Grace

I have the most sympathetic dog in human history.  I don't know how he tells I'm crying, but the moment he realizes emotion is happening, he's right there, nose to tears, paw on shoulder.  Or, as this picture shows, tongue to tongue in a display of anti-exercise solidarity.  This afternoon I sat down with my coffee after a morning of work and finished the last of "Julie & Julia", a favorite not because of the cooking but because of the marriages.  Both Paul and Julia and Eric and Julie have marriages like I have a marriage.  The words these men speak to their wives; the way they go to bat for them; the insight they have into the female hearts they have care of (witness the gifts given: mortar and pestle, faux pearls); the tenderness they show their fragile, driven women; all these things melt me into a pile of goo.  Weeping goo, in this instance, and Norman was right there to make sure I didn't emote alone.

I am so thankful for my life I don't have words. God will have to translate my tears. I think I'm finally beginning to absorb what happiness really is, a thing with which I have struggled all my life.  I have never been wildly emotional so I chalked it up to that, but it goes deeper.  Of course.  I begin to feel, not simply understand, that I have been rescued from God-knows-what and placed in a garden, both physically and emotionally. I look at my beautiful yard and joy erupts out of me. I think of Dale and the most perfect outlet for my happiness is these tears. This is what humility is achieving in me. I haven't written about humility yet, but I will.  It's a rainbow I've chased all my life, thinking if I only ran fast enough, if I only searched hard enough I could achieve it.  Suddenly I find all I must do is stand still and accept God's opinion of me.  Out of all reckoning.  It's not about me at all.  I did not expect an ability to assimilate happiness to be on the other side of sacrificed pride, but that equation makes perfect sense now that God has managed to crack the door of my understanding.  And through that crack I see the kind of person I hope to become: unashamed, guileless, simple, sincere, empathetic, and 100% love.

Just like Norman.