Serendipity - an accidental fortunate discovery.

I am sitting here, composing all of this in my head, hoping I can get it all down before it drifts into the ether. My thoughts are consumed today (as most days) with thoughts of you, of what you mean to me, of how much I love you. My hope is that this letter will be precious to you, for you are infinitely precious to me. In this, you have my heart, you have my soul, you have the truth.

With you I have traveled, not only into your world, but deeper into my own. I have learned who I am, who I want to be and what I dare to dream can come true. Ours is a love that has endured hardships and joys, and you have stood strongly with honor by my side. You have been a father figure to my children and the captain of my heart. You have guided the love we bring into our home and manifested it within our family. It has not been easy, but you have done it. I love you for that and so many other things that my heart could not possibly spell out.  In time, I hope you will come to realize my appreciation of you as a man, a patriot, a father, a friend, a lover, a provider, a future husband, and a believer in what some would call an impossible love. 

Because you have loved me, I have learned to love myself even more. Some may call it madness, but I call it love. A wise woman once reflected that if you judge people then you have no time to love them. You do not judge me, Honey. You love me. From the moment that our lips first met, truth be known, I have been enthralled with you. I have wanted to be yours. I struggled for years with my feelings for you. Your simple touch felt like misplaced fire embers, hot on my skin, it electrified me. Your presence made my heart beat faster and with more life than it had ever before. Today, that same flutter in my heart, the same wanton feeling in my stomach still occurs, and there is still no one that I would rather be with than you. Your warm arms around me hold without regret and without abandon. And without you, I am unfinished. Like two pieces of a puzzle, we fit perfectly together. Everything you have given to me, everything we have shared, this is what I have imagined love to be – complete, whole, all encompassing. That is what I have with you.

It is our love that makes us wealthy, our love that makes us worthy. I could have all the money in the world, all its possessions, but  without your love, I would have nothing. With you, everything has meaning and joy, and life holds amazement for me everyday because of you.  With you I have true love. With you I have true life.

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius”.

I promise that I will cherish you always. I will love you forever.

My children and grandchild know love, though they nothing of the sacrifice of it just yet. My husband knows love and knows well the sacrifices we make for it and because of it.

“Behold what manner of love has the Father bestowed upon us.” 1 John 3:1.  Can we even conceive of His love?  The love He bestows upon us is certainly not earned nor deserved – it is without merit. In the greatest act of love ever known, He united Himself with us so that His life became our life, His death became our death, His burial became our burial and His resurrection became our resurrection. What manner of love indeed!

I recently read a great post regarding God’s love, and when trying to interpret it, I found that their words matched perfectly to my own thoughts and beliefs, so why rewrite what is so perfectly written in the first place?  Thanks and credit to allaboutgod.com for this amazing post:

 God is Love: How do we Define Love?
“God is Love”, but how do we define it? The American Heritage Dictionary defines love as “an intense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties”. Often this “intense affection” stems from a sexual attraction for that other person. We love other people, or we say we love other people, when we are attracted to them and when they make us feel good. Notice that a key phrase in the dictionary definition of love is the phrase “based on”. This phrase implies that we love conditionally; in other words, we love someone because they fulfill a condition that we require before we can love them. How many times have you heard or said, “I love you because you are cute;” or “I love you because you take good care of me;” or “I love you because you are fun to be with”?

Our love is not only conditional, it is also mercurial. We love based on feelings and emotions that can change from one moment to the next. The divorce rate is extremely high in today’s society because husbands and wives supposedly stop loving one another-or they “fall out of love”. They may go through a rough patch in their marriage, and they no longer “feel” love for their spouse, so they call it quits. Evidently, their marriage vow of “till death do us part” means they can part at the death of their love for their spouse rather than at their physical death.

Can anyone really comprehend “unconditional” love? It seems the love that parents have for their children is as close to unconditional love as we can get without the help of God’s love in our lives. We continue to love our children through good times and bad, and we don’t stop loving them if they don’t meet the expectations we may have for them. We make a choice to love our children even when we consider them unlovable; our love doesn’t stop when we don’t “feel” love for them. This is similar to God’s love for us, but as we shall see, God’s love transcends the human definition of love to a point that is hard for us to comprehend.

God is Love: How does God Define Love?
The Bible tells us that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8). But how can we even begin to understand that truth? There are many passages in the Bible that give us God’s definition of love. The most well known verse is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” So one way God defines love is in the act of giving. However, what God gave (or should we say, “who” God gave) was not a mere gift-wrapped present; God sacrificed His only Son so that we, who put our faith in His Son, will not spend eternity separated from Him. This is an amazing love, because we are the ones who choose to be separated from God through our own sin, yet it’s God who mends the separation through His intense personal sacrifice, and all we have to do is accept His gift.

Another great verse about God’s love is found in Romans 5:8, “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” In this verse and in John 3:16, we find no conditions placed on God’s love for us. God doesn’t say, “as soon as you clean up your act, I’ll love you; ” nor does He say, “I’ll sacrifice my Son if you promise to love Me.” In fact, in Romans 5:8, we find just the opposite. God wants us to know that His love is unconditional, so He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us while we were still unlovable sinners. We didn’t have to get clean, and we didn’t have to make any promises to God before we could experience His love. His love for us has always existed, and because of that, He did all the giving and sacrificing long before we were even aware that we needed His love.

God is Love: It’s Unconditional
God is Love, and His love is very different from human love. God’s love is unconditional, and it’s not based on feelings or emotions. He doesn’t love us because we’re lovable or because we make Him feel good; He loves us because He is love. He created us to have a loving relationship with Him, and He sacrificed His own Son (who also willingly died for us) to restore that relationship.

Lately, I have been hearing that marriage is an evolving paradigm, that it is being redefined, that it is on the decline, that people are doing it within days of meeting one another and that gay people are mad because they can’t participate in it.  I read recently that there were people in the streets of California RIOTING because the majority of people voted to keep marriage as it is currently and historically defined – between one man and one woman. In fact, some people are actually resorting to violence against others in an effort to force change upon the rest of us. Marriage was never intended to be any of these things.

What really stands apart from the mire, the muck and the mud that we all hear about, though, is that marriage is standing strong and fierce in the face of those who operate under some delusional ideal that what someone wants, everyone must get, including changing the foundation of marriage.

The Archbishop Joseph Kurtz sums it up best. “Marriage is not something we invent or change to suit our own purposes – it is a gift given to us, a blessing that originates in God. Therefore, we are not free to change it.” Wow, how right he is. It is not in our realm to alter such things of God! Marriage is a holy endeavor. God does not create a bond, a covenant, that cannot withstand the test of time. Which is one reason why one can argue this issue on its own scientific and philisophical merits and not even rely on Biblical proof.

Biological fact: species propagation requires procreation with one male and one female.  No progeny is ever created by anything other than one gamete provided by one male and one gamete provided by one female. Period. Although God made it that way, this method is scientifically irrefutable. From the earliest of times, there has been a special bond between the procreative pair which was eventually and gradually recognized and formalized by invention of the institution we now know as marriage. 

This does not mean that marriage cannot entail many additional, ethereal gifts, but it does mean that marriage is meant to involve and include participation in God’s creation by the sexual union of one man and one woman leading to the birth of children. Because of this, marriage by definition is a relationship including only one man and only one woman and is rooted in our human nature!

When marriage is undermined by gender confusion and by distortions of its God-given meaning,  generations of children and youth will find it increasingly difficult to develop their natural identity as a man or a woman. Some will find it more difficult to engage in wholesome courtships, form stable marriages, and raise yet another generation imbued with moral strength and purpose.

Once we water down the meaning and definition of marriage, we dilute the foundation of our society. We will not further ourselves if we allow marriage – the pure, whole, ancient, holy meaning of marriage – to become something it was never meant to be.

One benefit of being an older parent, and taking the advice of Kim who has already raised children, is the knowledge that today is the day to enjoy being with your child. They grow so fast, and you can miss out on a lot by looking forward to the future to much. Sure, I am excited to think about future Christmas holidays, when Brooke Lynn will know who Santa is, and all of that. At the same time I am careful not to take the present for granted. Who knows whether or not I will even be here for those seasons. Nothing, but the present is guaranteed, and I plan to enjoy it thoroughly.

This is supposed to be a Christmas story, not a philosophical yarn about the joys and frustrations of aging and being a parent. So it shall be. The wife and I got out of bed fairly early yesterday morning, and got some coffee brewing. About half an hour later the princess woke up and we got busy with opening the presents that were under and surrounding the tree. As Brooke is so young, Santa decided not to wrap her presents, and instead he just laid them out around the front of the tree. She was interested in the first item as you can see in the picture below.

We went a bit overboard with presents for Brookie. She didn’t care to look at them all, so I set them aside for her to play with later. My wife and I then opened up our gifts and had a great time doing so. She always gets me such thoughtful things that mean so much to me. She gave me an awesome little laptop, the Acer Aspire One, which I am typing on right now, and a very nice set of headphones. The thing that means the most to me however, was a nice little Case canoe that she found that has the nativity scene on the side of it. The knife is a special edition, of which, only 350 were made. She found it at a small mom and pop store in Spurgin, TX. This knife means more to me than anything else I received. My wife spent a lot of time procuring it, and that means a lot to me. It will outlast my computer, and my headphones, and will be passed down to Brookie most likely when my time on earth is over.

After the little princess took a nap she was ready to play. We opened and assembled all her new toys and put them on the floor with her. Her favorite seems to be a little driving toy that makes car sounds! That’s my girl! Maybe some GI Joes, and toy guns will be in order for next year. Who needs Barbies anyway?

We are set to journey to our beloved Hideaway Ranch for the weekend tomorrow. We will be commemorating our first anniversary in the same place that we honeymooned. It will be a little bit different this time, as our lovely Brooke will be accompanying us. She is a blessing to everyone that meets her.

While I must admit that taking on the responsibility of caring for her has changed our plans for our marriage, she has ended up enhancing it. We had planned to rome freely by ourselves for the rest of our lives, and now we can’t do that. Once that adjustment was accepted however, Brooke has become the biggest blessing my Lord has ever bestowed on me, besides my lovely wife of course. I have been given the chance to do what I thought was never going to happen.

My chance to serve as husband and father, as God intended man to do, is happening now. I could not be happier either. As I embraced the idea I realized that raising a child with my wonderful wife is more fullfilling than a life alone together could have ever been. We have the chance to build a legacy together that we would not have had otherwise. We have a chance to teach Brooke our values, and to raise her in the way that God would have us do.

My life has changed so much over the last year. It has changed for the better so much more than I thought possible. I am grateful to my wife for everything she has done for me. She is my foundation, and without her I would be a much lesser man.

So baby, as we travel together this weekend, remember that I will always love you. I will also do my best to raise our grandchild the way she should be raised. I promise to you both that I will strive to be the best servant leader I can. Brooke when you are old enough to look back at this post with the maturity of adulthood, I hope that you will see how much I love you and your grandmother. The two of you mean more to me than the world.