Writing My Vows.

It's Tuesday afternoon.  I'm sitting in my apartment that I still love two years after signing my first lease.  Plopped in the center of my bed with only my white twinkle lights that surround my wooden four poster bed frame to light the room, I am getting my thoughts together for writing my vows, which I will soon recite to a wonderful man on Friday afternoon.

I had written vows in my college years for whomever I would marry.  I wrote them quickly after viewing the ending of Shakespeare's Henry V in my Shakespeare class at ORU.  The first line of those aforementioned vows were from Henry V's pleading with the French princess to be his bride.  Some time after the ceremony and the whirlwind road trip - honeymoon, perhaps I will share the declaration of my love.  Perhaps not.  I am rather fond of the idea and reality we're making happen.  My fiance and I will take our vows in the presence of clergy and our single-moms, the only other people who know us as well as each other (probably better as this point) and love us unconditionally.

I do, however, want to re-share a piece I wrote while still living in China in the spring of 2009.  At this time in my life, I had really begun to learn what it meant to love someone because it was a decision, because of their intrinsic worth and not what they did for me, and to love them without having staked a claim, a love given freely.  Having really come into what it meant to love like that, I had tried it out on someone I'd known for years, but probably should not have trusted.  I don't regret loving that person with the best that I had, I don't regret them taking it for granted and abusing it, I don't regret them ultimately walking away from me.  That's what loving truly, openly, without expecting in return did for me.  I don't even hate them or need to do a forgiveness proxy.

I did still hope and continued to hope that one day I would find someone who was at the same point in their journey through the school of love who would love me for my intrinsic worth as well.  I wrote this piece to try to describe such a man and I wanted to share it again because in the light of getting married quite soon,  I think it is very profound how much I have been blessed by God.  The man I love today may not have all of these qualities in their full, mature, shining glory yet, but that's the beauty of a life-time commitment--I get to be there as he grows into having those.  Without further ado, here's the piece:

"You Will Come"

You will come one day from the coasts of love,
Tender as the dawn, strong as deep roots,
The heat of the sun will have kissed your skin,
Healing rains will flow from your sweet mouth,
And your stature will be of a mountain.

You will come, with your capable, extended arms,
With eyes even the stars will try to rival,
Sharing thoughts with a simple move of your brow,
Expressing ideas with clarity and smoothness,
Like the passing of a cloud,
Or the ripples that waltz upon water.

You will come one day from those shores of love,
Ambitious as the morning, wise as the evening,
The crashing of the waves will have trained your ears,
Discernment of the tides of time will guide you,
And your heart will burn from a fire within.

You will come, with your open, unclenched hands,
With shoulders that line up with the horizon,
Opening wide your storehouse of mercy,
Giving to all who have need
Like an oasis in the desert,
Or a father to an orphan.

You will come, O man of my dream,
You will come, one day,
And be more to me than this tenuous hope
Currently stuck in my throat 
Caught like a cry unable to be let out.


©Celeste Smith, May 2009