You walked by me one day a couple of years ago, totally unaware I existed. I sat up and took notice. I thought maybe you were the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on.
I know now that actually is the case.
You feign calm indifference. But I see through you. Your gentleness and sweetness seeps to the surface.
Maybe you did see me back then. I try to understand how I gained trust & the gentleness. There’s no logical explanation.
But I live for these moments – when you breeze across my path. They are never long enough and always enough to keep me wanting more.
You’ll walk away. I’ll move on. But I’ll relieve your sweetness, your quiet checking on me, and the way you catch my eyes, for a very long time.
If only.
Someone once asked me if Macon is a real person. The truth is, I dreamed him into existence. And then I met you. You are like him, in so many ways.
Maybe you’re enough inspiration to get the next book written?
Sunday is the ever so weekly reminder that the work week has returned and I’m being drawn away from what I most want to be doing.
It’s Sunday night again. If you were here, our lazy day of rest would turn into a relaxed evening as we cook together. We would turn on the music and talk our way through our plans for the week.
You are the calm to my storm. You are my deep breath. Sunday night if you were here, your larger than life presence filling up this small space, I would think twice as I watch you washing dishes, about complaining that Monday is on our heels.
It has taken us so long to get to this moment. I don’t want to take a single second for granted. In the mundane of this every day moment, while you wash dishes, and I finish making our meal, I am reminded that this is everything I’ve ever wanted as quiet and normal as it is.
Sunday night if you were here, you would be another reminder of how the days and weeks conspire, with God’s hand on it all, to bring us exactly where we are meant to be, at exactly the right moment in time.
One day I woke up and knew I loved him. It was a shock. And yet, not.
We are nothing alike. And yet he was home. We are nothing alike – and yet, somehow still, so very similar.
One August day, sitting next to him, as he handed me something to clean off my sunglasses, without me asking, I knew.
I knew then that I’d waited a lifetime to love a man like him.
I knew then that my life had changed.
I will spend a lifetime trying to understand God’s purpose in this confusion and heartbreak. After everything I’ve seen and experienced, I’m not sure I will ever open my heart again.
After so many months, after so much time to process what was, what was not, and what will not ever be, I thought it would make sense by now. Or, that I’d come to a place of numbness – that I’d move on.
I haven’t. I’m not sure I ever will.
August has brought something of him to me in new ways, as long as I’ve known him. The first August, it was the knowledge that I loved him. The second August brought a crazy, faith-rooted belief that he was the man I’d waited for, for so long. That conversation, a little over a year after I knew I loved him, he told me something that rocked my world.
It sounded an awful lot like answers to a lifetime of prayers. No man has ever come close – didn’t hold a candle – to who he is and the ways in which I believed God answered a lifetime of prayers in this man I never dreamed I’d like, let alone love.
Here we are, at another August – and I miss him in increasing measure. I never knew it was possible to miss someone this much. I thought time would make it easier. It has not. Today hurts in a way I would not have imagined.
I expected by now, with distance and time, that I’d have a better understanding or find some meaning behind it all. There is no understanding. And the pain is somehow worse.
One day, I knew I loved him. And that’s about all I understand.
It is summer. Eastern Carolina is a sight to behold in the summer, even more so on the coast where the air is like a sultry, sexy Flamenco. It just seeps way down deep into your bones. The light in the early evening is like this living thing. It almost breathes. Deep. It wraps me up – safe and content.
He, the beautiful man of the hard way, is a challenge I am sometimes convinced I can’t meet. Even after all these years. Today, in a quiet moment in the midst of a busy day, I thought about the way his eyes hold mine. There has been fire and light for me in his eyes – for me, for as long as I can remember. Me. His fierceness lights me from the inside out with just one look. In the middle of an everyday moment, I look up to see his eyes on me. And there in that moment when I’m nothing special on my own and living in the mundane, I am all there is in his eyes. I am the only one in a room filled with people.
And then as quickly as he is fierce and passion, strength and fire, he is vulnerable. His tenderness for me still churns my insides like it did from the beginning. In those moments, I think I love him more than I knew was possible. On nights like these when the lightening bugs pop and flash in the approaching night, as we sit quietly on the porch, I’m overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. There is stillness and quiet between us just like it used to be in the beginning, when he said all he needed to without a word spoken. The heat surrounds us in spite of the encroaching darkness. The rising moon isn’t bringing relief from the swelter.
But somehow, in spite of the sweat that trickles, and the air thick, all I can think about is the way fire and heat burn off the dross. We have been tried and tested in the fire. In the quiet, he reaches over and takes my hand in his. Ten years and a handful of days after the first time he did that very thing, it lights me up inside. Still. I close my eyes, lay my head back, and breathe deeply of the contentment that comes from loving him above myself – even when we do it the hard way. Even when we are tested in the fire.
One year ago today, my novel was published. It was a long time coming. I started writing this book so long ago. Like all of us, as we grow and change over the years, it changed too.
But it was always about family, adoption, and love. To celebrate the anniversary of finally chasing my dreams . . . the book will be on sale, starting June 12th!
You can read an excerpt, here & here. You can find it on Goodreads, here. You can find the Amazon reviews, here.
There are some days and nights when I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over you. This seems a little dramatic, no?
You can’t make this $%^&, up, right? The months that have passed leave me with more questions than answers and resolutions.
This can’t be the end.
If it is, this is the biggest (maybe second biggest) punk’d moment God has ever pulled off, in my life.
Tonight, I am drowning. Last night, I longed to talk to you. Tonight is no different. I pray for the ability to let go.
“Hang on, hang on.” I hear in my head when I’m standing on the edge and about to say, “NO MORE. I can’t wait any longer, pray any longer. I can’t wait for you anymore.”
For the longest time, I tried to make excuses. I figured that there had to be more.
Why? Because nothing made sense. I lived everyday with this confusion hanging over my head and the belief that somehow, somewhere this would all make sense.
But I’m tired of making excuses and I’m tired of trying to make sense of that which will never make sense.
The man I need in my life is allin. He chases me down and won’t let go. The man I need in my life is careful with my heart and doesn’t run over it.
The man I need in my life won’t lie to me or hide the truth from me. The man I need in my life will cherish me. The man I need in my life won’t continually hurt my heart, even after I’ve asked for a reprieve.
Relationships aren’t easy. Marriage will take work. I am a romantic at heart but I know it won’t always be easy. And there will be days and weeks when choosing agape love for my husband will be hard – when the romance and feelings wane.
But, even still, there are some basics I can’t and won’t compromise on. I made excuses for so long. I can’t make them anymore.
The man who will choose me, will choose a woman who will love him unconditionally, fiercely, and find new ways to build him up when he feels knocked down.
I know what I bring to the table. So I’m tired of making excuses and chasing down any man that’s not allin for me. The one who is, will never regret that. But until he’s all in, he’s not the one I’ve waited and prayed for, for so long.
Still somewhere choosing your words carefully, I presume?
There’s a hole here in this big house. It feels even bigger than normal.
There are things I’d like to do with you.
I’d like to cook an extravagant dinner with you, music playing, and candles burning.
I’d like to argue debate pointless & meaningless things with you because you make me laugh when you’re trying to be right & stick to a point for no reason.
I’d like us to unwind from a long day on the back porch, drinks in our hands, and a fire burning in the fire pit.
I’d like to raise some kids with you.
I’d like to find new ways to find each other, when the romance wanes and life gets hard.
I’d like to feel safe with you.
I’d like to curl up next to you, in our big bed – settling in beside you – the only person I want to share a bed with, for the rest of my life.
I’d like to camp with you, beside the ocean or in the mountains. I grew up doing this and there is nothing better than to wake up on a cool summer morning, the scent of our campfire still clinging to the air.
I’d like to make you laugh for the rest of my life. Or at least until I turn into a senile old lady (haha). But more important, I want to laugh with you. It’s the way we will get through.
One day you wake up and you’re no longer young. I mean young, young. As a woman, you near a certain point where you begin to be more and more certain that you will not give birth to a child.
Some women go through adulthood with that desire a distant thought or a “Eh. I don’t think I want kids.” The thing a woman like me is often annoyed to hear from her fertile friends with white picket fences, “I never wanted to have kids. I don’t even really like kids. But here we are.”
I am not that woman. I have wanted kids as long as I could daydream about it. But I wanted the whole picture – the husband, the family, the dog, the picket fence, and a rolling hillside.
The truth is, recent months have shown a light on this truth for me – I am not happy. I am happy. But I’m not reallyhappy. There’s an ache and a hurt in my heart that my life looks nothing like I planned.
The healing is not close. It seems far off in the distance. And in the rush of needing to fill this quiet space, I threw some lipstick on that pig and tried to parade it around like I had it all figured out and wasn’t brokenhearted.
I don’t have it figured out. And I am brokenhearted.
The truth is, I am angry at God that countless people have child after child they can’t and don’t care for and I am alone. I am angry that my prayers have gone unanswered for so long.
I’m angry that barren women have miscarriage after miscarriage and woman have 5, 6, or more children and leave them to raise themselves – abandoning them to raise another generation of lost children, themselves.
The truth is, I want to be pregnant. I wanted to. The truth is, I want to give birth, or pick up my newborn from the hospital – as an adoptive mom. I want to raise this tiny one, from day one.
I want to share parenthood with the love of my life – my truest companion. But, as time ticks on, I stand here with 42 a little over a month away, and the sadness floods me. This was not the life I dreamed of.
But it’s not just the dream. It’s actually what I saw as my calling. I saw my family as part of the ministry God was calling me to. So how do I understand all of this now?
I probably can’t understand it. But I can pray for healing. And trust my gut and God’s timing. I make my greatest mistakes when I rush through, without prayer, and try to fix my own heart.
I can’t fix my own heart. Only He can.
So . . . if you’re anything like me . . . and you tend to run off, headlong, at full speed ahead and try to fill the pain and emptiness in your heart, with ideas, theories, or frankly, anything other than Jesus, you’re probably gonna end up like me.
Sitting in some of the deepest pain I’ve ever known, I regret how easily I run ahead of Him. It’s not so much whatI got into – it’s the timingof it all.
I can’t fix my own heart. Only He can.
I can’t make happen, in my own way and timing, what He ordains for my days. And so I seek His face for healing, forgiveness, grace, and wisdom. And I pray for strength for the days ahead.
I used to listen to Fernando Ortega’s “Hymn & Meditations” album over and over again, years ago. It has been a quiet comfort in some stormy moments in the last week and a half. The hymn above fits my heart tonight, as it has so many other times in the past.
Oh, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be
Let that goodness like a fetter
Bind my wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above
Here’s my heart, oh, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above
“Bind my wandering heart to Thee…”
My wandering heart, prone to leave, is going to take a step back, admit my folly, and wait for His answer.
