We Can Enjoy All the Same Things and Come Completely Apart

He couldn’t wait to take me there.

“I have something to show you when you have a minute.”

In our marriage that once meant, I know you’re gonna love what I love. Today it means, I know you.

“I found a picture you are going to want to take.” He says, standing at door wide open. Grabbing my phone, I’m excited to see what he’s discovered for me.

Driving down gravel, he pulls into an access to the field. He’s hardly in park before I open the door. Acres of red clover. “It’s beautiful,” I exhale. And he knows, and I know, and all together the air fills with the welcome aroma of knowing each other.

Have you ever known the blessing of being known? Ever wished another could know you so well they never have to ask where you’d like to go? They’d know by your smile, the twinkle in your eye, what moves you the most deep down inside. They’ve watched and learned, even more closely than you, what it is you love to do.

After 38 years…we’re there.

The first kid came before the wedding day. When the last kid left, we knew—we either find things we enjoy together, or risk losing what started as forever. What we found, threw us for a loop.

There’s only One thing that holds all things together. We can enjoy all the same things and come completely apart.

When you know your known by the All Knowing—His Spirit full-fills every unavoidable gap. We can all differ in a million different ways as long as we all agree on the One who saves all. 

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The burden of being the same is a burden you don’t have to bear.

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I once impersonated my Mom in the first grade. Swiped her tan, tortoise, cat-eye glasses from her morning coffee table. Eyewear Mom couldn’t see four feet in front of her without. Back when contacts were a thing of the future. Carried them to school in my coat pocket hoping to boost my image. (Shirley got glasses and became an overnight success.) Slipping them on when Ms. Felton turned her attention to the chalkboard, I couldn’t see anything but colorful blur moving about the room. Planned to hide them in my desk till the end of the day.

Dismissed for lunch, a boy stood at my desk, “Why aren’t you wearing your glasses?”

“I only need them sometimes,” replied my big lie. He stared, like my story wasn’t adding up.

Keeping my nose high, I balanced them like a seal to the bus line home. Ms. Felton must have decided to humor my scam and spare me the embarrassment. Following the fuzzy head of hair in front of me, I quickly pulled them off before stepping up the bus. I don’t recall explaining their disappearance, only the relief of returning the burden of what was never mine in the first place.

The burden of being the same is a burden you don’t have to bear.

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Your life is on purpose for a purpose.

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Swimming in the pool last evening, my husband says, sitting on the bottom step, my waves bumping his gray chest, “Isn’t it amazing how opposite we are?” My smile reaches ear to ear because no truer thing about us was ever said.

There’s a true thing that truly lights a fire time can never burn out: The way God knows every knit and purl of you. The way God sees right through, to the real you. How God hears every word of your beaten heart. What God wants for you? To know Him the way He knows you.

Didn’t we grow up thinking God was the one behind the curtain? Truth is—He’s been calling us out this whole time.

Pressing His blood like ink into every letter of His undying word—because it’s a matter of life and death that you know Him. The exceedingly great reward is to read God the way He reads you—with the whole heart, the full strength of mind and soul. Reciting again and again how He loves you. It’s in there, beginning to end. You are wanted. Your life is on purpose for a purpose. No one is a mistake, a selfish motive, or obligation—but a miracle made for miracles only a God like He can make. All the vast and seemingly minute plans of God include you. Not the you, you hope to be or wish you were, the you, you are. I know, I know…we’re supposed to be transforming into the image of His Son. And we are, we will—as He wills. First we have to stop looking through the lens of everyone else to see anything clearly.

“It is in the revealed truth of God we learn to become the greatest, freest thinkers.” –Alistair Begg.

He can’t wait to take you there. Where the aroma of knowing Him takes your breath away. Just go with Him on His word that He knows you…and you’re there.