Divine Plagiarism

“Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, or they become legends.” – Legends of the Fall.

This will be my legacy to my family and my children. I will take God’s promises as face value. We will see what God can do with one man totally sold out to Him. I will give Him that man. This is all I have to give.

Fasting is praying with your body. I have wanted to do the 40-day fast thing for some time now. Now I have both the reason and the time. With my test out of the way, I think I actually have a window for it now. I’m giving up solid food (but due to my professional commitments, I’m keeping milk and Slim-Fast for protein.) I lift up the prayer that started this thing, ‘Lord, change my heart or change hers.’ Perhaps the answer will arrive sooner, as with the prayer delayed by the Prince of Persia. Perhaps the answer will not arrive until the end of the fast, or afterwards. Either way, it seemed like the thing to do. I start today.

Some of my conversations I will not share. They are between me and God. This much I will share. It seems like so many stories are like the Legends of the Fall, tragic webs of broken dreams and unrequited hopes. I believe my Father is richer than this. There is some story under His skies for me. So I wait upon Him, and I place my hopes at His feet. I am still in love with C. Now more than ever. If this is not His story for me, then may He reforge my heart and reshape my desires so that all I want is the woman He has for me. Where the good things about C exist only as a foreshadow of His glory woven into that woman. Where the ways C has hurt me are simply the rocks along the broken path that leads me to that woman. If C is not that woman, I want to know that to the very depths of my being. If C is that woman, if this is my story, then I ask that He would move in a mighty way, breaking and healing her heart (and mine,) holding us both close to His chest. Where my love would not be considered an insult, where she would thank me for not giving up on her. Where He would redeem all of these hopes sent up into the skies, and both her and I would find ourselves and each other more amazing than we ever dreamt possible. A good author will write a good story. I know the Author of my story. I will not be satisfied until I find His good ending (even if it is not the ending I would write.)

This is, one way or another, my way of fighting for my wife. In The Last Battle, Aslan tells the Calormen warrior who seeks after Tash and finds Aslan that all good acts were acts unto Him. All the blood and tears I spill here in these prayers are an offering to God for the woman He will give me. Whether that is C or someone else. A friend told me early in this story that in following it to the end, my wife would get a better husband out of it. I believe this with all my heart. This much I know: after God, my wife will have my whole heart. Every nook and cranny, all of the hidden places, all of my deep dreams. She will have all of the places I my heart I am discovering even now. I will look her in the eyes, and I will mean it with all of my heart when I tell her that ‘over every other daughter of Eve, I choose you.’

This much will be true: there will be no fragments of lost hopes in my heart. Whoever she is, my wife is a beloved and cherished daughter of the Most High. I will serve her with my whole heart. There will not be even a whisper of settling, not in my words, not in my eyes, not in the very deepest wells of my heart. She will have no doubt that with every fiber of my being I believe that she is the only one for me. In order to be able to say that, I must see this story all the way through. The shards of Narsil are reforged into Anduril; my heart is broken so that it may be reforged into His image. I welcome the breaking, I welcome the fires of His forge. May only He remain.

Adam’s wife was made from His very being, made of the very same essence. There is a woman with fire in her veins, where the future is born behind her eyes. There is because there must be. When God made me, He spoke life into me with His words. Those words were the beginning of a sentence. There is a woman in which He completed that sentence. I will wait for her. I stand on the mountaintop, overlooking the battlefield, and I wait for a woman who dreams the same dreams I do. A woman who has the strength to follow them. A woman who loves the Lord her God more than life itself. I hold out my hand. I still hope that C will be the one who will take it. These are my desires. He tells us that He will meet the desires of our hearts. I believe Him. He will bring me this miracle, or He will reforge my desires and then meet them. I stake my heart on it. May those whose hope is the Lord not be put to shame.