Saturday, February 13, 2010

Love Without Constraints

On the envelope of a note to my wife dated February 13, I wrote "For you on this happy day..."




Today is a happy day, my dearest Heather.


For today--like every other day of our lives together--is the day I love you. Yes, more than yesterday; less than tomorrow.


When I knelt down at your feet between the seats on the New Jersey Transit and asked you to be my wife, and six months later when I took your hand before our great God and a whole host of human witnesses and claimed you as my bride, I was starting something richer and sweeter and far more meaningful than pastel colors and tasteless candy hearts. The commercial sea of gaudy pink and red baubles for sale at the local Walgreens can add nothing to our love.


Ours is not a love to be commemorated once or twice a year by an obligatory box of chocolates or the mushy sentimentality of some uninspired copywriter at Hallmark. (What does he know of our life together? Of the roads we've traveled?)


"Happy Valentine's Day!" people everywhere say out of habit, because culture says to do so. Routine words, signifying nothing. Devoid of imagination and sincerity. That's not the life--not the love--I invited you to share with me, until death do us part. No, our love is better than that.


When I said "Let's Kiss," I meant "let's share everything...just you and me." When I said "Hug Me," I meant "I need you so much closer; I'm at home in your arms." When I said, "Be Mine," I meant forever. Now, tomorrow, and the day after that. On and on and on we'll be together, yeah. And I want to celebrate that every day we live. Not with occasional greeting cards, but, as I vowed, "every day and in all things" by seeking to "meet your needs, know you better, trust you more completely, and love you more perfectly...in complete and humble dependance on the grace and power of our faithful God. Amen."


I'm not saying we can't light candles and pour ourselves a glass of wine now and again; I'm saying that's just a part--a natural part--of something so much bigger, something unconstrained by particular times and dates. Something found in the laughs, the prayers, the fears. The hard conversations and uncertainties. In the warmth and closeness, the knowing glances, the unspoken understanding, the comfortable silence, and everything else that sparks and pulses between us.


Ours is the love of life.


Always yours, on this day and every other,


Michael

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a beautiful expression of a beautiful love. Well said.