I see you


What follows is a text message — directed to the author of this blog — minus personal details, including the woman's name. I haven't logged on to this blog since last year about the time of my last post, shortly after the blog eclipsed 40,000 hits. Now it's nearing 50,000. The reason I came back was to correct something: I was wrong. There was a happy ending, as the following reveals. My next post explains more. I include much of her message because it answered many whispered prayers over the years. No, God didn't answer how I expected, but, when we let Him lead, we must trust He has what is best for us. If you're wishing for a partner, the Lord knows your heart. Do not expect any gift to be given without testing. God needs to know if you can handle the gift. Otherwise, it will ruin you. 

What follows is a love letter, but, unlike so many on this blog, I didn't write it. It was written to me. She said it first. She said, "I love you." It was important that she said it first. Why? Because I previously chased a woman for 7 years, only to be told she did not love me. There is so much in this letter, but I can say one thing for certain: this woman does see me. After I had given up, convinced no one would ever see what they wanted in me, she dropped into my lap. She is an answered prayer. She is a gift. This letter is a gift. It's easily the nicest thing anyone ever said to me. 

****

I love you, Joshua.

How quickly you have become my heart, my friend, my lover, my confidant, my partner in faith, my lead and my guide.

I want you to know, and truly feel in your bones, that I SEE you.


In me, you are fully heard, and respected. I lift you up on this Earth and through our God…not because I think I can change you, but exactly for who you are. Right now. In this very moment.


You are not average. You are not mediocre.


You are a light that shines like a beacon in my life.


You are a beautiful man, that I adore, who takes my breath away.


You are a love that takes my own healthy and happy self worth and somehow transforms it into something so exponentially powerful that love shines out of me and into the world around us.


I’m trying to understand how we do that together, in our shared love for our God, and I still haven’t been able to verbalize it. But I feel it and I know it’s very real.


Because you are everything I’ve prayed to our God for and so much more.


He didn’t just answer my prayers, He perfected them with the miracle of bringing us together.


You are my miracle from God and a blessing so unexpected, so undeserved, and so sweet, that it makes me cry tears of joy and gratitude to have found you in this weary world at the most unexpected and profound moments.


When I am with you, none of the pain and horror I’ve experienced matter anymore. Because that was my past. It is behind me. You are my future, ever in front of me.


You are the living, breathing incarnation of all of the dreams I dared to dream, since I was but a girl.


You are the answer to many lonely, sad prayers that I dared to ask of our God. You are an answer after many years of waiting…and, frankly, getting prepared to give up.


You are the very deep knowing that I gained by years of learning the hard way. Gain through living through hellish things that, I’ve come to understand, would break most people…but God taught me how to bend, so that I’ve yet to break.


You are a truth, so real, and so honest, that you shook me, at my core, from the moment we met.


Yes, you scare me. To my toes and back up again. Straight down my pine. You scare me into my core.


Sharp fear. Untrusting fear. Protecting fear.


Have I considered running?


Yes.


As fast as I could.


Like a jack-rabbit.


Like I always have when I couldn’t fight my way out of terror.


I run hard, adrenaline pumping, searching, looking for the fiercest briar patch, with the sharpest thorns to protect me…


And I dive into it… ignoring the pain while I cower underneath the thicket, praying to our God to save me…


Just one more time, God.


Please my God…I am nothing, you are everything. Please save me.


But then it wasn’t just me anymore. When I had my boys, something happened that I didn’t see coming.


They come before me now. I hide them first and best. Then I hide if I can.


That changes my whole survival strategy. That changes everything about me. It exposes me and yet it makes me smarter, sharper, wilier, and much harder to counteract.


I’m not just a tigress any more. I’m a Mama tigress.


Where I would run before. Now I stand. I fight. And I fight to win.


Before I took swipes. Now, I’m prepared to rip out throats.


The change is definitive and irreversible. I have transformed.


And I forget about a partner, or having that kind of love for a moment.


Yet, late at night, as I sit in the quiet hour of the wolf with my worries, I think, “who would I be to face down DCF, and the state government of Florida, yet be afraid of my own heart’s prayers to God?”


“When have I EVER let fear stop me from what I know is right, just, deserved, and desperately needed?”


And “why would I ever deny myself that which I pray for those I love?” A partner, of God, who is the compliment they need, the partner God gives them to facilitate His word and direction?


Joshua, I will lay my sword and shield down, only for you.


will allow our love to grow. And I don’t just think, I KNOW, it will.


And I will walk beside you as your mate…but I will follow you. Because I SEE you and I KNOW you are a man of our God.


I can finally trust. For the FIRST time in my life. And I DO trust in you.


*********************************


Our God has spoken to me often, since I was a child.


Now, He tells me that you are my home. I am safe and loved in your arms, your thoughts, your heart, and your faith.


And I know, in every part of me, this is true.


“Trust in the Lord with All thine heart. Lean not unto thine own understanding. In all ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct thy paths.”


I believe. I listen. I hear. I obey. I pray. I ask. I beg. I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. I give up. And you appear.


My Mama told me, more than once, that she believed that God’s plan was so dear to Him, and I am so dear to Him, that he would not give me peace until I gave Him ALL of me.


I have been pushed so far, and so hard this past month that our God and the Holy Spirit has literally wrapped around me and rocked me to sleep at night.


I have felt God’s angels at my sides many times.


I have felt our Jesus watch over me in my sleep.


... saw his Grandpa, who is in Heaven, visit our living room last week to check on us. He cried tears of joy and fear at the same time and cried out for me when he left him.


I prayed, in my darkest hour, for the Holy Spirit to fill me, and felt such a peace as I have never known fill my body and the very air around me.


Our God is a mighty God. And in all of His power, and His righteousness, it amazes me that He even sees me.


Me…a little, unworthy, tiny sparrow.


And He holds me so gently. And he has a love for me that is so pure that it makes me cry and fills my heart with such gratitude that my heart feels it will burst.


*********************************


And our God gave me to you.


And He gave you to me.


*********************************


I have always believed my children were my greatest blessing and gift from God. God chose them specifically for me.


Now I’ve just realized, He also chose YOU specifically for me.


In all of my imperfection and sin, God chose you to be my mate, to lead me, to guide me, to walk ahead of me and beside me.


And me for you.


And I think, the question isn’t IF, it’s WHEN.


I will wait and work for you.


Because WHEN it’s right, we’ll know together.


WHEN it’s right we’ll blend together.


And WHEN it’s right, God has a purpose, not just for me, or for you…we won’t be Joshua and ... anymore…we’ll be US.


God has a purpose for US. And it is tailor made for our hearts and minds to do His will together.


A greater blessing I can’t imagine. To do His work together is His gift to us, in love.


“Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”


You are so special. I SEE you and I love you, just the way you are.


Love always,



Thank you for reading. And God bless.

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