HOPE FOR THE BROKEN

"Oh, as you’re running
What hindered love
Will only become part of the story.
Baby, you’re almost home."
(Steffany Gretzinger)

She looked at him tentatively, shifting in her seat so she could face him head on. The passing clouds floated carelessly outside the small window beside him. Another plane passed, miles away. It looked like a toy.

“I want to feel like you want me,” she said quietly.

He furrowed his brow and tightened his lips. “Really?” he asked, not hopefully but angrily.

“It’s what all women want—to feel pursued—to feel captivating,” she said.

After taking a moment to collect himself—always trying to harness the storm of emotions that brewed in his soul much of the time—he asked her, “Don’t you think that’s all I ever wanted? For you to want me? Without limitation or inhibition? I wanted that for years—I wanted it so much it consumed me. I could think of little else for the first decade of our marriage. But it never came.”

Like a blind date that never shows. Like waiting for a soldier expected home from battle. One day, you stop going to the window. They’re not coming home. You pay the cheque, take your last gulp of whiskey, and head for the door.

Jesus, she thought. I wanted him to still be waiting. But he left. He couldn’t wait any more. He had no reason to wait. And he was heartbroken. I was a memory; a promise nearly forgotten. Unreachable. I was across the ocean in a foreign land, lost in a desert fortified by enemy soldiers. No record of my whereabouts. No hope of my rescue.

But I have come home. I am wounded—but not destroyed. I wanted him to be waiting on the road for me—but it’s been years. He moved on. Alone.

I have to go to him—despite my limp and the pain in my side. I must nurse his heart, reach out to him. Assure him that it’s safe to hope, to believe. I am still healing. I have flashbacks. Sometimes I feel like I’m still a prisoner of war. But I’m not. I have been liberated. Reunited with my husband—my soulmate. I am injured—but I am home.

There is a light that shines in the darkness
And the darkness cannot overcome it.

She stands beside their bed. He’s asleep. He holds a pillow tight across his chest. She reaches down and draws a gentle line across his brow with her index finger and then traces his jawline, memorizing him.

And she remembers the battlefield. She remembers the warrior who recused her. She remembers his lacerated back and the scars on his wrists. And she remembers his promise.

“I will make all things new.”

J.