Do you know why birds sing just before dawn? Scientists believe it's to tell their mates that they made it through the night, as a way of saying, "I'm still here."~Jeff Goins

This past week Giovanni and I walked down a pathway through an archway that only he and I could enter. To be with someone sometimes in that place is both fearsome and needful.

I sent him an email raw with emotion, reflecting marital pain over these last months. He, in turn, felt hurt and blindsided by my unbridled words.

We just love so differently.

"Don't you see, Priscilla, I love you by cooking and mowing and mopping the floor?"

"Yes, I do. I do. And don't you see that I love you by telling you, touching your face, kissing you, affirming you? I want that too. I need that too."

We did see. Again.

We realized for the thousandth time how beautiful and simultaneously disappointing our demonstrations of love are toward one another. The ways that are so relentlessly opposite, that they could break us into pieces or draw us together.

Then we sat in vertical time, letting our re-acceptance of one another be enough. No rummaging in the horizontal past, nor attempting to discern the possibilites of an indistinct future. We let being with each other now be our comfort. Be the glad place inside the archway of our love.

There is something miraculously healing sitting in the presence of someone who knows your faults, your weaknesses, your vulnerabilities and imperfections. And you theirs. One who hears. One who understands. 

Someone. Sometimes.

(Kind readers, I will be traveling and working on the finishing pieces of my book through the end of August. Thank you for your generous support and encouragement along life's pathway. Until next time, may the promises of God pour over you; may you experience His mountain of strength, discouragement obliterated. May you know break through and His abundant grace.)