love letters, chick flicks and hermeneutics

To combat a terrible case of writer's block/busy-mom-syndrome, I'm going to [try to] write a bit each week this summer in conjunction with The Journey's summer women's study, hermeneutics!  This is the first installment! :)  To find out more about the study, or about the Journey Campus, check out journeycampus.com.

Four years ago on Valentines Day, my husband forgot.  Well, I don't actually know if he forgot that it was Valentine's Day.  I mean, with all the commercials and signs at the grocery store a guy really doesn't have an excuse anymore.  I think he just didn't think about it.  Holidays have never been a big deal to him, especially ones that are so hyped up by greeting card companies and florists.  In his opinion, it all just seems like a ploy to make money.  And, confident in our love for one another and our relationship, I don't think it ever dawned on him that I would want a cheesy card or a box of chocolates (that aren't that good anyway) or some random precious metals to "prove" his love.

All that said, he forgot Valentines Day.  And as logical as I am, I'm also a girl.  As much as I didn't want to care, by dark that evening those stinkin tears that I'd fought off so valiantly all day rushed past my defenses freely and took over.  He felt horrid.  Exactly what I was trying to avoid all day.  He disappeared for a second into the bedroom, and returned with a brown leather journal that I had never seen before.

I love to write, and he loves to nurture and encourage that in me, so I thought it was a reeeeaaaaallllly nice leather journal.  Pretty sweet, huh?  But he asked me to open it, and on the first page, where it said, "This journal belongs to...", he had written in the blank in his own scrawly handwriting: "the love of my life, Mae."

[Side note: "Mae" is what he's called me since we were dating.  Its my middle name, and its a long story, but suffice it to say, that's me - I'm Mae.  Just in case you thought this story was starting to take a sad, twisted turn!]

I turned the page and found a page full of his scrawly handwriting.  And these words:

I bought this journal.  It is yours.  But you can't write in it.  You can only read it.  It will hold my love for you, and as we grow old together, you will always have with you words from my hand.  I wish right now I could say, "Come away with me," but for now I hope this will do.

From time to time you will find this journal left in a conspicuous place with new invitations to come away to a place for just me and you.  Never fear, we'll always go together.  We know the way.  We always have.  When we're together, everything is right, and you make every place a paradise.

Will you come away with me?... 

February 14, 2007

Every time I read it, I fall more and more in love with him.  Every time he writes a new page, new words from his hand, from his heart, I melt a little more.  When I stood at the altar of Central Baptist Church on Friday, July 7, 1995 at 7:00pm, I was sure that I could never love him more... In fact, I was confident that no human being ever could love anyone more!  But sixteen years later, compared to what we have now, after all we have been through together, what we had then seems like nothing!  On that night, I remember thinking that if I loved more, my heart would physically burst out of my chest.  Sixteen years later, that's nothing compared to the love I feel for him now.

Why do I share this?  A couple possibilities:

Am I bragging? 

Because believe you me, I will be the first to tell you that I think facebook should be internationally dismantled for the entire Valentine's week... I am not a fan of the yearly parade of roses and chocolates and rings!  There's just something profoundly sad about the comparison trap that we women fall into so easily when we place our security in the love of a man.  I very rarely share details about Dan & I's relationship, and pray hard when I feel led to do so, that the Lord would guard me from pride and guard my sisters from resentment, jealousy, or an unrealistic picture of love & marriage.  Because it is ONLY the grace of God and the power of the Lord Jesus that we are still married, much less in love.  It was not, is not, and will never be our own doing.

Am I trying to make your heart flutter?

Who doesn't love a good heart-fluttering love story?  That's why we watch chick flicks and read romance novels.  Just ask my husband: He's subjected himself to more chick flicks than any man should be required to, and I keep my Jane Austen by my bed! But I remind young women all the time to "guard their hearts" and urge them to travel back to reality from the land of Prince Charming and Matthew McConaughey.  Those guys in our movies aren't real.  They don't burp, leave their underwear on the bathroom floor, or have hair in any places you're not supposed to have hair.  So no, I am not just trying to make your heart flutter.  I'd be a more wealthy writer if I did, but that is not my motivation for writing nor ever will be.

So... why?

Because my real-life love story and all the made-up ones are a mere TASTE of the passionate love relationship the Lord Jesus SO desires to have with you and with me.  The fact is, there are faults in this love letter journal from my man... misspelled words, blank pages.  I love the fact that it was given in the context of a failure to meet my felt needs... However much it makes my heart flutter, every time I pick it up I'm also reminded that he's an imperfect man, God's gift to me as the froth on top of my latte.  HE's the espresso - the real, substantial, can't-make-it-through-the-day-without-it stuff.  Dan's just the froth on top... making it nice and pretty, sweet and fancy. 

I share for the same reason I still watch chick flicks and read Jane Austen.  Because it points me - as I pray it points YOU - to the perfect, unfailing love of God.  How to Lose  a Guy in Ten Days lasts 1 hour and 56 minutes.  I can breeze through a Jane Austen poolside in a week.  Dan screws up.  (Rarely, but he does... usually as soon as my heart gets a little off focus and starts looking to him for fulfillment.  Pretty cool the way God works that out.)  But HIS love is everlasting, unfailing, unconditional, and REAL. 

And here's the best part: He's written a real, live Love Letter.  And if its not already in your house, its at the mall!  And HIS Love Letter, unlike this journal I share with you today, is perfect!  Complete!  Never-ending!  We could read it all our lives and still hear new words of His expressing His love for us!  "The words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay, purified seven times!" (Psalm 12:6)

How do you read a love letter?  Do you keep it sealed until you have some free time to spare?  Do you skip parts, speed-read, glance over it?  Do you discipline yourself to read it, asking other people to hold you accountable, get in your business, and make you read it? 

Me neither. 

That's what hermeneutics means to me.  Learning to read, interpret, understand, and apply the greatest Love Letter ever written.  My Love Letter.  From the love of my life.

"For your Maker is your Husband - the Lord Almighty is His name -  

the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is the God of all the earth. 

The Lord will call you back

as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit -

a wife who married young, only to be rejected...

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed,

yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken

nor my covenant of peace be removed,"

says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

- Isaiah 54:5-6; 10