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My love was born at my mother’s breast and in my father’s strong arms. It was a sucking, insatiable, infantile love. I was happily curled in the warm embrace of pure need.

My love was shaped in early days by my need to perform. I worked hard at home, in sports, and at school. I had a first-born child's natural sense that people would love me if I excelled.

My love turned inward and became hidden and personal with a series of best friends. Michael and Mickey and Lance and Steve and Mark and Kenny. We claimed the rights to our own lives and our own loves. We stood together against the world with our secret clubs and inside jokes.

My love thrashed against my arm like a tethered falcon when I discovered the beauty of ponytails and freckled smiles. A series of little girls first turned my head and then turned my guts into jelly. The falcon burst its tether and screeched, circling and diving, causing me to throw myself to the ground in a panic. Bonnie and Carmen and Kathy and Tracy and Diane and Laura and Julie and Elma. How I ached and longed and cried and failed and watched from afar. Waves of feeling rose up in my chest and cast me face-down upon my bed. There was no end to it and no relief because it felt so good and it hurt so bad.

In time I learned the proper words to coax the falcon back to my arm. I slipped the tether around its foot and paraded it about for a few years with an imagined sophistication. Oh yes, I had it all figured out for a time.

And then I went to college and met a woman with a swinging ponytail and brown eyes that were tender and crinkly when she smiled. She sat across from me at the Baylor cafeteria, and when she talked she revealed a certain, indescribable spark of personality that proved irresistible to me. My falcon took one look at her, snapped its tether, and disappeared over the horizon, never to return.

I became foolish again, like a small boy. She carried a basket instead of a backpack. Suddenly I loved baskets, the weave and feel and smell of them. She had pale skin, so pale skin became the loveliest skin in the world as far as I was concerned. Once I was able to pick her out of a crowd of young women in shorts because I recognized her knees. She had a smile that could light up my heart and brown eyes that were too beautiful and powerful for me to understand. I wanted to keep her. I wanted her to be mine. I wanted to hold her and defend her with my life against anything in the world that would harm her.

I had her for a few months, and then I lost her. I was inconsolable and fell into a time of loneliness. I could not feel love for any other woman. I worked. I paid my bills. I prepared to go to seminary.

Then an unexpected letter arrived, causing my heart to thrash about in my chest. There was a near-collision in a supermarket aisle, and then we were sitting on the floor of her apartment, both frightened. She of hurting me and I of being hurt. But our hands moved across the carpet like small creatures with wills of their own. Our fingers entwined, and all the powers of joy and fear and pain and love came together in that moment.

My love became our love. I felt like I had arrived, but the story of my love was only getting started. I now understand that we knew almost nothing of love at that time. For our love had not yet faced the 12 labors of Hercules.

We had to survive financial crisis and the slow loss of the passion of youth. We had to survive the exhaustion of work and responsibilities. And then there came three children, three sucking vortices of need. We had to cling to each other, blue eyes locked on brown, swearing before the heavens that we weren’t going to let these three angelic demons take everything from us. For it is the nature of children to take everything and the duty of parents not to let them.

Years passed, and we aged together. We learned to love our softening bodies with their new demands and needs. Sometimes, when we were very tired, we would say that it was the two of us against the whole world. Friends would change, the children would leave, but our secret club was forever.

Then a tragedy happened. I woke up in a bathtub filled with ice. There were stitches on the left side of my chest and a note that said, “Sorry, but we needed your heart.” I arose, dripping cold water on the floor. I had the face and the look of Gordon, but there was something absent from my eyes. My trademark silliness was gone. And I could not feel any of the happy things. I couldn't feel love or joy. I was numb inside and sometimes angry for no reason.

I carried on by the powers of obligation, duty, and shame. I put one foot in front of the other. I smiled at home and at church. I said the right things to the children. I tried to force myself to be myself, but that never really works. Jeanene learned to live with the zombie version of Gordon, which is its own kind of tragedy.

The doctor called it depression, and he gave me pills. They worked pretty well for a long time. I was happy and my boyish silliness returned. Jeanene and I began reconnecting. Our hands had to crawl across a carpet of fear to find each other, but they did and things were good.

This is so hard to write, but I fear something is wrong again. I’ve slowly lost the ability to feel happiness or love. Once again I have all of the words and none of the feeling. My need to be alone is becoming overpowering. I come home and want to go to bed or sit in a corner. The idea of interacting with people is painful even to think about. Jeanene and the three sisters obviously know something is wrong.

Damn it! I don’t want to do this again. I’m going to have to go back to the doctor and start the process over again. I hate the idea of medication. I hate thinking of myself being dependant on medication.

“Did you remember to pick up your medication?”

“Has anyone seen my medication?”

“Did I take my medicine yet today?”

Medication medication medication medication. Fucking medication. MY medication. Like it’s some treasured personal possession. Like it’s now an essential part of me, like a leg or something.

But I'm going to the doctor. Yes sir. I'm not hesitating this time. I already have the appointment. And I'm going to do whatever he tells me to do. If he gives me pills (and he will) I’ll smile and say, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"

Because this is the story of my love. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is my love. My love for God and for ideas and for truth and for our church and for writing and for my friends and for the three sisters.

And for Jeanene. It's her love too. I have to remember that. I owe her my best effort to be the man she married.

If I am allowed to live a full live, then half of the story of my love is yet to be told. And I definitely want to be present and alert for part two.

rlp

There is no kind of loneliness more lonely than when no one in the world knows who you are. When there is no one waiting to see what a tender and fragile thing you could take out of your chest, like someone taking a hamster out of a cage. There is no one there, but you know exactly what it would be like.

Your elbows and forearms are pressed against your ribs and you hold the hamster beneath your chin. You are holding it as tightly as you can without hurting it. The hamster is squirming and wanting to go back to the safety of the cage, but you are going to show it to your best friend and she is waiting, trembling and excited, her hands cupped just as yours are cupped.

The moment of transfer is awkward. She squeals and you both laugh. The hamster struggles wildly and almost gets away, but she makes a desperate grab at the last moment and then it is in her hands, shivering and afraid and completely exposed.

Your heart pounds in your chest, and it is hard to swallow because she has your hamster now. But it looks like it is going to be okay. She is petting it and whispering little baby words to it. And it is calming down and peeking out from between her fingers.

You know the truth of this. You can feel it down in the part of you that no one can take away. You KNOW this is how it would be. But there is no one there for you right now, and you can't think of any reason to take your hamster out of its cage at all.

rlp

Sometimes I forget everything I know about her hands. In those times, they seem like exotic creatures, two delicate spider valets.

While she gazes at the mirror, trusting and confident, they dance their way up the front of her blouse, knitting it together with a spider's precision. Their legs rise and fall, working together perfectly, one pushing the buttons and the other bending the fabric back just so.

Then they roll over - one first and then the other. Submissive and vulnerable, they offer their necks to each other as the single button on each of their collars is made secure.

Then she turns her head this way and that, and they scamper over her face, patting here, adjusting there, stroking an eyebrow, pushing a lock of hair into place. She is groomed and ready and walks with confidence to the door. She forgets her keys but no matter. The spider on the right has seen them. It springs from her side to the top of the table by the door and snatches them just as she passes.

Where would she be without these gentle, tireless servants? Where would I be? Lost, for they are my sweetest connection to her.

In the evening, I often look with longing at them, wishing one would come to visit me.

Somehow she knows, and one of them takes leave of the familiar and bravely crosses the emptiness between us. First it plays with my hand; it slips its legs seductively between my fingers and fiddles with my wedding ring. Then it slides softly down the base of my palm to the sensitive skin of my wrist, feeling the quickening pulse there.

Next it climbs up my sleeve, tugging on the fabric, ducking in and out of valleys, squeezing here and there until it reaches the top. It plays with my hair a moment, then playfully squeezes my earlobe, pulling it gently, then letting it spring back into place.

All the while she stares straight ahead with just a hint of a smile on her lips, because she knows exactly what to do to me.

rlp

What children bring to the table is pure love, like a fifty pound nugget of gold a yokel hefts onto the bar in full view of everyone in the saloon.

One-by-one we leave the gambling tables, the liquor, and the player piano to sidle up to the stranger with the pretty rock. In that instant, love comes over us like the rush of a mighty wind, filling the room and touching us as if with tongues of fire. The irresistible pull of our desire sucks the air from our lungs and leaves us weak, panting, and forever addicted.

The yokel says, “This is love. Do you understand now?”

And your heart says, “Yes!” But this is no ordinary yes. This is the yes of your bones, the ontological yes of your being, the yes that existed before all time. This is what you were made for and only now do you see it. You cry out, and your body shakes, and you fall to your knees in submission. This is the world's most powerful drug, the one that all others can only imitate. Once you have tasted it you will pay any price for more, or wander the earth to honor even the memory of it.

This is what children bring to the table. They dance into the room dragging the greatest power in the universe behind them like a toy on a string. All of your petty sophistications are swept aside, and when they are gone you do not remember the substance of them or how they once held power over you. There is no going back. Here you stand; you can do no other.

You know you have handed over the keys to your kingdom, but the transaction is complete. It happened in an instant; it happened before you could draw a breath. And now the power to break your heart lies out of your control and in the hands of a child.

And they will hurt you, children will. They will take everything you have and give you only sips of what you desire. And then they will harden in time and become more and more like you. They will become guarded, and they will lose love. Then they will leave you to seek it in distant lands. When they leave, you are forever changed, forever hungry, forever seeking. You are deeper, richer, more capable, more able to love.

And if there is someone who shared this love with you, and if the two of you worked hard to stay connected through the firestorm and through the grief, and if both of you were equally determined not to lose each other in those long years, then one day you will turn to your beloved, lay your hand on her aging cheek, and discover that love has not left you after all.

And everything you gave for love will be returned to you. And you will become children for each other, dancing again in the Garden of Eden. You will see with new eyes. You will know Wisdom. You will bless the world.

And it is said that you will walk together in the land which the Lord has given you until it is time.

rlp

Jeanene and I went away together this week because we were feeling disconnected from each other. We are living in the busiest season of our lives, and our marriage is the only thing we can neglect without experiencing immediate consequences. If we neglect our children, they will let their suffering be known. If we neglect our jobs, there will be instant ramifications and acute stress. That leaves our relationship, which is the only thing we can let slide when our busy lives force us to focus only on our immediate needs.

Jeanene is a chaplain. She was promoted to head of pastoral care for her hospital about a year ago. That promotion has been very hard. We had no idea how inflexible her schedule would become. She has weathered the difficult transition and now seems to be enjoying this calling, but it takes a lot out of her.

You know the basics of my story. I was merrily working away as a pastor and a web designer when I decided to start a blog so I could write a little bit in the evenings. You know, for my own health and sanity.

I don't need to recap the last couple of years, but Real Live Preacher definitely has had a life of its own. I think I was in control of it for about a month. I'm not complaining, mind you. I wouldn't trade the last two years for anything. There's nothing a writer craves more than some excuse to take his or her writing seriously enough to work at it. Real Live Preacher has been my excuse, and I have worked at writing. I've worked hard and long into the night. I've hoarded time like a miser collecting scraps of soap and pressing them into mottled cakes.

If all writing required was a certain amount of time, then writing well would be a matter of scheduling. But good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you. Writing demands your most focused and creative time, the hours when your heart, soul, and mind exist nowhere but in the line of words spilling out of the absolute focus you have somehow managed to find one more time.

That kind of writing takes something out of you that's hard to get back in time for dinner with the kids.

So if your wife is busy, and you are busy, and your children need that same highly focused time and energy, how will you pull off this miracle? How will you write? Something has to give, and if you are not careful, that something will be your marriage.

Jeanene and I are committed to one another, and that commitment is inseparable from our devotion to God. We both know that neither of us will cut and run because of one busy season. That security is a good thing, but also a dangerous thing.

This kind of commitment sometimes creates marriages that have length but no depth. They are measured by years but not by happiness. Some people plod through the decades together, caring for their children and dutifully paying the mortgage while their hearts starve for want of affection and love.

I have a lot of respect for people who remain faithful to their marriages because of spiritual or other commitments, but I want more than a white-knuckled fidelity. I want Jeanene to love me, and I want to love her. I want this marriage to be emotionally satisfying for her, and I want that same emotional fulfillment for myself.

If we want our relationship to grow and remain meaningful, then we must work at it. If we put our marriage on auto-pilot, we will give the very best of ourselves to the children and to our vocations, leaving nothing but tattered scraps for ourselves.

That's why we went away together this week. We went away because we looked at each other one night and said, “We're coasting. We're not taking the time we need to nurture each other.”

The busier you are, the more intentional you must be about your marriage. In the end, the children will leave, jobs will come and go, and even something as precious to me as writing may only be here for a season. Jeanene and I hope to be together until the end. And when the end comes, I do not want to regret our journey together, knowing that I shortchanged it because I was too busy doing “important” things.

Jeanene and I reconnected this week. We did a lot of talking and pledged to be more intentional about our relationship. We're going to work a little harder at this marriage. That's as it should be, because marriage is good work to do.