Speaking of Love #11

You have lifted my very soul up into the light of your soul, and I am not ever likely to mistake it for the common daylight.

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In the late summer of '96, I returned to Messiah College for my senior year as a music major, and Jeff worked as a barber and took college classes in California.  Despite our busy schedules, the letters zoomed back and forth between Pennsylvania and California, keeping us connected and causing our hearts to grow ever closer in our quest for unity.

In the first letter Jeff sent me at college, he wrote, among other things, this:

27 Aug 96

Tuesday

O Happy ~

I took a short nap on the grass around lunch time before anatomy lab.  The day is hot, about 100 degrees F, but the grass under the shade of the trees still feels cool.  Sometimes, I dream thoughts and not pictures.  This time I dreamt about how big a choice it is for you to choose a marriage partner.  It is a commitment for your entire life.  In the dream, I could clearly understand how a person could be nervous of such a choice.  Is it easier for a man?  In today's society?  The choice seems the same in the role of today's society for both man and woman.  In more male domineering times, it seems it would be more difficult of a choice for the woman, because she would have to follow the man despite her own desires.  Today, compromise is more acceptable and equal.  Not to forget, sometimes women were not even allowed the choice of their mate and no less were expected to submit to his guidance.  A woman often has the harder lot.

I would rather have a woman who would choose me, even as I chose her.  A woman who would not regret her choice, even as I would not regret mine.  And after having fulfilled the choice, never to look again.

At this point, I have chosen, and am no longer looking.  I found you.  You, more than I knew to look for.  You, better than I could have selected without the hand of God.  You alone, Davene, do I desire, for my entire life, a hundred years be it so.  Yet, if you retreat, and go another way, I would scarcely recover, except in that my requisite for a wife has always been that she love me unconditionally, and one that would retreat would not meet this desire of mine.  So, I would be left alone unless the Lord led me another, knowing the one who retreated was not the "right" choice.

I have tried both to show you who I am, what my love is like (so you could envision a life with me and its pleasantries), and at the same time provide you an escape (so you would not feel trapped).  I don't want to marry an indecisive trapped lion, I want a lion that will roam with me voluntarily.  I don't expect her to be "tamed" now or ever; I am not tamed, nor do I ever hope to allow this world to do so to me.  So, you see the train of thought of my dream... I sympathize with you in your choices.  I understand the struggles, the fear, and yet the desire.  I love you, Davene.

I realize my life needs a "bumpstart":  a little direction.  Sure, I want to preach/teach; I want to live in Israel; I want to learn several languages; I want to do mission work - but I have not figured out where or how to channel these wants (calls, goals, visions) so that they may come to pass.  What school should I go to?  How shall I afford it?  Questions... Questions I can not yet answer nor ascertain how to answer yet.  Ambition... What is my ambition?  How do I keep my ambitions from being carnal?  Or self-glorifying?  To love souls as I love my own and to desire their perfect walk in Christ even as I desire my own even at the cost of the scorn of my peers, family, and the world.

O how my mind travels today!  I miss you, Davene.  I love you... I wish I was together with you, I wish I knew the future... Yet, He desires me to walk by His faith and not by my sight.

I do love you,

Yaquir