1 Peter 4:8

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. ”

Lindsey tried to tell me a few times about her previous “history” which is code speak for her lovers and relationships. I am 52 so I know sometimes we might want to see if our past will somehow wreck a potential future with a new person we are falling in love with.

I let her tell me one really tough story that Haunted her more than the rest. I listened and then said, ‘Rae Rae, we write our own story and that’s all that matters from here on out’.

I really had no idea how powerful Love really is until I watched Our love start to heal all the brokenness in her life. Her past. Her mental health and terrible struggles with depression, and her spirit and her relationship to Christ.

I felt Our love shattering long held insecurities in my heart and mind. I felt it breaking the patterns of thought that had crippled me nearly all my life. The deep and abiding wounds from the scars of my previous marriage of a spouse abandoning that marriage without warning. I lived a lot of time wondering when the shoe would drop on me again. I had a lot of fears.

Sometimes I think we get caught thinking about love in a sentimental fashion and that’s such a trap. Love is the most powerful gift from God and its power can be Limitless. When Lindsey Rae smiled at me, and I mean the smile she Reserved for me, I could feel the ground below me fall away and I began to soar. The Love behind that smile crushed my fears.

I have for certain never had that look from anyone. But Lindsey was braver than most anyone I have ever known. We would often not speak while at the table eating dinner but we would spend long moments just staring into each others eyes and all our problems of work, of chores, of stress would melt away until one of us could not stand it any longer and we would laugh together.

Looking back thru her life now and sifting through her digital footprint has only deepened my humility at how God worked in the “US” to create a place for Lindsey to find peace. I looked back to try and understand why she might have adored me so much. In the last weeks of her life she began to look even deeper into my eyes in ways that made me almost scared. I mean I loved her more than I ever thought possible, but what I saw when she gazed at me, the love there in her eyes was: adoration. I never deserved that kind of gaze. I felt I didn’t anyway and more than that it made me wonder ‘does she feel that I adore her’? It made me curious to know more of her story. I would have never pursued it as it was more like one of those things more often than not you just ponder about but never really look into. I was so in love with her and the narrative we were furiously writing that I don’t think I would have ever thought that perhaps her history, her own brokenness, her own dreams now coming to fruition were catapulting her deeper into Our love because there she found her healing and her completeness not in me per ‘se but in the Us we were making together.

I am sure it will ease your heart to know that in this new “Us”, she was becoming something she had never been: Integrated. Whole. Strong. Vulnerable. and most importantly: Godly and Holy even.