A Late Anniversary Tribute

There is a man in my life that I pray God blesses every day.  I pray that because that man tries to the very best of his human ability to be my personal Jesus here on earth. 

He loves me like no other.  He forgives me like no other.  He upholds me and comforts me.  He has cared for me like a benevolent, kind and caring king would care for his loved one.  He has done everything he humanly can to make sure that I am given the best chance at recovery.

He cleans for me.  Cooks for me.  Does the dishes and laundry for me.  And when he comes home and I feel so horribly guilty because I have not been able to do the things that I have enjoyed doing over the years making a house a home for us, he says he doesn't care, that it's not important.   

We've worked through some hard times.  There have been some hard anvil strikes while forging this bond.  My loonines and his looniness have been smoothed out to make us happily loony together.

He kisses me and hugs me and loves on me when I am no longer his sixteen year old image walking around in my high school job in a mini skirt and knee high boots at the Cactus Steak House.  He would come in to pick me up after football practice and the manager would give him a free steak and sit down and talk to him about all things sports, and I could feel his eyes on me the whole time I was "closing".

He might have been enjoying a free steak dinner with my manager, but every time I looked at him, he was looking beyond him, looking at me.

I am no longer twenty-one when my body was *beautified* by another pregnancy.  I was sick and lost weight and pushed myself mostly in a survival-mode-fog for nine months.  He loved my overly huge belly and took care of me sacredly when I wasn't feeling so good that last time around.

I am no longer thirty-five which I thought was my *best-looking* year as a woman - not speaking in terms of vanity, but that's when I finally started to feel at home in my own skin, and it showed, and he loved it.

I am no longer any of that, yet he looks at me like I am.

***

Last Wednesday night on the way home we listened to an "oldies" station out of Columbus.  They played the James Taylor song he sang along with when we were in his car together driving to school and he would squeeze my hand because it was corny, but oh so how he felt.

"Whenever I see your smiling face, it turns me inside out, because I love you".......  He even does the doody-doot-doots" and all.  

They played Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and Elton John's  "Your Song".  He and I were not so much into "candy-rock" as we called it then, but these songs were on the radio all the time and we knew them by heart and that music touched something deep inside us when together.

Last Wednesday night, he held my hand again as we drove home, and kissed it, and said no matter what, he still loved me.  More than ever.

I had not cried all that day - not when they once again showed me bad blood work results, not when they once again shook their heads over my weak bone marrow, not when they once again started the blood transfusion - I didn't cry over any of that.  But when he hummed along to Eric Clapton's "You Are Wonderful, Tonight" - and again kissed my hand while driving - when he did that, I cried, because I know I'm not but I know that is what he sees me as. 

I can't even put two good blood cells together, and he says he doesn't care.  I am blimped by steroids some and have no hair, and soon I will be in a surgery taking away what society says makes me an attractive woman and he says all he wants is for me to come out alive.

It's crushing him, and he doesn't care.  All he wants is what is best for me.  And he lives it every day and he prays it every day and he gives it every day.

Who can be more Jesus here on earth than that to me?  If I have no other blessing or prosperity or health or long dreamed of vacations or love - I have this.

***

He begs me to come out and sit with him each evening so we can engage in "garden-therapy" and watch the sun go down.  We talk.  And sit silently and listen to the birds.  And swat mosquitoes.  But it is far better than the faraway Caribbean beach.  It is better than a weekend on a cruise.  It is better than any vacation we have not been able to take.  It is better than any bathroom or kitchen that is not updated.  It is better than those exquisite restaurant meals we cannot now partake in for hours on end. 

It is our island of peaceful togetherness, our island of time that we didn't have together for years because of other commitments - it is our island of Shalom.  And we have treasured it the last couple of years.

And now more than ever. 

I don't know how I ever got a man like this.  I don't know how he keeps on.  But he has.

And he can sing along with songs of love to me all he wants in this desert .  Each day he is creating again and again, week after week, building and rebuilding because it is so easily shattered by words of people wearing bright colored scrubs - but he keeps building an oasis, a spot in the desert that is kind and nourishing and flowing and safe - for us.

He is buying me a solar light once a week to put into our garden to check the time.  To remind us of what we have overcome each week.  To remind us of what we need to do most the next week  - concentrate on some beautiful blooms, buzzing bees and late evening sunlight.

And the gift of each other.  

We talk about God and His Shalom out there.  We talk about our kids.  We laugh over our grandkids antics.  We talk about us.  We talk about the peas.  He tells me what he planted and what new recipe he is going to try for all the produce that will be popping up soon.

Because my world has shrunk considerably, he tells me everyone he saw that day, who he talked to, what they said - because he knows I am not able to "intermingle" so well now, so I hang on others conversations. 

We don't talk about cancer so much out there except for him to ask me how I am doing every fifteen minutes.

It's more of a sacred spot that he works at to give us a spot to "be" now.  I can't drink the coffee we used to relish out there every Saturday morning anymore.  I cannot sip the glass of wine with him in the evening.

I just drink him in and smile while he tells me about all of the birds and plants again. 

When the faithful are called to receive their reward, I know his will be something along the lines of "You gave your wife an intimate portrait of Jesus while on earth".  

Which might be the fulfillment of one of the highest commands given to husbands. 

And makes me a blessed woman.