Next to me

You and me, baby, we're stuck like glue. We learned from the best: now married 40 years, held in better times and worse, through fat years and lean ones, in illness and health, pledged as long as they both shall live. And walking down the aisle at their baby's wedding? That same open smile between your mom's dimples, and the same look of contentment on your dad. Can we make do that? 'Til death do us part?

You're as loyal a person as I've ever met. You stick things through - and not with resignation, as if bearing me up is a task, but with ethic and love. The extra housework, the extra time spent alone with your kids, the conversations and companionship of many hours over these many months. You do not waver and you do not avoid. Every heartache of mine is one of yours, and for that I'm sorry. Sorry is a good friend of mine.

Sometimes I doubt myself. I doubt I can live up to you. I doubt that I won't ever hurt you again. My commitment always seems smaller, slower, less than yours. You are a 100% kind of guy: you love it or despise it, you trust or distrust it with no in-between. You give your all to everyone - at work, at home, with me. This rests over all those doubts like a light blanket in summer, shivering under the breeze through the window. Small reassurance, but better than none.

Oh, that I might love you as you love me! To be able to dive into each challenge and disappointment without hesitating! To love loving, to never feel used, to give it all each and every day. I hope I'm learning these things from you. I hope, if you keep me safe long enough, I learn to trust the world again.

Liebe dich,
deine Fraü

When the money’s spent and all my friends have vanished

And I can’t seem to find no help or love for free

I know there’s no need for me to panic

Cause I’ll find him, I’ll find him next to me

When the skies are grey and all the doors are closing

And the rising pressure makes it hard to breathe

When all I need's a hand to stop the tears from falling

I will find him, I’ll find him next to me

~Next to Me, Emeli Sandé~

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~