Weary Memory, Part 3

Her eyes could break the hardest of hearts, but he turns away. Her only desire is to show him love but his eyes are closed. No light enters in and he closes her out. No amount of love can be seen if it is not sought after.

"How can you not see it?"

Her words soothe his angered soul. That simple fact in itself angers him. He is done searching for evidence.

In his heart he believes that he never truly loved her.

She sees it in his eyes and her heart breaks. He turns away from her and leans on an aged and sturdy wooden chair and shakes his head in a mixture of despair and disappointment. His heart is muddy.

"How can you not see it? Open your eyes! Go to the bookshelf. Open my journals. There you will find love."

He turns his head to the side, never fully looking her in the eyes. "Your journals lie." Even as he says it, he realizes that what he is saying is not true.

"I would never lie. Not about us. Go to the bookshelf. Read my journals. There you will find love."

Unmoving, he turns and looks at the bookshelf by the bed. It is simple and many years old. A crude coat of chipping turquoise paint covers every edge. A bent rusty nail is sticking out of the side. Filling the two shelves are books with unmarked spines. Some of elegant brown leather, and others with primitive string and glue bindings. A common quality throughout all of them is use. Every spine, no matter how fine, is worn from use. Each and every page has been turned . Every page written on. Every page read. Every page reread.

Life fills these books.

He has never touched the books. He has never looked at the shelf in detail. It was a sore spot that his eyes had always looked over. He knew that she wrote in them. He had seen her doing it almost daily. Even when she was sick she would write in them. And yet he had never read them. He didn't feel it was his place to read them. Now she was telling him, commanding him to read them. She was forcing him to review their lives together as she saw them.

The very idea of looking at their lives under a lens filled him with trepidation and anxiety. She sees it in his eye and goads him further on.

"Please. Go to the bookshelf. Read my journals. There you will find love."

He slowly takes a step towards the bookshelf.

"Go to the bookshelf."

He takes another step, his entire body is tensing up.

"Read my journals."

With every slowing step, he finds his anger turning to fear. His hardened heart anxious for what will be in the journals.

"There you will find love."

Weary Memory, Part 2

The old door creaks as the man enters a small one room house. The interior of the house is in disarray. Wooden beads are scattered about the cracking hardwood floor. On the woodstove is a broken teapot. Homemade mugs are piled on the counter next to it. Next to the bed is a vase filled with wilted flowers.

The man is carrying a bouquet and wearing a wrinkled worn suit that has seen better day and probably hasn't been worn in years. On the bed is sitting a woman wearing an old evening gown full of classic beauty. Her face is calm and serene.

Her eyes light up when they meet his. He ignores her and walks to the kitchen table. Without turning to look at her, he stammers softly "I - I thought you were gone."

"Not just yet" She smiles like a mother sweetly reproaching her child.

He turns toward her in repressed anger. "Why not? Why do you have to make this so hard? Why do you torture me and hate me so? Our story has been about nothing but hatred."

"Our story is about love"

"What do you know about love?" He steps toward her, passion welling up within him.

She frowns in disappointment. He still hasn't learned. He continues to advance and grow in intensity.

"Tell me, where was the love? Show me!"

He walks across the room to where the wooden beads are skewed on the floor by the bed. He gets on his knees and picks up a handful of beads and grabs the small wooden cross and string that had slid under the bed. He speaks with speed and conviction. "Was it here? Was it here when I broke your beloved rosary that you kissed every night? Where is that love?" He drops the beads and goes to the empty tissue box and picks it up. "What about here? Was it here when you were crying yourself to sleep every night? Is that love?"

"How can you not see it?"

Weary Memory, Part 1

A clearing in southern Georgia. All around, large thriving oak trees give the area both a sense of privacy and a sense of unity with nature. Rows of whitewashed wooden folding chairs create an aisle for the bride to walk down. Infront of the chairs stands a simple man. He is barefoot and in a worn suit. His beard and kind eyes are disarming and inviting. The bride stands beside him. She has a simple yet striking beauty that is irresistible. Her smile exudes kindness.

They love each other.

At the priest's prompting, they take the other's hand in theirs. Around her soft wrist is a simple wooden rosary with a small wooden cross dangling from it. His hands are rough and strong, but hold hers gently. They savor the contact. The priest gives them rings and they exchange them, a true symbol of true love. They kiss and he picks her up and twirls her once.

Pure joy and love.

Sunset of that same day. The couple strolls, hand in hand, grinning stupidly. They are unable to contain their joy. Behind them the chairs are being cleaned up from the ceremony. They walk in silence aside from the occasional burst of laughter. She breaks from his hand for a moment and picks a small yellow flower and sticks it in his hair. He smiles sillily and loves everything about her. He kisses her. A voice from the crowd behind beckons them. He takes the flower from his ear and slips it into his jacket pocket. They run off toward the group, hand in hand, celebrating the beginning of their new life.

Nudges

D'you ever get that nudge?

You meet a person and you just have to know more about them. That probably is giving the wrong impression. Its more like you meet a person [or see that they are online on facebook chat] and for some reason, not because they have any kind of external draw, but there is instead a certain magnetism to that person. You just need to talk to them and see what they are thinking. As much as we might like to blame that sort of thing on that person's personal qualities, I believe that it is much deeper than that. Sometimes God places people in our lives for a distinct purpose, and He knows that we'll screw it up if we are just expected to know that they are important, so He makes it a little more obvious.

He nudges.

I was very recently online and saw someone online who was a friend of a friend who had befriended me on facebook but I had never really talked to. Yeah. Earlier in the evening, part of the shoddy wooden scaffolding of cope I keep in my mind to keep me sane had toppled, leaving me in emotional shambles. Nothing huge, just one of those times when the weight of life is dropped like a ton of refrigerators on a very sketchy scaffolding made of two by fours and hammered together by 10 year olds with a rusty hammer. It doesn't really hold up. When it tumbles, it hurts, but you rebuild and move on with life.

So I'm online after the structural disaster and see this acquaintance at best, and get this feeling that I need to talk to him.

Nudge nudge.

So I do it. I told him that it was a random impulse conversation, and moved on. Within minutes, we were in deep conversation. Two people who didn't really know much about each other, other than that our connection is one we both trust, sharing in a random conversation. We talked about problems we were both going through, we talked about cussing in prayer, we talked about spiritual hunger. We both needed that conversation, and yet neither of us had any reason to have it. We both walked away from it a little bit transformed and full of peace.

Thanks for the nudge.

I tell this story to encourage you to obey these feelings, these impulses. God has a perfect plan that involves people and events, and if you aren't listening to what he is saying you might miss it. So next time you get that feeling like you need to talk to someone or you need to go somewhere, and it doesn't make much sense, look at it and see if it isn't a divine nudge, pushing you in the way you should go.

Thanks for reading.