dear honey,
doesn’t it seem to be happening more and more often? this…you and me…always having to fight back the tears?
when we both had to finally…actually once and for all…step out of my monday’s reason and into that day…both having to tell the other to “stop it!”…to stop making the other have to fight back the tears!
and i know that we tease that it just must be our age…
but i know that we know that it’s truly just a marveling and a wondering…a truly just grasping more and more His immeasurable grace!
and it just seems like it just keeps getting more and more obvious…we keep seeing and talking about and coming back to this same topic more and more…and more…these days!
and it just always seems to make us have more and more…and more…of those tears!
this grace dumped out all over us all our whole lives…but especially…most significantly…over these past 22 years…
His loving us so much that He would want for us to know the joy of truly loving somebody…some body else…
truly…
the way that He loves us!
at times, you and i have been just so…ugly…
this marriage (at times) just so hard…
but it has always only ever been what we’ve chosen it to be!
learning this hard truth that “happy” doesn’t come…you for me…
but me for you!
and not when i’m loving you only in the measure that you love me…or even loving you the way i would want to be loved!
but loving you the way that He loves me!
Him loving me first before i ever loved Him! me for you…first!
loving you when you love me like you did that morning…but loving you even more when you’re bein’ your most un-lovely! when you’re even bein’ a jerk!
‘cause that’s the way that He loves me!
and how grateful i am that He doesn’t love me only when i am deserving! only when i love Him the way He deserves to be loved!
with the whole and every single part of me!
but even when i am being the most truly me…the unloveliest…the most ugliest me i’ve ever been seen!
and it’s through learning to love one another at our most ugly that we truly learn to love the way that He does!
when i can look at you and love you…no matter what…i’m loving you the way you deserve to be loved!
the way that will truly make me most happy!
and truly…
why would i expect from you any more than i’ve expected from me? and haven’t i always been…at one time or another…just as guilty of any ol’ reason that i’ve ever been fed up with you?
aren’t i just as guilty as you’ve ever been?
and when He looks at me…doesn’t He see His Son?
and when i look at you…shouldn’t i want to too? shouldn’t i want to love on you as if i were loving right on Him?!?
and why has this always been so hard? why has this taken so long to learn? why this still failing at it so much of the time?
why is it we can still be just as unlovely…just as ugly…as we ever have been?
and how is it…that despite all of that…there’s this lovely revelation that we love each other even more and more…ever deeper and deeper…
so much so that it just brings on those tears?
that…
that just must be the grace…that’s just got to be His grace made most perfect when we are most perfectly, utterly at our most weak…
His taking all of our failed attempts…our ugliest parts of our marriage…and using them to actually make this marriage one of His best things!
this wrestling and tugging and pulling against has only served to knit our hearts most together as these years have passed on…
this “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone”…
this utter oneness…
this knowing that it’s only by His grace…His being lavish with us!
and you wanna know what?
i would much rather have wrestled and tugged and pushed my way through this past 22 years with you…than just walk right on through them with any some body else!
‘cause i just don’t think that marriage like this just happens…this joy that brings tears…without this having to truly work at loving on somebody else…like only He does!
very sincerely,
your me
