11:37.

My boyfriend was in a car accident on Wednesday.

He's fine, and so are both the drivers but that sentence above serves as a springboard for some of the thoughts swimming about my mind.

It's the first time in close to 24 years that I am calling someone "my boyfriend".

Of course, it was possible to engage that phrase sooner. If you want a relationship, you could find one. It's easy to return a smile, meet someone's eyes, respond. And next to these casual interests, there were good guys who make their stands clear, good guys who many other girls would say yes to.

I held out.

For a long time, I didn't want the involvement of a relationship.

When I was 17/ 18, I made a covenent with God not to date till I was 21 'cause I thought a relationship would dilute my focus on God.

Then, I developed a commitment phobia.

When you fall in love, you become vulnerable.

When you are in love, there is a certain dependency.

When you love, you share lives, you share hearts.

Call it part of my job, or part of the cynicism I know exist in me along with my idealism, but I've read more than enough stories about loss, I've met people who have lost their loved ones. And I know it is part of the inescapable risk of humanity - When you choose to love, you could be very hurt when you lose.

It's as if I thought about every thing that a relationship can bring and should and can be before I even was in a place where I knew I was ready to explore this new phrase of life.

I knew that when I fall, I would fall hard.

And I didn't want to spend the emotions and energy being involved with someone who doesn't make me feel like I want to love him forever and spend forever with him (Yes the definite first requirement is that I have to know God is not frowning upon us getting together).

Not fair to him and to me, love is not meant to be that way.

Faith - At the end of the day, I took that step of faith. We took that step together. Because it's with someone who feels so right, because the route we took to get here feels right too, because I know we have put God into us.

Faith.

There's a lot of that in our relationship.

We take a step of faith in loving despite knowing it comes with its risks. We exercise faith as we trust God that He will lead us, just as He has led. In faith, we pray that He will keep us as individuals safe even as in faith, we trust each other.

Long distance relationships seem to magnify the perennial issues in every love - Trust and faith.

In God.

In each other.

But I didn't enter this with eyes closed or for a lark.

We got together in the middle of the middle of the year.

Released - That's how I feel. Because we spent time to pray and seek God, because we took the time of the process, I feel released.

Released to love you.

And it has been half a month, boyfriend.

:)