Love Letter 23

I am a lucky man. We’ve known each other our whole lives. There isn’t a time I know of that you weren’t in my life and that is a great thing. I love you for so many reasons – the way you spent hours and hours staring at the spider’s web in the Summer House at Toby when you were 5 and when you were 50. Your curiosity reminds me every day that there is more to this bewildering universe than I can possibly imagine, but your clarity says to me, “It’s there for us to know, to see, to love.” I love you because you are able to change – that is rare in this world. You’ve changed in faith, you’ve changed by expanding your circles of care to embrace people you’ve never understood before. Hell, you’ve even voted for a Democrat – you gotta love a guy who can stretch that far. Lord knows I’ve stretched you more than most. But we need people like each other because if we didn’t have each other we’d end up just listening to people like ourselves all the time. I love you because you’ll wrestle with me until we’re covered in dirt, exhausted, and then we’ll have a beer and walk down the canal telling stories about Grammy. I love you because we share her. We share so much and isn’t that what builds love between two people? You share enough that the boundaries between “me” and “you” aren’t as clear as they are with other folk. It gives us a glimpse into what the love that lives through us in the Christ is like. Life’s flow will toss us this way and that over the next years – I hope – but in it my joy is made more complete because I’ve known you.

I love you,

Sam