A loving point of light

Tu diste luz al sendero
en mi noche sin fortuna
iluminando mi cielo
como un rayito claro de luna-- "Rayito de Luna," Trio Los Panchos

(You lighted the path / in my luckless night / illuminating my sky / like a clear ray of light)

It's been ages since I wrote an entry, partly because I tend to work first from what I want to write about, then relate it to a song. But today, because it's been so long since I wrote, I'm going about it the other way, looking at my songlist and making a free association with the title or topic.

So today I'll write about the love of my life, who truly has been my own personal "rayito de luna." It's already evident that I tend toward the depressive, and I know better than to think that all there is in life is one other person. Yet it's true that my love often is the saving grace for me. Even when I'm in doubt about God or feeling sorry for my love that he has to go through something I or we are going through, the fact is that he keeps me going just by being alive and by loving me.

A terrific book that I highly recommend and that changed my life was God's Call to the Single Adult. The book has six key messages about being Christian and single, among which is "You are a complete person in Christ apart from any relationship you will ever have"; another is "Marriage is not God's ultimate will for your life" (read the book to fully unpack that one). I learned both lessons, and I still have them in my heart. But I also know that I am a better person for what I have learned from my husband, and I've avoided unwise choices at times by remembering how hurt he would be.

He is more patient than I, and knows far more about real hardship, which helps when I'm being a stereotypical "spoiled American" by complaining how long the food's taking to arrive at the restaurant ("Have you ever actually had to go hungry?", which he has) or fussing that the drugstore should have a couple of 15-minute parking places so we wouldn't have to park a few spaces farther away. I'm a better teacher for having the input of someone who only got a few years of school to develop formally his considerable intelligence. Falling in love with someone shy and working through those early months when he didn't know how to express, in either language, what he felt and thought has expanded my ways of seeing the universe. I only hope he can say he's a better person for what he's learned from me.

Seven years, eight months, and counting ...