The Restoration Tour

Today marks exactly 18 months to the day since Ceecee and I got back together.   That means it’s been just about six months since the conclusion of the restoration tour (if you don’t know what that means, go to the Home page at the top and start there).  I thought I’d check in today with a few thoughts and an update on what’s gone on during this recent season of our lives.

First of all, our love is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.  Every day, I look at my bride and I know that she is my one true thing, my soul mate, the other half of my heart.  I’d like to say that will never change, but I know it’s not true.  It not only will change, it never stops changing.

It grows.  It grows deeper and more significant, filling places in me that need healing and reaching deep crevices in her that have never before felt love’s touch.  It fulfills and satisfies us, and as we continue to allow it to become our permanent reality rather than something new and different, there’s a richness and a comfort like a feather bed with the most exquisite satin sheets and down comforter that envelops us and makes us want to stay forever and not even have to change positions.

The healing that has taken place is so much more than remarkable.  I suppose that some of the scars will always remain, as even wounds that have completely healed sometimes leave behind tangible reminders of what once was, and in this case, what could be.  I accept that.

I still live with a lingering pain that accompanies me each and every day, but it’s faded now, and it has no power over us.  I wish it wasn’t there, but I also know that, just like Jesus’ scars, it remains as a reminder of the wages of sin, and of how much love costs.  Not that I could ever imagine going back to being the man I was, but knowing where we’ve been and how we got there keeps me on the straight and narrow so we can stay where we are and never even approach the things that nearly destroyed us.

Now I take none of it for granted, and I pray that I never will.  Now I work on being a better man, a better friend, a better husband, a better lover.  I read, I study, I seek.  I look for ways to romance my wife, serve her, flirt with her, please her, make her laugh.  I am intentional about the way I treat her, the way I talk to her, the way I look at her, the way I treasure her by my actions, not just in my heart.  In short, I love her.

None of this would have been possible without my father, God.  Back in the Spring of 2010 when I allowed the God who made me to truly have me, everything changed.  Now I’m intentional about Him too.  If I was to stop loving Him, I would cut myself off from the source of real love.

The love that I now have for my wife is the love that I received from Him.  It comes from Him to me, then I give it to her, and it cycles back again in a never diminishing loop.  As I said earlier, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever known.

Everyone is looking for love, except for those who have already found it.  Many, and probably most are still, in the words of the song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places.”  The right place to look is in the author and inventor of love.  He created us to know and experience love, but it’s found in Him first and shared with that person who you will become one with as an overflow.