The Announcement: Time to preorder friends. My across-the-web friend, sister, and mentor, Glennon Melton of Momastery, is releasing her second book. Love Warrior. It is about marriage. But it is also about us. (Do you love that I’m telling you about this book I haven’t even read? I can do this because I have been reading with Dear G for so so long. I know the story that gave rise to THIS story, and I trust in G and her infinite wisdom and grace).
This is some of what she has to say:
“Listen to me: Some loves are perennials—they survive the winter and bloom again. Other loves are annuals—beautiful and lush and full for a season and then back to the Earth to die and create richer soil for new life to grow. The eventual result of both types of plants is New Life.
New life for annual and perennial plants. New love for annual and perennial loves. Nothing wasted. No such thing as failure. Love never fails. Never never. Are you still married? Your love did not fail. Are you divorced? Once? Twice? A third time? Your love did not fail. It made you who you are inside of THIS VERY moment. Love never fails.”
Some Bravery: Glennon (see above) has this idea that life is brutiful, the inextricable qualities of brutal and beautiful. I’m reminded now, more than ever, that they truly cannot be separated, and that one colors the other in a constantly shifting perspective.
Right now? Life is messy and complicated and heartbreaking. Life is beautiful and amazing beyond belief, and I wonder if this part of life is the psychological equivalent to what Phillip Petite felt like while walking between buildings, suspended directly in between beauty and freedom and impending death. I need to tell this story, yet, this is not all my story to tell. But I have learned so much. So much about addiction and love and mistakes; about my own capabilities, and the patience of my friends. I have learned I am learning I will be learning.
Yet.
And one poem.
Untitled
When your husband no longer loves you
or you, him
you teach him how to roast a chicken,
how to prioritize — which task
needs doing first.
You begin to help more.
You think about the bandit who cut
your wedding cake when no one was looking.
The haircut, your hesitance. The scale
with which Father Bill confirmed you were
the most mismatched couple he
had ever seen.
You think about the difference. What
it feels like, now, to kiss someone who wants
to kiss you.
You can’t actually remember how long
because it feels like forever. Like you have
not been loved in forever.
When your husband tells you he wants
to love you, you are relieved. Not
with the want, but the admission.
And this makes you feel less crazy.
You remind him not to overfill the
washing machine.
You get off the couch.
You make dinner again.
You play cards at night, kiss chastely,
say “please” and “thank you,”
and mean it.
You become okay with not knowing
what happened.
It just is.
You are here, and something is next.
Much love, friends.
xoxo
Heather
from midnight oil 