Day 69.

It may not be a miracle as some count miracles, but to me the last chapter in this part of my life was a glorious awakening of the joy of inspiration that had lain dormant now for nearly 3O years. It happened this way.

I had been a solo parent long enough to know that when your teenage children go away to church summer camps, that it is not a good plan to stay around the house on your own where misery is likely to lurk. In my solitude I sought the solace of a gathering of like, recycled singles, as in ”birds of a feather, ”

I had made up my mind that I was comfortably single and happy and that I would approach the future with a calmness that would have maintained my dignity. That didn’t mean that l wouldn’t be unhappy if the right kind of relationship washed onto my shore. If it did ever happen again it would have to be a miniature eternity that mirrored the ideal that God wants us to enjoy in relationships.

In the years of my youth, I had loved others, but all my life I had yearned for the one whose name was unspoken and whose sight had always been unseen. The one who could unlock the passion that was in me. Then how unexpected when she came crashing into my orbit! This world is full of fine women, and there may be finer women than Earlene, but suddenly my mind had been blinded to the fact. The awakening was unexpected. The richness, depth and quality of the next few months took me totally by surprise. I had long forgotten what it was like to feel like this.

I would not say that she was particularly beautiful as the world counts beauty, but I saw her as a kaleidoscope of diamonds. She was a collection of rare and precious jewels in a cruel and harsh world. At the moment her light entered my night all words become silence; all other colors were gray beside the riot of shades that adorned her.

It was only a week and I was sure that parting would return my life to normality. She certainly never felt the same energy that I had or gave me any encouragement. I retreated to the wilderness for a planned visit with the one who created these emotions and there I found, under the tree of meditation, that she was not forgotten, that her memory mingled with my prayers. God was not dishonored by that, for He made love to be all that it is.

After watching five sunsets and five sunrises I realized that the rising and setting of the sun even to 1,OOO days, were not going to diminish what I had experienced. The coming and going of the sun only made the memory greater.

This unexpected enchantment with love led me to an infatuation with God’s own charisma, for what a glimpse of the eternal heart it is to know that God is passionately in love with me, in loving her I had been given an insight into how God wants my love in return and how it must hurt Him to not have it. This inheritance of natures graces did not diminish my spiritual life but rather increased it, I had in sighted God’s love in a new way. Is this not how God intended love, for the earthly to be a reflection and foretaste of the eternal. 584