Speaking of Love #8 & 9

I stayed up late last night getting ready for some visitors that spent some time here today; and as a result, I got behind in my love project.  No biggie, I'll catch up tonight.  I never can seem to complete a monthly theme like this without getting behind or skipping some days here and there!

Love means to commit yourself without guarantee, to give yourself completely in the hope that your love will produce love in the loved person.  Love is an act of faith.

~ H. Norman Wright

So true!  Without Jeff's faith, our relationship would have been very short-lived indeed.

I love you ever and ever and without reserve.  The more I have known you the more have I lov'd...

You are always new.  The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest.

~ John Keats

Tonight I'll share two treasures from Jeff's green journal; both include a sketch he drew along with the words he wrote.

First, a sketch of the ancient site of Gamla.

Although not well known, this settlement in the northeast of Israel has one claim to fame:  the oldest synagogue known to exist.  Perhaps in the years since April 27, 1996, when Jeff sketched this, an older one has been discovered; but when we were students in Israel, we were taught that this was the oldest one.  During a field trip there, Jeff prayed a special prayer.  His poem, written next to flowers he picked at Gamla and dried in his journal, describes it...

Three times is not "sufficient"

To say the words I long to tell you.

So in Gamla's synagogue so ancient

I made prayer that I'd pursue.

I could have requested so many other things - 

Yet I thought of none other.

Now I will await what time brings

Not looking for another.

I love you, 

But once is not enough to say.

I love you,

But twice even fails to portray,

How I love you,

So I told Him in my prayer today,

I love you,

And His will I will obey.

Second, a sketch of a very significant spot for us, a plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem which just so happens to be the place where we sat to watch the celebration that accompanied a wedding of people we didn't even know...and where he almost proposed for the first time.  On June 1, 1996, a few weeks after I flew back to the States from Israel, he returned to that plaza and started drawing this sketch...

...until he was interrupted.  He wrote a note to the side of the sketch, "A little girl stopped me from drawing this picture, speaking its title - I finished it by memory only, on the Cardo where Davene and I ate pomelo."  The title was, "You Are Not Supposed to Color on Shabbat!"  (Shabbat is the Hebrew word for Sabbath.  It lasts from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday; and in certain parts of Israel, very strict regulations exist about what one can and cannot do on the Sabbath.  In such a religious area as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, it's no wonder Jeff was stopped from drawing--which is considered work--on Shabbat.)

On the opposite page of his journal, Jeff wrote these lovely words to accompany his sketch...

This was the place I held you so close, and three words, no four, were stuck in my mind - longing to say them as I watched the wedding, I longed for us to be a part of.  It was such a joyful time of dancing and singing - I rested my head on your shoulder as you sat back leaning against my chest, I wanted so bad to whisper the words in your ear.  The dance stopped, my chance seemed gone, the people began to disperse.  We headed for the Wall* and I made the four words my prayer - my prayer lives on.

* The Western Wall, where he instructed me to meet him at the corner where the men's and the women's sections join.  When I reached the spot, he slipped a piece of paper through the partition to me.  On it was written the words, "Will you marry me?" along with the instruction to leave that paper in the Wall as a prayer, as is the custom at the Wall.  I did so, but I didn't want to.  No, I wanted to keep that paper!

Really, I wanted to keep that man.  But I didn't know yet how I was going to accomplish that.  ;-)