Genuine man

I love your authenticity my love. Your blue eyes looking for love and assurance in mine is not weakness. It is why God put us together. To help one another...a three stranded cord is not easily broken. I too need your leading, love and hope for a marriage that is just starting as we are in our later years. What you despise about yourself...I love. I love rough hands calloused with years of work that tenderly reach out and touch me and tousled gray hair graced with the Lord's wisdom...I look up to you and admire the things you have learned. Torn muscles on your left bicep paint one of life's mishaps on your frame. You are not perfect and I love that. It makes you real because mighty man you too are vulnerable. Lines of stress and laughter show you have lived life well and lived it hard.

I relish lying in bed with you on crisp sheets running my fingers through curly chest hairs gray, black, and soft. I kiss your lips and taste the salt from a days hard work. I fall asleep hearing you snore. The rhythmic sound puts me to sleep. All must be well and right for the man of the house is asleep and at peace. Then I too may sleep soundly knowing you are keeping watch unconsciously. You are the Lord's best for me and you were worth the wait......

Grace?

Grace is so easy to receive but I often find it hard to give. When deeply wounded by someone you love, grace is a difficult thing. My heart mourns and grieves for the best I saw in him. My hope is ripped away to show an ugly truth. Usually a selfish sin but one of the heart...a heart meant not to share is stabbed with the knife of betrayal and it crushes my hopeful soul so I can't breathe. My mind is perplexed and I can't think logical thoughts. Love wouldn't do such things. Love wouldn't dream of it. Honor could not stand the thought of it. And loyalty would not entertain the thought. How can he love me? How could it be possible. He must still have love for her and I have no room for this. Where is the honorable man who promised his undivided love. It must be a lie. Where your heart is your actions will follow. I still grieve and struggle this painful truth of betrayal and I don't fully trust. Because of my ex these old wounds are still there clothed but under the surface and tender like a fresh bruise. They really never have completely healed. When touched by a small poke ( a comment or inconsiderate action) that awakens these pains of the past, I react like a bad wound poked but covered up. When hurts of the past resurface and combine with your betrayal having similar qualities, I lump them together in the deep of my soul and grapple with the pain and the grace I know the Lord wants me to give. God help me because I do love him. Help me God not to judge lest I be judged.

When Job forgave and prayed for his friends, the Lord blessed him. Job42:3 says that the Lord blessed the later part of Job's life more than the first. Help me God to remove this bitterness of the soul and replace it with a heart of grace.

Made to Lead and Made to Help

I am blessed to be married to a man who sometimes lovingly corrects me because he is learning to love. To guide a woman and wait for God and her conscious to be of one accord is a wondrous task...worth the wait if one dare to risk waiting. I can rest in this kind of gentle, patient, God-trusting, powerful, hopeful love.

Don't give up on me my heart cries. Don't see me in my worst light. See the best and wait and pray and gently lead. If you don't give up, you will see my flaws buffed out like a high gloss polish on a flat wood surface. And if you look closely you will see the Lord's reflection because you dared to wait and trust that his perfect will would be made complete in me.

I too shall pray and wait and hope and trust the Lord. You will lead and love as He has planned. I shall see the Lord's reflection in your soul. You were made in his image. I was made to help you.