All day yesterday I walked around unconsciously holding
walls or tables. Just now I awoke in bed
feeling like I was going to fall. Who
does that?? And I noticed a new ringing in my ears. Well, that’s pleasant. NOT!
Add to this my eyelids have been twitching madly and you have yourself a
recipe for ponder and worry.
I started imaging all kinds of maladies: epilepsy, vertigo, brain tumor, aneurysm. When you awake in the night and your thoughts run off-leash, you can talk yourself into just about anything.
I decided I would get up and inform my Facebook world that if I awoke in a hospital with amnesia, they should remind Chuck that most of our courtship emails are printed out and filed by month in a giant plastic tub in the basement. I know…right?? But it was a time in my life I was going through much growth and turmoil and this man of faith became my best friend. If ever I didn't remember him, I would surely fall in love again after reading our story.
The letters I received from him on a daily basis challenged
me, infuriated me, soothed me, made me swoon.
On a single page, I could feel angry, joyful, romantic, wanted. We went through a ballet, a waltz of words
that danced on for months. I saved every
email and eventually printed them out.
Every time I try to pitch a few (maybe where we argued over politics or
the occasional parenting issue), I pick up a page and realize I can’t throw any
away. Each note winds itself up into the
next, refers back to others, forecasts what our future has now become.
It reminds me of another love note. God is such
a lover! The original poet, his songs
and stories, dedications, prose – all of that was written with us in mind. His intimate thoughts, his intentions, his
hopes and dreams for our relationship with him, all there.
You can picture the Bible as a rulebook, sure. But you’d be missing the other 90% of
it. It is the dance card of God’s
romance with us. The tempo rises and
changes, guides us and turns, spins and…sometimes feels like we’re
dropped! Different chapters outline
dizzy fears of being left by God just the way we can feel, sometimes. And yet…He shows he never went away. We’re caught and trust in our partner
reassured, the dance goes on, again.
I am thankful for both of my love stories. Praise God!
~~~~~Pondering points
Zephaniah
3:17
The Lord
your God in your midst, He is mighty to save; He will take great delight in you,
He will quiet you
with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.Jeremiah 31:3
The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you to Myself with loving-kindness.
John 15:13
There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay down his life for the sake of his friends.
Matthew 23:37
[Jesus said,] "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, but you were not willing."
1 John 3:1
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.
Ephesians 3:16-19
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment