Every so often, I look at Pete and I see the man I fell in love with almost five years ago and I wonder as my heart pauses in its beating for a moment what it is that I've seen (or IF I've seen) over the last few years as we have wandered around home, always together, yet sometimes so alone. I pulled apart one of our old wedding invitations as a backdrop for this photo of my ring, a jeweler's goof set with my grandmother's engagement diamonds (we wanted white gold, not yellow, to match Pete's wedding band). I read and remembered the vows we made, "from this night until I die."I know I got a gem of a guy. They just don't make them like my husband, you know. He's so smart, funny, random, giving, loving - and he loves his Lord with all his heart. But while he's definitely the most wonderful person I've ever known, I so often take him for granted. I forget to respond - I forget that I can respond to his love. I'm always searching for a justification for the feelings I have for him, trying to convince... who? that what I have is wonderful.
I don't usually like thinking about Peter's weaker vessel designation when it comes to myself, but my vows were centered around Abraham's Sarah, so it's hard to avoid. And to tell the truth, I am the "weaker vessel" in our relationship. I am afraid of more; my own sense of self-preservation keeps me from turning myself entirely over to my passion for anything. I do not have the strength in myself to lay down my life for Pete. I do not have that gentle, quiet spirit - I'm a bit restless when it comes to most everything. And while God is definitely working on that, I do struggle almost daily with fear and guilt that shouldn't be there in Christ.
And yet my husband dwells with me. And I don't mean that he just lives in the same house. He gets down and dirty and asks questions and keeps trying to break through and makes me yell at him because he knows I need to get something off my chest and doesn't judge me first because he knows there is something deeper than whatever it is. I have to argue with him to get him to accept that some things are just hormonal. Pete hopes. He hopes for me, hopes for him, hopes for us. Through disappointment after disappointment, through time after time that I miss him and how he is pouring out his heart for me, he keeps hoping.
My life right now feels like a very big someday - what will I be at the end of this road, when the place I am in no longer looks like fear and uncertainty and when and how will God change me. I don't know what I would do alone in this place, and I worry so that Pete will give up on me before God is finished, that I will wear him down too far because I am not stronger...
I have so many sweet memories of our relationship, and I am constantly rearranging the past instead of making new memories in the present. Perhaps this is because I loved and lost before; I want to look back and remember that what I had with Pete was so good, so wonderful, so real, so much more than I could have dreamed. But I am conscious of my need to live in this moment, to be here with Pete, with Piper, to cling to the now that we have instead of constantly trying to build new memories tomorrow.
As I was out driving yesterday, I listened to a Brooke Fraser song that has become a favorite of mine over the last few months, a wistful, almost rueful ballad of pursuit.
Your eyes are fullThis is my husband, the man God placed in my life to steal into my heart as He would, the man who loved me without a prayer of my loving him in return, the man who sees me and knows me and sits quiet with me sometimes, stealing my pain for his own, pouring out his life for me on sick days and on well days, building a life for us every day in every way he can.
Full of the future of us
The air changes as you look across
At me in that wondering way
It is as if
I knew you before we spoke
Do our hearts know something we don’t?
Conspiring, converging without giving us any say
You sing me to sleep
Talk down my walls
Look through my windows as I wait
You could be the thief
I give the key to
You’re ruining me
With secrets and gestures and looks
With sonnets from second-hand books
Playing the chords in me nobody knew how to play
It fits in your hand like water in rain
It unlocks our two different selves
And shows we are the same
Rather than wait ‘til I put me out for the taking
You’re breaking
You’re breaking
You’re breaking into my heart
And I’m letting you
I love the scent of his shaving cream, the laughter in his eyes, his willingness to think outside the box, his repeated failed attempts at high romance, his goofy almost-asleep random, the way he always seems able to put others at ease, his deep sense of responsibility, his quick wit, his desire for me... the list is endless when I stop to think of it. I wish you could know him, could see what I have seen, what I know of him, who he is. He is the blind date who wasn't (I refused to go and missed meeting him at a V-day dance five years ago), the man who first loved me, the lover who dwells with me, the thief who is breaking and entering every day.
This is my rambling, open valentine, after the fact, of course, but it wouldn't be mine if it was on time, now would it?
3 comments:
So sweet. I love that Brooke Fraser song too. Always reminds me of Josh. It really describes our relationship. I love that line, "You could be the thief/I give the key to."
Beautiful. Makes me think, just a wee bit, of this poem by Hila Plitman.
He was full of tenderness;
She was very hard.
And as much as she tried to stay thus,
Simply, and with no good reason,
He took her into himself,
And set her down
in the softest, softest place.
Originally written in Hebrew. Set to music by her husband, Eric Whitacre. Exquisite.
Kelly, beautiful :-) Thanks for sharing...
Post a Comment
Talk to me, if you like.