Dear Joel,

It is 4:30 in the morning. Do you hear that? The song birds are here. I was talking about the silence of this place recently. The way I can hear a crow flap overhead as it passes. How there seemed to be a lack of the birds who sing. All it took was two bird feeders and a bag of seed. Now they sing non-stop. Sometimes I am amazed at the minuscule acts it takes to help life thrive and expand.

I’ve been living like an eighteen year old this week. Two concerts in two nights. Like that is something women in their middle thirties should do. You kiss my forehead and send me on my way, HAVE FUN, you say. You can’t come, because… youth. Fifteen years of Thursday nights, you have been in the same place. After all these years. You call me as Ruth Moody breaks into Hallelujah in the Dream Cafe. I hold up the phone. You say it again…ENJOY.

I used to think that to co-labour meant we WORKED side by side. That service was only about how many floors I could sweep in your wake. Now I think it is much more than that. We are co-labourers with Christ. I am your helper in becoming more like Christ, to aid in the rebirth, your life made over. A midwife to the work of the spirit in you. That doesn’t sound very sexy, but I think it is the truth. My central role in your life is not to make you meat loaf. No. My role is to help Christ birth in you more and more. My role is to call you out to LIFE. To the truest sense of yourself. I’m afraid it might involve a motorcycle, but I made promise to never diminish your dreams, my vow was to help make them true. Can you dream a few safer ones from now on?

You do the same. You free me to become all I was called to. People ask how I do so many things, I tell them, Joel makes room. He invites me to BE. He kisses me on the forehead and says GO.

So many marriages seek to constrain and contain each other. Thanks for being the kind of husband that scatters the seed, invites this wild bird heart to sing.

Meliss

(Linking with Seth and Amber Haines. I love these letters…believing that chasing hard after our marriages we can help you to do the same. You can read all of my letters here)