Day 36: Beloved

In 2006, when I flew from West Africa to Davis, California on my way to start a new job and new life, I wrote a letter to my future children. I dreamed of who they might be, when I might have them, with whom. Little did I know that only 2 days later would I run into the man who I would later marry and have these two beautiful boys with.

I had never much pictured myself "settled down." I was driven. Passionate about solving big problems in the world. Alleviating poverty and human suffering or something like that. It was my call and I felt ordained in the ministry of global service.

But that year in Davis, God gave me a great gift. A soul mate. And my course was changed.

I began a new journey, or maybe better said, a new leg of the same journey. A continually unfolding journey into the way of love. I knew love before. I knew compassion. I knew sacrifice. But this call, loving these boys was a call to know a deeper love. A relentless, lift cars and jump over high building kind of love that comes from years of inter-dwelling. I've come to understand God better: Why he calls us his children, his beloved. Why the song of solomon is scripture. Why even God, themselves, are portrayed to us as a perfect relation in the trinity. God is love and not just "isn't that nice" love but the move mountains and split universes to uphold us kind of love. My kids don't always know or understand my love for them,  but that doesn't change anything. They won't understand that some of their pains, I have to let them go through. But it doesn't lessen my love. They won't know how much it hurts me to see them suffer. That love is an ache in the heart unknowable to anyone but me. And so it is with God.