This is a follow-up letter from our our women’s retreat in October, but really it is for everyone who knows…

We cannot breathe without Christ.

Dear Beloved,

It was a lovely weekend, wasn’t it? I planned it all, you know, perfectly, sovereignly, for you.  I wanted it to be special, all the details, carefully and lovingly sorted through.  My thoughts are always precious towards you, you know?  I love you so much the sand grains on the mighty shores of My ocean’s boundary lines do not outnumber how much I think about you.

Every. Single. Day.

You are always on my mind.  I loved you before you knew Me.  I thought about you before your mama carefully formed each letter of your name, swirled in ink, a signature handwriting belonging only to her, across that page. Angelic beings stooped in awe as she ran the tips of soft-skinned fingers over the outline of letters, in love and anticipation of the day I would let air touch your wet skin, and they asked, “Another one, God?”  “Yes,” I answered, “another one added to us,

fashioned solely for her First Love,

sent forth on mission, equipped to serve,

isn’t she beautiful?”

Your first cry was a cry of rebellion…a tiny fist raised against Providence,

and I loved you.

I secured and ordained each day of your life and wrote it down in Heaven’s book.  Most of your days were walked out in self-rising, desires that fed your flesh, wants that robbed our intimate and familiar conversations, distractions that made you forget My scent.

My hands are sheathed in wet clay and I delight in the spinning of your life.  I have fired you in the furnace of affliction, and whispered, “Return to Me with all your heart…surrender to My design.”

And so I set aside days and times and a season on a sprint into color, brisk with the entrance of Autumn, warm with leftover summer sun, seasoned in fever heat, to remind you that…

I wrote your story…, don’t shut the book, don’t let it collect dust.

When dust settles, we forget.  But it’s almost as if forgetting is safe. But safety in forgetting means ignoring traces of my Father hands sculpting a masterpiece.  My invisible fingerprints riddle your life, can you see them?  Love your story because I wrote it, not because you are

the star, 

or the victim, 

but because it was woven together in holy threads of color, sewn in glory,

by ME.

I often plan special events for my beloved children to remind them of My great love poured out in living blood, leaking through open tears of ripped flesh, running down a trail of holy washing.. A lifeblood that never dries up.  A vine that never withers.  A lion whose roar never wanes.

He roared…

And you ran home, and fell in His arms, unashamed, and He led you in a holy dance, that felt effortless…you inhaled Him and let Him sweep and dip and twirl you until you lay in His arms,

sweetly satisfied.

He was as close as your breath and your heart joined in unison to His steady, rhythmic beats of Divine pulse.  There was no place on earth you would rather be,

you couldn’t look away. 

The irresistible fire in His eyes locked you in with an intense, arousing love. This was your time…you felt His holy kiss and He fastened Himself to you.

The music is still playing…

Can you hear it?

Turn down the noise of the day and turn up His song,

The one He plays for you just before dawn… 

He has been singing over you as you rest in perfect trust….

Wake up and run with Him! Feast on words and the sweet juice of pomegranates, drink deeply and imbibe until you are intoxicated with His love.

This is how you pour out into those who are clawing at every last bit of tethered hanging strength you have.  This is how you:

Keep loving

Keep serving

Keep giving

This is how you breathe.

This is how you respond in love to a harsh comment

Or a whiny child

Or a rebellious teenager

Or a needy neighbor

Or an angry brother or sister

Or the betraying friend

Or the pastor who doesn’t respond

Or the church who hurt you

Or the mother or father who forsake you and sided with another

Or the selfish husband

Or the unbelieving spouse

Or the cruel teacher who hurt your child

Or the mentally ill

Or the poor who can’t find work

Or the hungry

Or those we judge because they are different

Or smell

Or smoke

Or who keep making the same wrong choices over and over

Or the thief

Or the cheat

Or the adulterer

Or the same-sex attracted

Or the prisoner

Or the addict

Or the drunk who ruins every family event

Or the brain injured

Or the child on that wild spectrum.

Fill up and drink from Jesus every day and pour out grace-laden buckets upon buckets on those who can’t see, or hear, or understand, or taste,

yet. 

“The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant.” (Psalm 25:14) 

“It will come about in that day, declares the Lord, that you will call Me Ishi (Husband)… (Hosea 2:16). 

“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love” (John 15:9). 

“When I found Him whom my soul loves; I held on to him and would not let Him go…” (song of Solomon 3:4). 

Consumed in holy fire and intense Divine love,

Trish

 

I noticed it when you slipped your fingers into the soft hollow of my palm, that familiar fit, safe and warm on that Sunday morn last week.  22 years long of sweet sameness, warming one another, exchanging a living heat, created for a lifelong together. The beats in my chest tapered off and a gentle sigh escaped the upward satisfied curve of my lips in response to the slipping in of your fingers.  This was right, and in that moment nothing was wrong.  “This is my gift,”  I thought, “the best earthly gift, given to me to enjoy, play hard with, rest tangled with, wrestle angry with, cry shattered with, laugh til we heal with,

and  it reminded me why covenants are kept by the Keeper,

not the ones who throw away.

Cuz truth be told, we would all throw one another away if it were left up to us.

If there’s one thing we’re good at…

it’s garbage,

and our hearts have become the landfill….

a thick stench rising,  choking out hope, until we are offended by one another.

As if bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh are dispensable,

When we are done with them we can always get a new one, well cuz, this one just isn’t working so well for me, or for us, anymore.

yeah, it’s all a bunch of garbage.

My eyes opened on you one day so many calendars ago, and I loved you.  There was no way around it, really. After they saw you, they kept looking for you, scanning rooms, crowds, bars, in hopes that you would walk in, because when they found you everything in me moved with an energy belonging to an anticipation, filled with excitement, pressing into the unknown.

You noticed me about as quick as I noticed you and the days leading up to our first exchange of awkward words and fumbled touch served only to feed our desires to be known by the other. After all these years, we still find ourselves sinking into the knowing.

We were made for each other, you and me…

We fit.

And then you sang to me before you even said hello.

Who does that?

Our raisings and origins and values were worlds apart.  Yours was pride and responsibility, mine was a different kind of pride mixed with belonging to a strange and foreign tribe and tongue….people who believed Jesus meant what He said and moved in sync to that invisible love…

even when our house was cold deep in Wisconsin frozen, we still shared meals,

and opened our doors.

and that mother-in-law of yours, well…

she taught me to pray

and to fight

for you,

and for us,

and I never saw anyone believe holy words in that ancient book, like her,

and 18 years of that

shaped me for you.

Providence is a strange and mysterious thing and our lives are riddled with prints of holy and breaths of wind led out through glory.

Before these four eyes locked into one another, with the latching of a promise not to look away,

they prayed for you…you know the ones, those other parents belonging to the same tribe who thought you might marry their daughter.

And he prayed for you…

The smoking Catholic priest who opened his home to two best friends a country away from home fresh green out high school, a bit too brave, with invincible confidence, the two of you. And look at both of you now, following after Christ….

These praying ones, these were the ones who cherished life and eternal souls housed in sin-wracked bodies. Cuz they knew how to bow their own sick-shackled frames down low, breathe in dirt and exhale a cry for help.

And somehow

they got all tangled up in the shaping of our joining through cries halfway up the frail pulse of their prayers, where God stooped low to meet them.

And amazingly it all fit in a giant puzzle that’s so hard to put together at times. It often just sits there waiting for someone to start working on it again, connecting pieces until beauty and purpose take shape,

until you see it’s Designer.

And I cry when people won’t work at the puzzle and throw away the most valuable pieces,

like trials, and sadness, and crushed dreams…and shattered people.

And the most important pieces of it all,

each other.  

So the Keeper, the Designer of the pieces, the ones He made to fit together into something lasting, reflecting beauty, radiating intense divine pulsing love…He’ll take our pieces that we can’t seem to find where they fit anymore, and gently press them in for us.

Cuz the cross made us all fit.

And that thought we’ve all believed from time to time, that something, anything , is better than my life,

this marriage….

It doesn’t fit! Cuz somehow pieces of another puzzle got mixed in with yours and it doesn’t belong!  Throw it away and search for the one that fell out and is hiding at the bottom of the dark closet of your heart, the missing piece, it’s still there!

Grace is calling and grace will give you the strength to seek and to find, but the way there is brutal.  The trail is marked with blood and leads to death.  Death of desires, death of dreams, death of wanting anything, everything, something, even one thing  more than Christ.

So my sweet goose, my best friend, my partner in toil and sewing and reaping, and healing from all of our wounding,

So. much. wounding.  

The Keeper of our “perfect fit,”

yeah, Him..when He woos me into that secret place morning after morning, when I leave my side of the bed, next to your side, and you roll over into that warm where my heat still lingers…

It’s there where He fills me, He heals me, forgives me, restores me, strengthens me, and satisfies me so that even when our edges fight our familiar groove,

yeah, We still fit.

I love you, Eric, you’re my goose and my groove.

Trish