Safe to shore

We've walked the rocky shore, my hand in yours, and yours is steady and steadies mine. In your embrace, I climb up from the dark abyss to reality, rappelling up on your love and your brokenness over my despair. You've been my strong fortress in times of war, my adviser in times of conflict, my voice of reason in times of foggy confusion. You are my peace, my warrior, my prince, my passion, my pride, my constant source of those glittering glimpses of joy on a joyless landscape.

It's the 11th Valentine's Day, and we've already given each other our gifts. Utilitarian givers we are, you give me wool and I give you a beard trimmer and we smile like kids in a candy store. There is no fading of this love, only a deepening saturation of trust and truth and triumph over trouble. The naysayers are long gone and have forgotten our 17 day engagement. When you know, you know - and neither of us were wrong about each other. At least I hope you would say the same, after cancer, career changes, church pain, depression, and all those days spent at our daughter's hospital bedside praying fervently for healing.

Are you a saint? Can an ordinary man be a minister unfailing to his broken other half? You hold out Words from Scripture like pearls in a black velvet box. You are my record-keeper, remembering all the good times when I am drowning in a sea of amnesia. You draw me back to shore, the shore where every stone is balanced perfectly on it's neighbor, like the memories balanced between good and bad. We lie down together in the curve of the agate earth, listen to the waves crash in toward us in the dark. We are safe on shore, our stories tangled up in each other like your legs and mine nesting against the beach. You've reeled me in again from disaster, and I lean hard on your warm shoulder.

My haven, my heaven on earth, my husband.

I don't like walking around this old and empty house

So hold my hand, I'll walk with you, my dear

The stairs creak as you sleep, it's keeping me awake

It's the house telling you to close your eyes

Some days I can't even trust myself

It's killing me to see you this way

'Cause though the truth may vary

This ship will carry our bodies safe to shore

There's an old voice in my head that's holding me back

Well tell her that I miss our little talks

Soon it will be over and buried with our past

We used to play outside when we were young

And full of life and full of love.

Some days I don't know if I am wrong or right

Your mind is playing tricks on you, my dear

Don't listen to a word I say

The screams all sound the same

You're gone, gone, gone away

I watched you disappear

All that's left is the ghost of you.

Now we're torn, torn, torn apart,

There's nothing we can do

Just let me go we'll meet again soon

Now wait, wait, wait for me

Please hang around

I'll see you when I fall asleep

~Of Monsters and Men, Little Talks~

As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me! My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come..." (excerpted from Song of Solomon 2:3-12 ESV)

The view from the 10th year

The evening of our 10th anniversary, we talk about how things have changed and how they've stayed the same. How it seems like our wedding was yesterday and forever ago. How you could see me the day we said "I do" and how now I can see me, too. How I could see you, and how you still can't see yourself clearly. What opened my eyes to self? Cancer, emotional pain endured, reprocessing of the things that shaped and harmed me? Life hasn't been graceful to me, wrinkles and gray hairs sprouting; you either, face ruggedly handsome now, man of hard labor, man of sorrow, dear husband mine.

Ten years ago today it was the first morning we woke up together. I remember it felt scandalous, waking up in your arms. Almost impossible that there was a stamp of approval on this bliss from parents, God, society. That it didn't need to be a secret that I was in your naked embrace. And then we went off on an adventure, this time of the day we were half-way through North Dakota, playing travel Scrabble across the plains on our way to Seattle and the Sound and paddling and sleeping under the stars.

Today, ten years later, a different big water, a different adventure. You are off at the hardware store for split rings to mount 3 pound spoons on my grandpa's deep water fishing rod, dreaming of lake trout. I have a whole sketchbook of white pages for writing and sketching and I'm looking forward to sitting next to you on the cold rock curled up with the dog while you fish. Watching you. I will never tire of watching you, love. And then perhaps we'll find a café for lunch and maybe a hippie store because I need a new purse. And agates on the beach. Then a indie-folk concert tonight at a brewery.

But for all that we've endured, and for all that life has washed away from us, by grace we are still elementally the same people. Music, bread, cheese, beer, words, outdoors, water, the unexpected, and the flesh and minds of each other. These we still love together, after ten whole years.

Joining Lisa-Jo on the prompt, "Graceful"

Letters to Aaron: I am Supposed to Be the Helpmate

I found you on the stairwell after I got done printing materials for my first day of work, waiting for me silently there, to make sure I came to bed so you could hold me and dry my fear tears. I heard you, 20 minutes before my alarm went off, up making coffee and warming the waffle iron. I saw you, packing my most comfortable shoes into my work bag for the drive home and putting a charger cord for my cell phone in the extra pocket, checking to make sure I had my office keys. I took the warm travel mug of coffee straight from your hands as we walked out the door, leaving for work at the same time. And when I walked out the door at the end of the day, there you were, after finishing work at the same time, waiting for me at the closest door so I wouldn't have to walk one extra step to putting my feet up in the air-conditioned car.

I heard you loving on the kids as you short-order-cooked left-overs for dinner while I rested for 20 minutes in bed. I heard the sounds of you washing their feet in the bathtub, and rummaging through drawers for their pajamas, and keeping them out of my office while I finished grading, assuring them I wouldn't forget to come hug and kiss and sing them off to slumberland.

And when I walked down the stairs, bone weary, there I found you, icing the cake for our daughter's long-awaited and belated 9th birthday party tomorrow. I saw the bag you'd packed with paper plates and candles and special silverware and the big 9 wax candle that has to go on the baseball cake. There by my work bag was the gift wrap for the t-shirt I'll buy tomorrow on the way to the party while you work until the last minute wearing 30 extra pounds of lead shield to do your job in radiology without ever complaining about how your back hurts at the end of the day.

And tomorrow? You'll have breakfast made for me when I walk out of the bathroom make-up on and earrings in, and hot coffee in a mug with just the right amount of cream, and the first thing you'll ask when I cry about how long the day will be, and how hard, will be, "Is there anything I can do to make it better?" Even thought I always nod no through my tears, you will keep asking, a thousand upon thousand times, until death do us part.

              helpmate (or) help-meet [ˈhɛlpˌmeɪt]
                                        noun companion and helper, especially a wife

It says, in Genesis 2:18, right at the beginning of the Bible we both hold dear, the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” He was talking about me. The Lord God made me to help you. But so many days, it is you helping me. Feeding me, clothing me, making sure I take my pills, get my feet up, go to sleep at night, take care of myself even though the children clamor for more, more, more, the world is out there calling for just a little bit here or there, or someone needs a helping hand or hospitality or a shoulder to cry on. You are more than my protector, my brother in Christ, my supporter, my bread-winner, our household decision maker, my leader, my courage under fire, the one who catches me when I fall or when I faint or when I collapse in tears.

You are my helper, my cheerleader, my best friend, my lover, my checks and balances, my reminder, my beloved, my believer, my companion, the one who quietly, steadily and sweetly takes care of many tasks that should be in my realm. Often, the dishes, laundry, dinner and childcare are kept from falling completely off the radar only by your perseverance, endurance, and love. 

And after all that, you have time to frost a cake. Love to frost a cake. Capacity left to do it creatively and beautifully. Character to do so without a complaint (and even a smile on your face). There is not a grudge, a sour word, or an angry expression.

Sometimes I fall even shorter than just letting things fall on your shoulders instead of picking up my own slack: sometimes I pile guilt on my shoulders because you are so good to me. Sometimes I don't let myself be loved. Sometimes I just let myself believe I am an utter failure because I am not a helpmate most days; I let myself be blind to the fact that instead, I am treasured, cherished, and kept.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church... (Ephesian 5:25-29)

 You are so wonderful

Being near you is all

That I'm living for

You've shown me more kindness

In little ways

Then I've ever known

In all my days

Tell me we'll stay together

Let me love your forever

'Cause you're a wonderful one

You're a wonderful one

In you, there is a rare quality

Your love baby

It means the world to me

For me, you're always concerned

And you ask nothing in return

You're really more than I deserve

From my heart I mean these words

You're a wonderful one

You're a wonderful one

Sometimes I'm up

Oh, sometimes I'm down

But your love

You're always around

Words of confidence

You speak to me

Baby, then you place a tender kiss

on my cheek

It makes my burden

A little bit lighter

It makes my life

A little bit brighter

'Cause you're a wonderful one

You're a wonderful one

From Amber & Seth Haine's old meme that I apparently can't get enough of! 

This day, 10 years ago, I was working my last 12 hour night shift before my wedding. In 2 days, we'll have been married 10 years. How much we've weathered in 10 years. And how much sweeter love tastes, 10 years later! I never would have dreamed it possible... How big is our God, and how amazing the man He gave me!

View from the 10th Year

I remember casting bedroom eyes at you on our wedding day. I remember those first days of the honeymoon, never close enough to your bare skin. It was a passion I never thought would quell, a need I knew I'd have forever. I never dreamed of the comfort of this 10 year love, how being roommates and companions is fulfilling in a way that nightly sex isn't. 

This tenth year, you come home to beautiful choas in a house where I am trying to throw myself into "opposite action" - when I feel weak, I do something crazy. Dig into crazy love for these four children born of you and I and birthed from my now-spent belly. You walk in to find Fort Valentine constructed in the least clean expanse of our floor, right in the middle of the kitchen at dinnertime.

And all you do is smile and give me a hug.

You make supper to the tune of a boy singing to his trains.

You and I laugh over the budding "manicurist" who never wants her own nails painted.

You don't mind that the house is full of cousins,

a Valentine's Day party for kids in full swing.

You laugh at my Smartie parfaits, and don't seem to notice

I fed them to our children right before dinnertime.

You doggedly begin on the lunch dishes standing dirty in the sink.

You bring me warm fajitas as I rest in our bedroom in the dark,

my ear aching, my energy spent.

By the time I crawl into bed with you, you are already asleep. The children needed rocking, and reading, to come down from their Valentine's Day sugar high. I had to prepare their clothes for yet another early morning trip to the doctor's the next day. I sigh, open my book, and read a few paragraphs before I join you in slumber. We are barely touching, too asleep to cuddle, no action between the sheets this year. At first, I feel a little ashamed that Valentine's Day has come to this, you on call and me exhausted, and the main thing accomplished today was four happy children who felt loved by us both.

But there is comfort here, simply in the sharing. There is beauty here, simply in the serving. There is passion left, that binds us together in the night and keeps us content in each other's arms while we wait for the next time to ride that wave and sleep tonight to each other's sounds.

It scares me sometimes, how comfortable your love is, like my favorite sweatshirt and pair of yoga pants. I always thought of love as a skinny halter dress, squeezing tight and showing everything. But in the nights of warmer pajamas and spooning under flannel, I've learned that love is much more than physical. It is the delight of sharing life, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the mundane, monotonous, and magical, all rolled into a beautiful life together.

Thank you for loving me quietly in all the moments in between the rowdy. You are showing me a new face to married love that I never dreamed was possible.

'Cause when we dream, it's of the wind, blowing cold and hard 

When we wake up we still live in a house of cards

Sometimes we were a fire burning out of control 
Sometimes we were nothing but a candle glow 
But it never died, baby, that's how I know 
There's a keeper for every flame 


~Chorus from Keeper for Every Flame, Mary Chapin Carpenter~