The Third Letter

Dear Levi,
It's been nine months since that night that ended with spilled hot chocolate and broken hearts. That is the time it takes to grow a whole new human being, amazingly enough, and it has been my prayer all through these long months that God would do just that - create in me a clean heart, a right spirit, a renewed life. As He has been faithful to chasten me and try me, I have been obedient to follow. You told me to focus on God, and that is what I have been doing. More than ever before, I have been able to devote myself to seeing my life clearly through God's eyes and bringing it to the surrender of His work. And now, He has told me to write you.
It's been a long, hard journey to look at each mistake I made that night in January, and all the ones leading up to it and after it, and bring them before God. Humiliating, is the best word. But for something to be humbled, it is indicated that there must first be present pride. And that has been the great struggle. To surrender my pride to God day by day, and submit myself to the fire of his chastisement. How kind a Father, to take a worthless pile of rags and gently, consistently work to form them to His glory rather than merely discarding them. How great He is.
This letter is an apology. Because the biggest thing God has revealed to me day by day is how many ways that I wronged you. Not just during the time when you left me, but all the way back to the very beginning. It has been like looking at a puzzle, seeing three years of events and trying to sort through motives, circumstances, and actions. But God has been working to reveal something to me, and I have been praying that He would bring me to the place where He could open my eyes. While home in Kharkov, He did.
I want you to know that this hasn't come easily. My parents and I have been praying very deeply each day for months and months. If any man seek wisdom, let him ask of God. And to see the puzzle slowly shift into place, and the bigger picture pull out into focus, has been... unspeakable. Amazing, and yet agonizing. I think it has been such slow progress because I am not a superhero. Satan has used my circumstances, my memories, my enemies, to try to get me to give up. And honestly, I can't say I haven't wanted a renewed relationship with God more than a renewed relationship with you. And God doesn't want to be equal, he wants to be greatest in my life. I've come to realize that I can't get you back, you are gone. Gone, gone. It was not until I was able to accept that and let you go that God began to just shout out to me from heaven again. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.
Do you remember when I asked you at The West for a passage of Scripture to prove that God had led you to make the decision to leave me? Quite honestly, you thumbed around your Bible and tried to avoid the request so long that when you finally showed me Amos 5, I could not truly believe in my heart that God had led you regarding us through that passage, whether it was your first sermon or not. But I marked that passage in my Bible, and I have read the chapter every single day since. I haven't missed once. Because it didn't make sense to me, and I wanted it to.
...Ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. That is the verse you said spoke of us. Of you, and of me. You called me a stumbling block. Frankly, you shocked me. Seek ye the Lord... was the passage you left me with. You said a lot of things that day that were not true, and a lot of things that you turned around and contradicted by your actions. But the words you gave me, and that passage, remained with me.
And I don't know what your intentions were with that chapter, but I wanted to share with you what God has revealed to me, and He used that passage to help a little. Because he finally showed me why when I look back at my young adult years, I see a repeating story of loss. Failure. Grief. And I couldn't figure it out, maybe because I'm naive, or maybe because like the Bible says, the heart truly is deceitful. All I know is that I could evaluate my actions, recognize my mistakes, and try to rectify them. And that's what I've been doing one by one. But the bigger picture kept nagging at me.
Why didn't God do anything? It was like a cry from a starving child in my heart. God, why? When I prayed for you to be there, you withheld your hand. It says that the king's heart is in God's hand, and yet he didn't change your heart towards me. Why, God? He was my refuge, my shield, my strong shoulder for all the pain and tears and loss. But he didn't move for me, and I didn't know why until just a little while ago, when he showed me the bigger picture of things.
Do you remember when we first started talking? I was never able to go all the way back to the very first Facebook message, but I can remember the time frame. It was autumn, the fall semester I sat out after my car wreck. You noticed I wasn't there, and we started talking. It didn't take long for my heart to fall very much in love with everything you were, without even having seen you in person much. And I couldn't understand why, when I began to realize how much you meant to me, that God let the school write the letter to put me on probation in condition to my return. It seemed so unfair.
We talked about it, and frankly, I agreed to the conditions on the outside but wholeheartedly knew I had no intentions of submitting in reality. Remember the airport? IHOP? From the very beginning, I had a choice to either submit to authorities I disagreed with and sacrifice some of my relationship with you, or fulfill my own selfish wants. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to talk with you. It was a choice that I made. The difficulty of my circumstances only made your kindness more desirable. But it was a choice to be dishonest with the people I am to show respect to, namely my authorities... my parents, and the school. And for that, I am very sorry.
I am sorry because as wonderful as falling in love with you was, I clung to you and cried fearing that it couldn't be real, that kind of happiness, and I fear that it would end. Remember the tears every time you had to leave Nichols Hills? I was so scared to sacrifice six months of the beginning, but in the end... I see I gave up the sixty years of the end. How could I be so stupid? I don't know. I can only recognize that I was wrong, and ask you for your forgiveness. I chose to begin a dishonest lifestyle, and I was wrong to include you in it.
And God continued to show me how that one step often leads to another. And if refusing to respect the wishes of my authorities regarding the existence of the relationship with you was one thing, next I ignored their wishes regarding the parameters of that relationship. I don't have to talk about them in this letter. I know you remember. And I remember how reluctant you were, and how we prayed about it, and how much we struggled. And I remember being so confused about everything. Because a doubleminded man is unstable in all his ways. And trying to walk uprightly with you while walking dishonestly before others was absolutely painful. But it was the choice that I made, because all I could see was the present. The brevity of life. And the huge press of my own desires and longings, my own dreams and wishes. And I feel that I was the guilty party, that it was at my hand that we experienced so much turmoil and darkness during those months. It is a sure sign that God was trying to work, to fight against Satan's attacks, but ultimately I was never willing to sacrifice my relationship with you to do the right thing. And for that, I am very sorry.
Summer came, and autumn, and we now had freedom to be together and those were the very best days to me. But God hadn't been honored when we began to build our relationship, and it was on slippery grounds. I think that we had a good chance. I think that both of us, ultimately, wanted to glorify God and help people. But all the fighting that slowly crept it was bred off of a lifestyle of selfishness that had been the key from the very beginning of our relationship. I firmly, and completely, beleive that God brought us together. I'll never forget the day you came to ask me to pray about going to help in Ukraine, because you were so afraid that I would be angry. But I wasn't, remember? Because all I could see was the amazing hand of God entwining something special. Remember the letters you would write me? Long letters filled with Scripture. I read the letter you wrote about God sealing our letters together, entwining the cords of our life, and I remember how God revealed to me and to my parents that our love was from His blessing. But like so many blessings of God, Satan introduced difficult days and cold and dark times... and since I'd been developing this lifestyle of selfishness (without really even recognizing it) when the fighting began, it was merely a fulfillment of that selfishness.
For all the things I said, all my actions and words that hurt you so badly during the holidays when we were apart, for my desire to close things up with Brandon rather than consider your feelings, for my selfishness regarding the date at The Vast in the Devon Tower... for so many failures and hurtful memories... all I can offer is my penitent and sincere apology. How can I ever express how truly deep the grief runs? At what was lost, and what I did.
And in the end, when we fought over a thermos of hot chocolate, and my phone, and the snow around us was flying in the heat of our passions, God was very far away. All we had left was the selfishness. So you ran, and I chased you to yell, and you never came back down from that hill.
Do you know how many times over the spring semester I would go to that hill and sit on the bench and cry? So many times. Because when I looked at that hill, I saw my failure. I saw the ultimate destruction of the thing I loved and cherished the most, and that was my Levi, my little prince with so much potential. And I grieved at my failure, and I began to pray and seek God. And it's been a very long, long nine months since that day as God has chastised me in regards to so much wickedness in my heart.
For three things, He has told me to ask your forgiveness. The first was regarding Brandon, and that was the first letter I wrote. The second was regarding my temper, and that was the second letter. For my dishonesty, and selfishness, and lack of respect for my parents and God and eventually you... this is the third letter. That you stood by my side for so long is amazing to me, and I want to thank you for each kindness you gave to me. I am sorry for the magnitudes of the wrong I have given to you. I know that saying I'm sorry doesn't really amount to much. If I can ever demonstrate it for you, I would be more than willing.
I took all your things and I put them in a box. Not like my Andri box, which was like a great chain around my neck dragging up the pain from the past. But I wanted to take the good memories, and the love that the Lord gave to us, and I want to remember the good. I remember to remember what I learned, everything you gave to me, everything you taught me, everything you made me want to be. And I have given that box to God, and placed it in His hands, which is what I should have done the very first time I realized that I was going to love you forever. It isn't mine to keep. It doesn't belong in my hands.
You have been, and will always be, every day in my prayers to God.
Galatians 6:1-11 Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden. Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith. Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand."
Sincerely,
Noelle O'Brien

Eiffel

Dear Levi,
Last night I stood with Steven at the top of the Eiffel Tower on the French Boulevarde, and we watched a lovely golden moon rise above the soft golden streetlights of Kharkov. This newest mall is so lovely, complete with wrought-iron balustrades and the very newest edition to the McDonald's chain in our city. The autumn sky was very black and dark, the wind a light whisper across my bare shoulders. My hair is so long now, it plays with the breeze several inches from my collar bone in the back. I know you'd love it.
As I stood there with him in the dark and quiet, you were on my mind. You almost always are. I thought about bringing you to my city, and how it may never happen. I thought about how nice it would be to bring you here for the sole purpose of understanding me better. I don't think you ever really understood me. And when the intrigue wore off into frustration, you gave up and walked away. What do you know of Russian women? The way a Ukrainian girl puts on the nicest pair of Chanel highheels and carefully picks her away across broken asphalt streets, along rotting cement walls rank with the smell of urine and dead cats, and pretends the world is beautiful under a Parisian moon at the new mall? How would you ever understand the terror and panic that builds up inside her, to survive this place? To fight for something better? And how would you understand the love in her heart that runs as deep and old as the 360-year-old cobblestones in the square downtown, the love that won't let her heart free from missing yours? No, you didn't understand and you didn't want to, in the end. You wanted a simpler, more shallow life.
And I hope that you found it. I hope that you are happy, with your coworker/classmate/lover at your side day in and day out. You used to say that you felt broken and worthless, when you looked at your car and your home. But no one in my country our age has their own car, not even me. And your home is within the call of church bells and welfare agents. You would never know what broken and worthless feels like until you came here and saw me carry stagnant, murky water inside a half-built laugh of a building and washed the blood and clay of construction mortar from my hands, while the sweat trickled down my back and no AC within a thousand miles to escape to. No fast stop at OnCue for a slushie. How I longed for one when I got off the bus in Lubnisk, in the dead of night on the bumpy grueling ride from the capitol to my city, and I staggered to the public restrooms on the edge of the bus lot. Rotting cement and rancid mildew huddled in form of a shelter over a dark hole that descended underground to the restrooms. Dark holes, splashed over with festering vomit, blood, and feces. A broken sink and scraps of a bar of lye soap leered under a shattered mirror in the center of the open room. Open, with no privacy. I had known this smell, this feeling, since a child. And I just closed my eyes and pushed away the thoughts, much like I taught myself to close my heart and push away the anguish so I wouldn't break down the past eight months.
But when I got back on the bus, I opened my eyes and remembered. I remembered your white collared shirt and the feel of soft carpeting against my skin as we shared a sweet, innocent Sunday afternoon together. I remember your lips finding mine and the bliss of that moment. I remember the fascination of calculus on paper, and falling asleep in your proximity.
Like the dark fields slipping by outside the window of the bus, I was remembering what was gone forever.
Your Star,
Rigel

Washington D.C.

Dear Levi,
I'm writing this from Dulles International Airport. That means I'm sitting in the Capitol City of the Whole World, and you don't even know my connecting flight to Frankfurt, then Kiev, will take me to the bus station that will drop me off home in Kharkov, eventually. I wish you knew. I wish you were here with me.
An airport is a good place for letters. Remember writing letters to each other during the long flights that brought us together for the first real time? I could never forget. I still have yours and keep it by my bed in Edmond. I cherish all my memories of you.
It is a daring thing to publicly publish this blog, but it's the choice I've decided to make. I hope someday you get to read this blog, and I hope you get to meet the girl that still loves you. And maybe reading her letters, like you used to love, you will fall in love with her again.
That is my prayer, and my hope.
Your star,
Rigel