to visit
with wonder in my eyes.

The same streets.
The same skyline.
The same city
I once promised myself
I would live in.

Only now,
I get to wake up here.

I get to drive
the roads I used to admire
through a passenger window.
I get to make a home
in the place
I once only imagined.

And sometimes
I want to find
that girl I used to be
at the end of her senior year,
standing somewhere
in the middle of Austin,
dreaming about a future
she couldn’t possibly see.

I want to tell her:

You were right.

You will live here one day.

But there is so much more
I wish I could tell you.

You will grow up.
You will lose yourself
and find your way back.

You will meet a man
who makes you understand
that love can be gentle,
that home can be a person,
and that some of the most beautiful
things in life
cannot be planned.

You will fall in love
with the city
you’ve been dreaming about
and the man
who already calls it home.

And when you finally arrive,
you will realize
that God was never just
leading you toward a place.

He was leading you
toward a life
you couldn’t yet imagine.

A life
where the dream
you carried as a girl
would become your everyday.

Where the skyline
you once admired
would become the view
on your way home.

Where the city
you fell in love with first
would become the city
where you found
the love of your life.

And maybe
that’s what makes it
so beautiful.

I always knew
I would live here someday.

I just never knew
God would bring me here
with you.