I love because he loved me first

Excerpt from the memoir I'll probably never finish

You found me on the eve of spring, on the periphery straddling the hours between night and morn, a time when timid lips speak words from the heart, spilled over, cascading past propriety, but awash with tender, awkward realness.

People sometimes asked if I still got butterflies when I thought of you. I pondered over the question.

Love came slowly; not with the thunderclap I imagined it would, but softly, gently, with a whisper on the wind. It came upon the ivy, secretly growing along my walls to crumble them, stealing in between the cracks of my lined, worn-out heart with a warmth unknown to winter days.

I wondered how it happened, how I first learned this was love: a touch that did not sting, words that did not cut the heart or break my spirit.

The night when you sat there beside my bed, and nothing happened. And it surprised me, and you told me it shouldn’t have.

Touch to me was this: fingernails that tore the skin, leaving trails of red across my arms. Hands that struck and painted streaks of blue and black across the canvas of my body.

Yet here was one of gentleness, of may Is, and if-you-wishes.

And here were words—words you spoke to wash away the markings on my soul, carved into place by those that came before. Tender words. And a name that felt safe when uttered from your lips rather than a threat.

Was this love?

“Sing to me one song for joy and one for redemption.”

Could someone so beautiful as you ever had known that you would bring light to pierce my endless night? From so high a pedestal, could you fall and shatter to prove me right? Every day, thoughts strayed to you and no amount of control could tempt them to return.

Listen. My silent heart had not been heard for too many winters. But you—you, with enough love to hold the world—your touch just might teach it to sing again.

You never told me you would save me. You said you were there and would walk with me beneath every shadow.

You found me in the lull after tempests, long after I’d sworn never to love again—never pushing, always present, faithfully waiting—even as I’d warned you not to expect too much, that I, we, may not even last two months, and you said, “We’ll see.”

The night we went to the beach, and you ran your fingers lightly across my scars and told me I was beautiful. That night, we sat on the rocks after I poured out my broken soul and shame, and you said simply, “I accept you,”—as the sea gently washed upon the shore, washed away the fear, and we knew then: we, together, dreamed of an endless love.

Months later, I’d stand upon the same shore when you asked me to be yours forever. And I, who had never belonged to anyone, said, “Sure.”

You read stories over the phone to sing me to sleep and stayed for hours so that I wouldn’t be alone if I awoke in the night. There were the instances when you suddenly looked over at me with your dimpled smile and said, “I like you.” The night after we promised forever at the altar, when we prayed a blessing over our love with tears that melted away the cold, and you whispered, “See? We made it.” The moments, small and fleeting, that crept into my world and opened it to a place of refuge, to grow and grow, and you, always, always there, until nestling myself into your arms started to feel like somewhere to belong and be sheltered.

“No,” I’d reply when people asked, “I never had butterflies with him.” But oh, oh, the safety and security in knowing myself so well loved, that, that I did have.

That is what I knew to be true.

“Why do you want me? I’m not good,” I asked you, half hoping for, half fearing your response.

You came near and held me close. “You are good. But you don’t have to be. You’re enough as you are.”

I looked at you and I marveled.

Together we loved our beloved, you and I, though you struggled to understand the depth of our bond at first. I also struggled, unwilling to love someone so much, knowing the unrestrained way I love. You feared for me; you knew I had plunged into his depths, heedless and uncaring of the consequences. Yet you came to care for him too, and together we fought impossible forces for him, that he might be ours.

He says I am impossible, the way I know all he is and stay and stay. I tell him you taught me what love is.

I tell him: there is the one person who knows and understands every part of me, who answers my thoughts before I say a word. My love, you are the only one who sometimes knows how I will react even before I do, knows me even better than I know myself, can explain to me why and what I’m thinking when I don’t understand myself. You see all I am and love me through it all. If I know how to love others, it is because you showed me first. If I know how to be a safe place for others, it is because you were mine first. No words could ever accurately convey who you are to me. My reason to live. My love, my light, my everything.

I tell him of Christ’s love, far greater than mine. We speak of faith and our struggles with it.

My faith tends to be less loud, more riddled with doubts–something I carry close to my heart and dislike sharing with others unless I am comfortable with them. I’ve heard it said quite often that if one was passionate about something, they would get uncontrollably excited about it and want to share it with people.

It took me a long time, but I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that God made people different, and we’re not all meant to express our devotion to Him in some cookie-cutter fashion. My faith is quieter, more reflective, more internal, more relationship-focused. People may not see me as “on fire for Jesus,” but I love him deeply all the same.

“I know love because of you,” he says.

And I know love because of you, My Love.

And we know love because of Christ.

And the layers unfold from bitterness to neutrality to acceptance.