The angst of enlightenment

All the while I was married to “the abusive christian husband” I felt strangely aware that the saying, “I HAVE been loved” was so true for me. This was a line from the book "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte. I knew that I had “been loved”. Why, oh why, had I settled to live with an abusive man who called himself a Christian but did not have the love, gentleness or respect that my “first love” had for me? My heart struggled with that question for years. I guess that I was supposed to stay married and "be happy" being abused by a christian man, being a Christian myself, and to forsake and forget thoughts of another man or the possibility of a happy life without abuse and with real love.

The dreams within my heart that I struggled with FOR YEARS were of the first man; my "first love" to whom I had loved and given my heart and body. I tried for years to get him out of my mind but I honestly didn't want to. I thought that perhaps I was still being tempted by thoughts of him because I felt so unloved in this marriage. I felt that I "should not" be thinking of him but as another song says "if loving you is wrong, I don't want to be right." I loved him and I knew that I  did. I "had been loved" by him and I still loved him with all my heart.

After nearly a year of being separated from my second and "abusive" husband, just before “the end” of the marriage, I was sitting at my computer in my office with him sitting in a chair next to me. While checking my email, I saw that a Robert “friended” me on Facebook. I looked over to him and asked, “are you friending me on Facebook?” and of course, not being computer saavy or Facebook-friendly, he replied “No, who IS friending you?”. It turned out to be my “first grade boyfriend”. “Oh my gosh, it's Bobby!” I howled. He was a really super cute young man with dark hair and eyes and a brilliant mischievous smile and wit. We would sharpen our pencils at the trash can together. I obviously must have had a soft spot for men named “Robert”. I have always loved that name. Well, I looked back to "my husband" and said “Oh, you don't have to worry about Bobby” (meaning having me being “taken away from him by Bobby” that is) and I added very honestly and boldly “NOW, if GCD "friends" me on Facebook THEN you can worry”...I even laughed about it but little did I know the fullness of the TRUTH that I blurted out.

The "Dark Ages" would soon be replaced by the Age of Enlightenment as my heart shone with the truth of the love that it had hid for G for all these years. Within five months from that moment, what had been “just a dream” of G finding me on Facebook and ever seeing each other again felt like a possibility. It seemed to visually break through the ethereal longing, desire and hope that I had hid in my heart. It's substance was infused with life that kindled the fire within my soul for his touch. I believed that he "must also love me" in the same way after all these years. I listened to my heart's cry, finally. I allowed myself to hear it's truth and hope for the love that I had known had been in my heart all those years.

Listen to your heart

There have been so many times in my live, as I realize now, that I had turned away from hearing what my heart was trying to say to me. I callously responded to the "cry of my heart" with; "that is impossible", "it can't be done". I could not hear or maybe didn't want to hear what my heart really wanted me to know at least not until I realized just how beautifully made it was. It was only then, that I had to listen to what it had to tell me...

I was in my apartment as a "single again" christian woman as I looked at the beautiful Capodimonte red rose blossom that my mom had purchased for me at a gift shop while we were at lunch some months earlier. It was sitting on a table in my apartment. As I stopped and looked at it one day, I took a moment to ponder its beauty and as if I was talking to it, I said "You are so beautiful and crafted with such detail"...I heard God's voice say  to me:

"I love you more than this rose. 

You are MORE beautiful 

and 

I have fashioned the details of your life 

with MORE care than this piece of porcelain. 

You are more precious to me 

and more beautiful 

than ALL the roses in the world".

I cried with huge tears of gratefulness for FEELING so loved that God would "use" a Capodimonte porcelain rose to tell me of "how beautiful and loved" that I really am. I had identified my SELF as a "rose" being that it was my family name, my favorite flower and that I had decorated my first "single again" apartment in a rose motif, this touched my heart deeply. I was SEEN by God and deemed beautiful; my life and heart have been carefully crafted with delicate detail by the Master's hand. I was was beautiful and worthy of love.

My mind went back to the night BEFORE my marriage to my first husband; nearly 3 years after the beginning of the "Dark Ages", the time that G and I spent away from each other. I realized that this man I was about to marry "was not G" and had "not intellectually stimulated me as G. had done". My heart collapsed into despair. Not only was I resigning myself to a life without love but also a life without intellectual stimulation and challenge. A life without G. This would become the darkest day of my life.

As I stood before my rose on that day, I could then "hear my heart"...the heart that had cried out "to be loved" and it was then that I heard my heart say

"I have been loved" 

(line from the book Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte). I knew that I HAVE been loved. I knew that G loved me and that I had BEEN loved by him. I HAD loved this man and felt his love for me and LONGED for it.

A heart that has been abused and unloved finds itself sometimes unworthy of love. Even love that it had known before. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are all "worthy of love" and it is ONLY then that we will "hear our hearts" and pursue the love that we had known before.

***It feels good to write...

I have kept SO much inside me; hidden away from the world and myself for the most part for SO many years that I thought that I might feel overwhelmed at first when it would start "pouring out of me". The funny thing is that I don't feel overwhelmed but I feel that I am reliving parts of my past, the best parts of my life in ways, again, and it feels good.It is a joy to be writing about a man whom I have loved for so long. It is invigorating to think of "how young" we were and the life and love that we shared. It is empowering and affirming to be with him again. It is to "truly live" to be with him in reality after so many years of the "dark ages" where only my dreams beheld his face, my arms encircled him and my lips kissed his. This story will also illumine the years that he also dreamt of me and how he gave up on having me in his life as well, until death brought us back together.

I am really trying to get my bearings on the organization of this book : 
"Back to OUR Future" a true 1980's love story rekindled 25 years later". I am in the process of outlining a ROUGH draft but where does one really start to write about the last 30 yrs of their "not yet 50" year life? I was just a teenager and G, 2 yrs, 3 months and 13 days YOUNGER than me, was only 16 when we met and fell in love. Yes, I realized shortly afterword that this set of "first loves" included an adult and a minor...WHO could have guessed. Over 6 feet tall, weighing about 180 lbs or more with LOTS of muscle, deep baritone voice, dark, course facial hair and his "savoir faire" manner in how he instinctively appeared more mature and FAR older than his near 17 years should have legally allowed. I smile when I think about how young we were. We were just kids. We fell in love for the first time, with each other. We feel in love for the ONLY time with each other even though both of us lived through marriages to two other spouses and now, we have fallen in love again for the last time at our reunion. We have come "full circle" and all is right with the world again.