Ramblings

If this is what being in love feels like, then, oh, I am ready! But no, being in love -- if the storytellers and the historians and the theologians and all people throughout history haven't been lying -- being in love must be, is, infinitely greater. For, as my mother says, it lasts much longer, a lifetime.

This feeling after finishing a book, completing a film, leaving a play, cadencing a symphony, or opening a letter. This feeling when the couples are united, when the good triumphs, when the journey ends happily. This feeling of such joy, when even my old soul and heavy body want to leap and dance and shout and sing. And all my face can do is contort into the brightest, broadest of beams that I think it will break altogether. Love must be a beautiful thing if it inspires more true joy, more giddy happiness than this.

Is it silly, naive, even coarse to compare true love, that which has been immortalized by author and poet, painter and sculptor, composer and musician alike for thousands of years to the ecstasy of happily ever after? I think not.

As a matter of fact, if I do say so myself, I think few things are more fitting or romantic. What could be more natural for a girl to dream? That knights of chivalry do come riding in, that good always prevails over evil in the end, that a soulmate truly lives and breathes and eats and sleeps and, perhaps, thinks of me, does exist -- what could be more fitting, more youthful, more beautiful for me to believe in?

I still await my soulmate, yes, but I know that if he never comes or if he does and I am not permitted to have him, I know that I will live on. And even be happy. How? For knights do exist, in the stories and legends and lore and life, yes, but also in the only knight who can bring perfect, whole satisfaction, joy, and peace. He has already been introduced to me. And Jesus is His name.

So, yes, I wait for my soulmate, for my best beloved, for my husband. I await the day I will "know" he's the one, the day he will begin to woo and win me, the day I will be won, the day we will be made one. Yes, I long for all of these things and for that girlish bursting of gladness and joy. Yet, I know that my Redeemer lives, that my Beloved is bringing a beautiful day and I get to spend all of eternity marveling and singing and dancing and shouting and jumping and beaming and loving Him.

"Arise, my love, my beautiful one,

and come away,

for behold, the winter is past;

the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on earth,

the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove

is heard in our land.

The fig tree ripens its figs,

and the vines are in blossom;

they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my beautiful one,

and come away. . . .

let me see your face,

let me hear your voice,

for your voice is sweet,

and your face is lovely. . . .

My beloved is mine, and I am his; . . .

Make haste my beloved . . . "

Song of Solomon 2:10b-14, 16a & 8:14a