Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Write something AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL (10/02/14)
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TITLE: My Love Story | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dee Kyalo
10/04/14 -
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ADD TO MY FAVORITES
The old lamp on my windowsill, a vital piece in my autobiography, has sentimental value. It also symbolizes the difference between what my life could have been without love and forgiveness, and what it has been.
These words still sound as fresh as when they were first spoken to me. The richness of his voice was especially confusing to me then.
“I have known you for a long time, but you didn’t quite notice me,” he said, with a voice as tender as the murmur of the rain when great clouds gather.
It’s not as if I hadn’t noticed him; I had chosen to ignore him. He seemed perfect, and I was not used to perfect. Then, surprisingly, he asked for my hand in marriage! That’s when I got the same kind of feeling you get when you find a diamond in your coal shed. Is this real?
However, when you have been hurt repeatedly, you develop a kind of defense mechanism. I was what I like to call a ‘porcupine person’.
My response was tense. “You don’t know me and we can’t be together.”
A life is one thing, and a wreck is something completely different. I had issues that I wasn’t proud of and no one who knew my story would voluntarily choose to be with me.
As we conversed, his effect on me had the tenderness of a mother’s kiss that mysteriously stilled the restless spirit within a hot, impulsive child. Is this what peace felt like?
Then I decided to say yes, but it was more like “ok, after all what did I have to lose?” My heart had been broken so many times that the remaining fragments could no longer shatter. Have you ever been so low that the only place left is to go up? That’s where I was.
After accepting his proposal, culture would have him go and prepare a place for us to live and I was required to place an oil lamp in the window as a sign that I was waiting for my groom’s return.
Surrounded with uncertainty about what I had got myself into, I reluctantly trimmed the lamp. It was burning, all right – though dimly. If the lamp was lit when he returned, it meant that I still wanted to marry him. He would take me to the wedding and then to the place he had prepared for us. If the lamp was not lit, it meant the wedding was off - this was a symbol of rejection.
Although he wrote to me daily, sometimes I felt like Noah waiting for the flood as mockers jeered.
“Did he really tell you he was coming back?”
For a while, I treasured his writings; proclamations of his unending love. “If only you could grasp how wide and long and high and deep my love is for you. If only you could know this love goes beyond what I can explain to you in this letter...”
Eventually, the mockery got to me. I chose the more convenient way out and reverted to what I knew –non-commitment. Soon I was oscillating like a pendulum, back and forth between pain and boredom. His letters kept coming, but I wasn’t reading them anymore.
Then, one winter morning, in a brief note I decided to end the engagement: “I must confess. In moments of weakness I lay in the embrace of other men. I’m not worthy of your love.”
His unanticipated response said, “Don’t be afraid. I know you’re hurting, but keep reading my letters. My love for you has not changed; and even when the oceans rage, remember that you’re not alone.”
So amazed and besieged with adoration, I was no longer fearful and lit my lamp afresh. When at midnight the cry rings out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’ I will, without shame, come out with my lamp to meet the One whose love never fails.
He is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9 NIV). He keeps my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. Therefore I keep watch, because I do not know the day or the hour of His return. (Psalm 18:28 NIV, Matthew 25:13 NIV)
This is my love story. What is your own?
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Inspired by Romans 5:6 NIV, Matthew 25:1-13 NIV, Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV, Psalm 18:28 NIV
*(A porcupine person is one who is just reacting to hurts in their own lives that they are dealing with. When the quills come up it is an indication that there is something in their heart that God wants to deal with)
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Well done.
God bless~