"Thanks For Helping Me To Live..."

So I’m just going to have to stop cleaning up!

Every time I do lately, I find something emotional enough to bring some tears.

Even though I never lived in this house full-time with my Rob, we did move lots of things here after getting the house in 2005.  That way, we would not have to 

move them from parsonage to parsonage.

Today, I came across a box that contained a note that I had brought here 

with some other things at some point.

Rob asked me to marry him in June of 1993 while we were at the beach

with his extended family.

While we were there, he bought dozens and dozens of postcards. 

When I asked him why he was buying so many,

he replied with, “You’ll see.”

And I did.

For years.

Throughout the next few years, he would write me notes on those postcards.

Sometimes just a quick, jotted down note.

Sometimes a long, well thought-out letter crammed onto

the small space a postcard offers.

And sometimes in between.

My Rob told me that, through those sweet postcard reminders, 

he wanted me to remember what that week felt like…

…the week he knew I was his bride and the week I knew he was my groom.

Before he started Duke and was still working a regular job,

he would mail them to me from various places on his route.

One year into our marriage when he started at Duke Divinity School,

he started mailing them to me from Duke.

1½ years into our marriage and after he became a pastor at his first churches 

– a 2 church student appointment – 

he didn’t have much time to get to a post office

so he started leaving them for me at home in the mornings 

when he would leave for Duke.

The notes lasted a good while before he used the last one.

And I enjoyed every single one of them.

Today, I did the same.

I was in a hurry when I first came across the note but seeing it made me

stop,

sit down,

read,

remember,

and savor

each word he had written to me.

In the middle of the mundane task of cleaning up,

my Rob’s words,

(22 years and 1 month after he purchased the cards,

and 3 years and 9½  months after his death),

once again,

reminded me not only of the week that he asked me to be his

and I wholeheartedly agreed to become his bride,

but his words also reminded me of my worth to God, to him, and to others,

of my vision for my life

(which, of course, has been under refinement since his death),

and of his belief in my virtue and my integrity.

I needed every word today,

probably even more so than I needed them back then.

Our marriage ended the moment my Rob took his last breath,

but his supportive words to me live on through his notes.

It felt good to remember what it felt like

to know someone loved me so deeply and freely.

It felt good to remember what it felt like

to know that my someone loved God so deeply and freely.

It felt good to remember what it felt like

to know how excited that my man was

that I came to hear him sing and play his guitar.

It felt good to remember what it felt like

to know that my someone characterized me as

“a woman after God’s own heart.”

It even felt good to remember the nicknames he gave

the 2 little teddy bears he gave me on one of our first dates.

I had not thought about that in a long time.

In short,

it felt good to remember what it felt like

to want and need him in my life

and to be wanted and needed in his.

Even though my Rob is gone,

his influence on who I became

and who I am still becoming

is alive and well.

For that,

I am thankful.

Rob’s last words to me on this particular note were,

“I love you, & Thanks for helping me to live – PROV 20:6.”

I can no longer help Rob live on this earth

but through his words, 

he is still helping me to do so.

And today, as I have been moving

and continue to move forward in my life,

his words actually reminded me

to also never settle for anything less

than God’s best.

In all areas of my life.