A Word On Particular Love

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." ~ Ephesians 5:25

I am writing today, not so much a theological treatise or a spiritual musing, but a glowing praise. I love my wife. I do. I love her more than my own life. You may ask, "why Sam do you love your wife?" I will say to you, "because she is lovely." I have the distinct pleasure, and secret honor of knowing more about her soul than any other creature on this planet. It was once told me that good therapists do their jobs because of the sheer joy in encountering another in their distinct essence. I think this is even more true of my marriage to Anjuli - I derive untold pleasure from simply being in her presence. She is home to me, or perhaps she is penultimate home, pointing me to the bosom of my God. You don't get to experience her when she is giddy with delight at the most simple and delightful of things - like the names of our children. You don't get to experience her when big, beautiful tears cascade from her eyes and reach for the earth as the words of her heart unfold before me like a flower in the morning sun. You don't get to experience the depth and breadth of her sheer otherness, her "Anjuli-ness." Even I don't get to experience all this - a joy that God has reserved for himself.
She is beautiful.
I love the sound of her voice - it is at once gentle and strong. I love the sound of her silence - which mysteriously opens my heart. I love her smile - it is truly infectious, even when I'm pissed off it makes me laugh. I love her laugh - when Anjuli laughs she laughs with her whole body, laughter that reminds me of the laughter of God - a kind that makes the earth tremble in joy. I love her ears - men and women, young and old, hard or soft, unfold before her listening ears like presents on Christmas morning. I lover her - here it goes - submission... She loves and respects me and I feel it every day - she would follow me to the end of the world. In her submission there is no loss of herself, but she brings the fullness of who she is to bear on the fullness of who I am - as iron sharpens iron. I love her friendship - she is without question my best friend, my twin soul, I have laughed more, cried more, shared more, lost more, spent more, given more, recieved more with her than with an soul under the sun. She is my beloved wife, mother of my son, and sister in Christ.
I write these things for others to read, I am going public with my love for Anjuli, because Christ's love for his church went public. I am to stand under his directives as the true Husband, and so I proclaim my love for Anjuli, and in doing so proclaim my love for my Lord Jesus.

Step into the Waters

"He used to often say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to." ~ Frodo Baggins

I love to write... But I only love to write when I'm inspired to write. When I'm inspired words flow from spirit to mind to fingertips with almost boundless energy. When I'm uninspired, the page looks at me with mocking silence... taunting me. As a lesson from three weeks submerged in the silence of God, I must resist the taunts, I must lay hold of life, Life, within me. It is a temptation of mine to surrender to the fear of the empty page, as it is a temptation to surrender to any fear. Yet surrender to fear is surrender to death, and if the Life within me has overcome death, then there is nothing to fear. The empty page is a mere symbol of my empty life, it points me to the reality that I have surrendered my soul to fear, and when the soul is lost so are words. All that is left is emptiness, an empty page, an empty life. A page I don't know how to fill with my words because my words were lost with my soul; a life I don't know how to live because I don't know who I am.

No longer! I demand that space be filled, that emptiness be articulated. No longer will I withhold myself from life, no longer will I withhold my words from the page. No longer will I wait for inspiration to come for me to live; I am alive, because life... the Life... lives. As He wells up to eternal life I enter in to His waters, to His stream of living waters, and I am quickened. Words and life are connected, "In the beginning was the Word... in Him was life and that life was the light of men." Words connect me to Life. God spoke and I lived... "I said live and you lived."

This space I have created in the otherworldly cyberspace, is a space for me to live, not the only space, but a space none-the-less. It is a place where my words connect me to my Life. It is public because I need the Life in others to flow into mine, as tributaries join the River that flows in "those who have recieved Him." It is my way of asking for help, my way of saying my words need your words, lest my words be lost. So I ask you to step into the River with me, to step onto the Road.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with weary feet,

Until it joins some larger way,

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.