Why, a life without love is no life at all

   
         It is currently 11:46 pm and I am wide awake. It's turning colder in Washington, the leaves are beginning to brown and turn into vibrant oranges, reds, and yellows. There are pumpkins lining doorways, walkways, and business entrances, and in some yards, the Halloween decorations are in full display, still covered in a thick layer of dust from their days in storage. The air holds a suppressed excitemement, a promise of new things to come... and I am ready. At least I hope I am. As exciting as this season is, I am feeling some apprehension towards it. I have fallen for someone, quite deeply in fact, so that I know this attraction I have for him is more than just infatuation. It is something real, something very nearly tangible. This man completes me in a way no one else has ever attempted before. He knows me inside and out, understands me in the most simple of ways, and makes me smile like not another soul on this earth can do. I have been afraid, truth be told, because I am wary of allowing my heart to open up again when it was shattered so horribly not very long ago. I have been asking myself, drilling questions into my own brain... is this real? Are these feelings merely product of loneliness? Or emptiness? Of hopelessness? For a long time I convinced myself they must be. How could I have moved on so quickly? How could I have found a man in whom my heart delights this abundantly? So I simply forced myself to imagine life without him. The product of these musings? I lost my breath. I was literally left breathless by the thought. Here I have found someone who has had such a profound impact on my soul, that he can steal the very breath from my chest without ever knowing. His affections for me are the same. We feel perfectly fit for one another, and I can not help but find it beautiful. When I think of him, I picture a future of travel, of adventure and intrigue, of foreign lands rife with intoxicating beauty and danger. I see hazy Autumn mornings, frost lining the fallen leaves. I see gentle snows blanketing rolling hills and frozen clouds of breath. I see great mountains, with cliffs so steep that your neck is craned in a grotesque manner, just trying to catch a glimpse of their ends. I see stolen kisses in moonlit gardens, canoe rides down raging rivers, muddied boots and sweat caked foreheads from the strain of an arduous hike. I see children with big eyes and open hands leading us through rural villages, singing in their foreign tongues. I see horses flying over hilly terrain, heaving sides and salty skin. I see oceans and forests, castles and cottages, sheer cliffs and desert valleys, meadows teeming with deer and wildflowers, wastelands riddled with charred remains, swamps and rivers, lakes and streams, clouds and sunshine, storms and lightning. And through it all, I see his face.

         Come Monday morning he'll be gone. This man, this being who has captured my soul is also a Marine, bound to the country that birthed him. Four years his life will belong to the flag, four years he will sacrifice, and four years he will be parted from me. At night I lie awake and imagine, horrible things, scenarios that leave him hurt or worse. And my heart breaks, and tears prick against my eyes, and again I am left breathless- afraid to move, afraid to breathe. There are few things in this life that scare me, but the thought of his journey is one. I am so proud, so inexplicably grateful for what he is about to do. Still, the fear festers in my mind like a putrid corpse, and I am left suddenly feeling terrified and alone, stricken by dismay. But deep within, somewhere in that place between my heart and my brain, I know that God is going to protect and keep him like only He can do. My worries, great as they are, are mere phantoms in comparison for what God has in store for his life. This man will change nations, I foretell, and I am so privileged to be a part of his destined life.

And now an excerpt from a favored song of ours:

Never knew I could feel like this, Like I've never seen the sky before, Want to vanish inside your kiss, Every day I love you more and more, Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing? Telling me to give you everything, Seasons may change, winter to spring, But I love you until the end of time. 

And you, when you read this, know my faithfulness, know how my very heart beats, and know that I will wait, though hell should bar the way.