I wake up in the pre-dawn, the furniture just becoming visible in our dark bedroom. This home in the country is as quiet in these early hours as you are, my silent and stoic, my granite shore, my unmoving one. Ever since we first met, I sensed the solidity of you, the way you stayed when all else on the landscape shifted. We talked about faith, and your love of the Catholic Church you grew up in burned fierce. You were a man to stay, and to change from within, not one to scatter and scurry away like so many others when they find that their beliefs don't align with the world they live in.
I look out the window and see the moon dropping like a yellow gem toward the dark horizon, the sun lighting her in apricot hues against the midnight blue sky. I am the moon, running across the sky and always in motion; you the horizon, fixed and permanent.
You tolerate my moveability, we joke about my favorite book, A Moveable Feast. And while you've come to understand why I am this way, you don't join me. You have the same convictions, the same beliefs, the same sureity, the same politics, the same way of romancing. You haven't changed much since we joined hands and hearts 10 years ago. Through my cancer, Amy's illness, my depression...you've been an unwavering Point North for our entire family. For all around us who observe our hardships and our family's response. While pain erodes you, it doesn't move you. My entire being shifts under the weight, and I lose my grip on the earth and drift out to sea on pain. But the waves of Truth bring me back to your shores, and I curl roots into your rocks and hang on for dear life. I trust you because you are trustworthy. You are led by the One who is unmoveable. You hold strong and solid when others cannot. You remind me endlessly of the strength of our Rock, and make yourself like him, a boulder, a cliff, chipped off the great Rock of Ages who rules the tides and the torrents of our everyday.
Sometimes I try to change you. I think that, by growing my mossy roots on your pocked granite surface, maybe you are changed. But you stay the same. You resist my pell-mell ideas and don't let yourself race to chase the rapid beating of the drums in my mind. You stand there, still, waiting for me to return. And when I do, the sweetness of your strong and silent arms, always welcoming, but never chasing, that grounds me and brings me "home". In spirit; in body; in faith.
Linked up to the Marriage Letters of Joy, Scott, Amber and Seth.
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