In the Garden

She is nearly there. My Grandma is so ready to go home. Home to a place where my grandpa waits for her, ready to take her by the hand as he always did countless times before, his warm brown-skinned hand against her ivory pale hand. His mumbled Spanish when he was frustrated or the turning down of his hearing aide when she nagged him a bit. Their love that lasted into decades of marriage starting at World War II when he first laid eyes on his soon-to-be British bride. Her beautiful eyes and the way she loved pearls and a cup of hot tea with every meal and all things classy...she was from England afterall. Things are prim and proper there.

Death isn't proper. It's not prim. Not at all. It can leave you with tear-stained cheeks feeling like you got sucker-punched in the gut and abandoned. After my grandpa went to be with the Lord, my grandma wanted to follow shortly. She's wanted to for years. She keeps telling us she doesn't want to "Keep him waiting." I am reminded of the Brad Paisley song where he says he's gonna find a bench up in heaven and wait, wait for his sweet woman. That is exactly what is happening. My grandpa is there warming that bench, but I can guarantee when Grandma gets there and flashes that pearly and dazzling smile at him, he's not gonna care he waited at all. Not even if he had to wait another 10 years. That was the kind of love they shared.

Was I not a little girl yesterday with pink foam rollers in my hair and a beloved Barbie nightgown, shuffling down to the kitchen to make pancakes with you before everyone else woke up? Weren't you just helping my skinny little arms hold the batter bowl so I would be able to make the "tiny" pancakes I always wanted to make? Weren't you just making me cups of tea and getting me hooked on cream and sugar in my tea to make it more "Britsh?" I remember endless tea parties, sitting with you on the swing just watching the flowers grow. You were always letting us dress you up and watching every single roller-skating, baton, and musical show we could muster up. You were the best audience we could have asked for. Your endless cards & encouragement make me selfishly want you to stay, but I know Grandpa is waiting to take you by the hand and show you around.

Grandma, I will always love you. I will always remember your "chipmunk kisses" or the "light treatment" to wake me up when I was being a lazy teenager and wanting to sleep til noon. I will remember how you always liked to put on lipstick and powder before you'd go anywhere. I will always remember your Britsh accent saying, "Oh my." When things get a little crazy. And they always did. I will remember how much you love the color green. I love your sweet voice that you always use when you sing along to the hymns you love and know so well while mom plays the piano. I love how you believed in me. I love how you stood by and always watched us and rooted and cheered for all us grandchildren. I know you may not get to see any of your granddaughters get married, but I know when I zip up that beautiful while dress and take a deep breath just before I walk down that aisle, I know you'll be there with me. I know you'll be watching. You and Popper. Like you always did. The absolute best audience.

Tears fill my eyes as I type these words because quite honestly I am unsure of how to face things without you here. More than what I want though Grandma, I want you to be made complete, to see Grandpa again, to meet the Lord who you have "walked through the garden" with all these years. I know when you get there, the Lord is gonna have some hot tea waiting for you and Grandpa will give you a long-awaited hug.

I love you so much. Here is your favorite hymn...just for you.

Porcelain Hearts

Deep down I think we all want to believe in love. ♥ ♥

Yep, the person next to you on your morning commute that you barely notice because you're already frustrated with traffic flow or if you're like me you're singing along loudly to your latest addition to your i-tunes. The person next to you wants to believe in love. Your co-worker who endlessly complains, your boss, your friends, the homeless man on the corner holding a grungy coffee cup Starbucks discarded ages ago...the one common thread is love and the desire to hope and believe in it because it gives us something to cling to that makes us all the same and makes us all human.

The housewife who feigns love because her idea of love has been polluted since she went her teenage years...the teenager who can't say "I love you" to her parents but can text a thousand "i <3 you's" to her friends a gazillion times a day...The husband who claims to love yet "forgets" his wedding band every morning when he leaves the house...

What's happened to us? We want to believe in it, we want the media to puke love to us in the form of romantic comedies & valentines and the saturation of our social lives to serial date. We want to believe in the "idea" of love, but we don't want to truly love, expose our souls in such a way that others would see us for who we really are, we don't want to act on our feelings, we want love to remain a "feeling" and not an action.

I was thinking of this when I talked with a co-worker over lunch today and she told me how she met her husband and how she fell in love and she just knew he was the one...her face lit up when she was speaking of her husband like fireworks on the Fourth of July. She told me they have almost been married 3 years now and she sounds like she's fresh off her honeymoon. It is LOVE. Good old fashioned L-O-V-E. It brought tears to my eyes and renewed my spirit to believe that one day I will experience that kind of love. I didn't realize how jaded I had become to love until speaking with her today. I have built up these castle walls so high and put all kinds of crocodiles in the moat surrounding the castle that no prince dare pass this way...

For at the end of the day, I know love isn't a feeling. Love is HARD WORK. Feelings are feeling, love takes give and take, it takes commitment. It's washing his laundry every week just because this is a form of love...it's sacrifice, it's a kind word when you just want to scream in anger...love is beautiful.

Love means that one day I won't have to wake up with my arm wrapped around a pillow because a man will have his arm around me. It means that when I turn my key in the lock I won't have to come into a dark and empty apartment and figure out what's next on the agenda for my night. It means I will have someone kiss me goodnight and good morning and not have to worry if he's gonna call me the next day. I will have someone who makes me laugh til it hurts and someone to dance in my bare feet with on the kitchen floor. Someone to have babies with and with tears streaming down my face welcome a new life into the world with him by my side and I can't stop crying because I can't quite believe it finally happened to me. That little life will be part of he and I and that is love in the form of a sweet bundle of joy. I'll have him feel every kick of that baby and hope he always looks suprised and happy, even if he doesn't feel a thing. ;-)

That's the kind of love I hope to "fall into." I don't need a movie to tell me how it should look, and I don't need to rush it. If I have to wait forever plus another day, I will do it because when he gets here and I see that 4th of July sparkle in his eye when he looks at me, I'll know. I'll know that his hand is the hand I am forever meant to hold. His arms the arms that will cradle me like he's afraid to let me go...his kiss the only kiss I will ever want until my dying day. I will kiss that man every single day in order that I memorize his lips so that if he should die before me, I will never forget.

Love, I can't wait for you to get here. As I type this I look down at my lonely ring finger and my eyes brim with happy tears in the anticipation of you. Not yet, but someday. Some sweet day. You have my heart already...your lady is waiting.

Love,
Me
♥

I don't often share my heart as openly as I should. Sometimes I sit back and let things reside within me until I am about to burst with emotion for I cannot sit by another second. Don't be deceived, I wear my heart on my sleeve 90% of the time, but the other 10%, where I should speak up, I remain silent.

Once upon a time in my younger years, a guy who I dated a few times told me, "Meghan, I think you would be the perfect wife, but...(the lovely "BUT"...I hate that more than any word in the English language) BUT...you just aren't perfect for me."

Mind you this was just a couple years after my dad had left and we hadn't reconciled just yet. So brimming with insecurity and self-doubt, I sat. I soaked it in. I allowed that comment and the words he spoke to me that night in the cushiony chairs at Starbucks to become a fiber of my very being. This was just a piece of the story of my relational life. I allowed people to dictate who I was and tell me who they thought I was when really, I was who I was the entire time. I was Meghan. I love all things girly and yet I love to lift weights and run 7 miles at a time. I like to play in the mud. I like getting dirty in serving the people of this earth and my greatest dream is to hold orphans and speak words of love over them. I want to be married. I want to wear the white dress. I want to be a mom and feel that life growing inside of me. I want to glow. But...not yet is what the Lord tells me to some of those dreams.

In the meantime I am supposed to be who I am and true to who I am without anyone telling me who they THINK I should be. It isn't just in dating. It isn't just with my family. It is with friends, family, & the loves of my life. I cannot be silent any longer for I am slowly learning that that very fiber than began to run it's course in me so many years ago is dissolving along with the insecurities that have held me captive for so long. I am captivated by my God who loves me when I wake up in the morning with crazy "Fraggle-Rock" hair, glasses on...blindly stumbling for my coffee in the dark. He loves the freckles on my nose that I try to cover up with makeup. He loves my loud laugh and my love for people even when they walk all over me. And guess what? He loves you too...in all your insecurities...with all the things you think flaw you. Those flaws make you YOU.

So thank you Guy who I wouldn't make a perfect wife for...for helping me to realize that it's not of any fault of my own. It's just who I am and who you were and it didn't mean we were "meant to be." Thank you for helping me realize that I have to remain true to who I really am and not settle for being less than who I was called to be. If a man cannot fall in love with who I am as I am, then that is ok by me. I'd rather live alone the rest of my life than be a fake version of myself. :-)


PS-**I was reading a blog yesterday about sweet little Lucy, a 5 year old girl who is struggling with cancer and she needs all the prayer you can ferverently pray. I do not know or understand cancer and why children get it, but I do know that our God is mighty and awesome in power and He CAN heal this precious little girl. Please think of her and pray for her sweet self. Let us live beyond ourselves and think of others today and everyday.** Here she is...

I will leave the light on for you...

I'm tossing my kitten heels over the next cliff I come across.

I want to exchange them for the sound of your laugh and your smile, your sweet embrace that I don't yet know of. I want to trade them in for hiking boots I can climb a million mountains in, with you by my side. For the magic of that first time you touch my hand, fingers lingering on my palm for just the right amount of seconds before they slip down to intertwine with my fingers. My chipped pink nail polish so obviously girly against your calloused hands. A perfect fit. And you don't even mind that my nails are chipped.

I am going to collect all my lonely & sleepless nights and put them in a jar, a jar to throw off that cliff along with the heels, to trade in for your embrace and your arm around me while I sleep in peace because I know that when I wake up in the morning you will be next to me, and maybe you'll keep me up snoring all night, but I will even be grateful for that sound because you're right there. To trade for my last "first kiss." Warming the normally empty spot next to me. To see your face when you wake up with your sleepy eyes and messy hair and fall in love with you even more because you're not "perfect," but you're perfect for me.

I don't know you yet, but I hope to know you soon. I press on through my days, making myself a pot of coffee each morning that I can't finish alone and having leftovers for days after I cook because there isn't another to feed. I don't care if you don't like my cooking once you get here, I will keep trying, even if we have to order take-out for a full year. :)

My friend told me something very wise today while I await the next adventure in my life, which I pray includes meeting you...she said, "We never know what He is saving for us, or saving us from, or bringing us to, or keeping us exactly where we are, but if that's where He wants us, it's right."

Amen.

I'll leave the light on for you love.

<3