On love and prayer outside of Eden

Before My Babe came into my picture I had a dating life and, of course, she had also dated some guys before I sort of tripped into her world.

(In fact sometime after the fact, My Babe told me that the wedding she had asked me to attend with her, the key date that changed everything in our early relationship, was actually never meant to be – I was the third guy she had asked, but the only one, to my fantastic fortune, that happened to be free that weekend.)

We’ve shared this with the kids for no other reason than it’s the truth and if one is to have any sort of natural and intimate conversation with them from time to time — (we do have what we call Around the Couch Time every Sunday) this sort of thing does comes up.

This is always a surprise to children who are more inclined to believe that Mom and Dad just sort of appeared ready-made in front of each other, sort of like in Eden, which, you have to admit, would greatly simplify the mate selection process.

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This all comes to mind because I recently shared this post on my FB Page – an essay I first noted was linked to my brother’s page, that is my single brother who, as far as I can tell is playing the relationship scene with some amount of caution and willingness to wait, not unlike myself when I was his age.

The gist of the essay that he linked into is that it’s possible to find oneself drowning in the deep pool of love, to love another soul that deeply, yet, for one reason or another, find marriage elusive because it’s not the right season.

One circumstance or another keep it from happening, yet you still carry the heat of that flame, with some amount of pain the closer you are to it, maybe even for your entire life.

You may think what you may about this. And, it seems to me, that your thoughts might be related to how vulnerable you allow yourself to be with others.

My own view is that it’s not only selfishness that can cause this sort of pain in relational loss, but sacrificial love also.

Sometimes life also has a way of opening and closing doors, which maybe is all going to that old adage that “the right person at the wrong time is the wrong person.” This is one thought that helped me put some of my own earlier relational desires in perspective.

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The other thing that saved me from jumping over a cliff over some of those old frustrations was prayer, often desperate, late at night on long country roads.

Of course my prayers as young man were different than those as the years went on. After enough pruning and pummeling “Not my will, but Yours” became somewhat easier to say,  became more reasonable, became, in truth, the only thing left to say.

And when the right person came along … it was the right time.

And what I felt more than anything was overwhelming mystery, the feeling of having some strange wind at my back, blown along at remarkable speed with my only job now to hold on for dear life.