Dear Younger Me
In your 20s, your biggest fear will be loneliness,
that you’ll never marry, won’t have children, grandchildren.
You think you find the one in college,
but he finds someone else. Then, seven years later, this man reappears.
You give it another try. It seems like true love. He leaves you again.
This time over the phone, long distance.

Once again, you’re abandoned. You watch friends start families.
You move, start over, meet a much older, intensively interesting man.
This guy shows you his town, which soon becomes your city.
He tells stimulating stories about where he’s been.
You date him. Things are great, but differences pop up.
You fight, you consider leaving. You make up. You stay together.

After almost eight years, he finally proposes. For 30 years,
you’ve been secure, as cozy as the soft, old t-shirt he doesn’t mind
that you sleep in. The strong, funny man who loves you
left you alone on work trips, but you got busy with church,
spent many hours grading, lesson planning, writing.
Then he retires before you, goes away to take care of his mom.

Weekends are hard, but you find things to do. His love is as steadfast
as the towering oak trees in the yard of the home you moved into.
So many times, your worries about companionship, money, career
occupy thoughts that should have been spent in gratitude
for the life God gave you with this loving man you met
on your first day starting over.