Letters to Aaron: Unraveling

Some memories come fast and others slow. I remember times in prisons, times in chains, times of evil. You reel me in with your long, strong arms, and in the slow melting of two souls together that is our embrace, the good unravels inside me and coils there warm while you rock me just as you did when I bore our babies into this beautiful broken world. I remember this dance, strung on the guitar strings of sorrow, the first notes of a symphony of bittersweet joy.

Worry frays the day like fingers picking at the string on a sweater, and some days you come to end with a ball of yarn in your hands and shivering bare shoulders. Others are more successful, days when you can concentrate on something other than the fraying and keep fingers busy away from the string that unravels.

You were there for my reconstruction, a woman coming of age in her early 20s. You watched sunlight make it's tentative way across my features in the dawn of those first weeks of marriage. You've been pulling me toward the light ever since. Slowly, a slow dance towards an understanding of grace. A waltz towards forgiveness - you forgiving me, loving me, as Christ loved us - and I following quietly the dance steps toward self-forgiveness.

Now here we are with me deconstructed again. A jumbled pile of beams of the spirit - the things that hold us up: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith tossed in with the evil, wrong, wasted, wanting. I huddle close to the pile, afraid to look at these parts of me laid out in the broad daylight. You know each plank, each weathered board, each scar, each scratch in the paint. You're not afraid. You pull out a piece of lumber, hand it to me, and ask me to name it. It's Unconditional Love. It's from you, and from God. And it belongs right in the center of this new house we're building for my soul.

I think of the end of days, when my pile of moments will be lit on fire to refine for beauty. I know this house we're building means hard work, but if even one ruby falls from the ashes at the end of my life - oh, how I will thank you for that proof of your love holding up my shack when the wind blew hard.

It's been a long time coming since I've seen your face

I've been everywhere and back trying to replace

Everything that I had 'til my feet went numb

Praying like a fool that's been on the run

Heart's still beating but it's not working

It's like a million dollar phone that you just can't ring

I reached out trying to love but I feel nothing

Yeah, my heart is numb

But with you

I feel again

Yeah, with you

I can feel again

~Feel Again, OneRepublic~