hold you in my arms

As a child, I requested the telling of a love story that I held close to my heart night after night after night. Unlike most fairytales, this one was true and its happily ever after still being lived out.  I loved this story, complete with facials and sound effects at specific moments of affection.  It was the love story of my parents.  I craved this story to meet my ears at night.  It was the truest story I had ever known of love.  Since my days as a little girl hearing bedtime stories, I have added to my catalog of romances witnessed.  I have been in weddings, gone to weddings, and even tried my hand at matchmaker a few times, but now I am writing my own story. 
My Soulmate has found me after wandering this earth for years without him by my side.  He is more than I could have imagined simply because he is himself and no one else.  He placed a ring on my finger Sunday afternoon and we continued our commitment to be only each other's for the rest of our lives.  
As we set dates, book venues, plan honeymoons, and all other details seemingly required for a wedding, I look forward the most to putting my baby girl to bed at night and telling her a bedtime love story of my own. 

Emotions of a Savior

I have tried to be very mindful of Christ this Holy Week. As I have consider my savior's state, this thousands of years ago, I am overwhelmed trying to empathize with his emotions.  Crippled by humanism, he experienced them all and at a divine level as well.  I can't help but imagine the humility of washing feet, of carrying a cross, and then hanging on it.  I can't imagine the sting of betrayal, that though he knew its imminence, I am sure the bitter taste lingered in his mouth. Imagining the weight of sin seems to be the most unimaginable to me.  When I am entangled in sin, I feel spiritually heavy and worn and even physically weighty as well, but my savior carried the sins of the world remembered, known, and to come.  Good Fridays come and go with a service or, sometimes, just a thrill that there is no school, but I am trying my hardest to honor this day of sacrifice.  This unequal exchange of beauty for ashes.  This transaction of filthy rages for glistening robes of white.  I am laying down my crown. I am taking up my cross. I am following the man gave me life.  He gave me freedom. He gave me hope. He gave me salvation.
It is done. The veil is torn. Praise the one who paid my debt and raised this life up from the dead.  Jesus.