Dear Whomever You Might Be,
I miss you, but I haven't met you. Oh, but I want to...
Two weekends ago I had a pretty rough car ride home. I was driving back from a good friend's wedding. All things considered, it should have been a very straightforward and familiar drive home. Traffic was light, weather was fine, and the music was good. However, during that one hour and eight minute ride home, I had to convince myself not to take my own life. I went from deciding my fight was over, and being willing to give into the void, to convincing myself I couldn't do that and must claw my way out. I went from darkness to light over the course of that drive home.
My 31 years so far have been filled with many great things, so much to be thankful for. I've always been at my best on a team, with a pack, and with a responsibility to others. However, loneliness has always had a way of isolating out those things and making me often feel like I'm on the outside looking in. Standing in a freezing cold deluge of rain looking in on family and friends who are happy and thriving. To this point, a wedding should be a time of celebration, and that weekend was no exception. The bride and groom were perfect, a love to be envied. However, my choices and my life have always confined me into this state of mind where eventually I'm alone. Even if I'm not physically alone, I feel desolate. This emptiness weighs down on me like a ton of bricks and I must muster any strength I can to keep from being crushed beneath the weight. Two weekends ago, that void, that emptiness, it crushed me. I had to hold it together until I had dropped a friend off at the airport and as we said our farewells, I watched him walk into the airport and whispered to myself "Goodbye, I'll miss you man". Thus began the longest hour and eight minutes of my life. I was broken, I still am, but I had given up at that moment. I tapped out. I have persisted through life so long alone. The pains of my past added on to the weight and I had nothing left. I staggered into the fray of my mind unarmed, alone, and content that I had fought a good fight, but was done.
I did title this a love letter, so bare with me.
Wherever you are, hopefully you don't come across this letter before I intend to read it to you. I'm putting it here for a timestamp and to remind myself of this moment, this decision. But, Even if you do, I hope that on the day I do finally read it to you, you'll appreciate the gravity of this one hour and eight minutes, and how you intervened within it. I don't know you yet, at least I don't think so, but none the less, thank you.
I began a plan. I first thought of what I would say to my family and friends, the individual videos I would send. It's not any of their faults after all, not remotely. As Dave Grohl once said of Kurt Cobain's suicide: "Sometimes you just can't save someone from themselves." But before everything was finalized in my head, I was saved. You see I don't know you yet, but my God do I miss you right now. As I played the mental game of "give me a reason not to do this. Give me a reason life is worth it" and the Lord whispered back: "She is, and I am"
I had no immediate rebuttal. I wanted so badly in that moment to give up on the immensity of love, but I couldn't. Please don't, but if you scrolled down through each of the posts on my "blog" that spans 10 years at this point, there are 3 constants for the most part. Faith, Hope and Love. These are three things no living version of myself could ever give up on. The path of life for each of us goes all kinds of directions, and certain pivotal moments in our lives take longer or shorter to get to than they do for others. But at that moment, right then, I was reminded that somewhere out there was a novel in a sea of magazines, a needle girl in a haystack world, a rose red in a lifetime of black and white. You. The truth of the matter was, to me you deserve to be happy even more than I do, and giving up on that was something I simply could not do. At this moment, as I type this, I don't believe I deserve a yes from you, but hopefully by that time I will have. All this time, for over three decades, I believed I loved the idea of you, but during that hour and eight minutes I realized it was You. Its always been You the Lord has pointed me toward. Through trials and tribulations, through my aimless wanderings in the dark, my salvation and You were always His plan for me. A plan promised in Jeremiah 29:11. "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Because I believe that plan in the broken core of my heart, I will press on, I will find you, and I can't wait for His plans for us.
Our love story has been a long time coming for me. But I just wanted you to wholly understand that I've dreamed of "us" my entire life, and it is by God's will that it has come to fruition. I promise you on this day to try and better myself every day when I can. To be worthy of the journey that has brought us both here. I promise to love you fiercely, with every fiber of my being, and to continue to write our love story together. A love story to rival the ages. If I have learned anything about love in my lifetime, it is that true love, the kind that endures, is a love that forges two souls into one. "I" becomes "We", and "Me" becomes "Us". A duo fused together, braced against the tempest of the world. I will do everything in my power to bring that into our reality. I will submerge myself in the ocean of God's grace, to be brought back to life through Christ, and I will do this for us. I will latch onto a verse that has carried me through the hardest days of my life, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."
I cant wait for that day, whenever it will be. Until then, know that I miss you, that I love you, and I'm trying my best. I'm not remotely perfect now, and I won't be then, but I'm trying. I promise with all of my heart that I'm doing the best I can.
For now, I will metaphorically fold up this Love Letter into a nice paper air plane and sail it forward through time to you; for that day.
Thank You for being You, for this, and Thank God for that one hour and eight minute drive home.
“It was a comet. The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning. And when it went away, he waited his entire life for it to come back to him. It was more than just a comet because of what it brought to his life: direction, beauty, meaning. There are many who couldn't understand, and sometimes he walked among them. But even in his darkest hours, he knew in his heart that someday it would return to him, and his world would be whole again... And his belief in God and love and art would be re-awakened in his heart. The boy saw the comet and suddenly his life had meaning.” ~Lucas Scott, One Tree Hill
