Autumn

Dear Levi,

It’s been more than a month since I wrote here. I've been writing you on paper, keeping the precious letters tucked safely in a binder in my desk under lock and key. So much has happened... I moved into the new apartments, I started the new job, and I began my ministries. I moved on from summer… from the Landes, too busy now with the Heartland hundreds and coming baby… from the Crossbearers, overflowing with OU students from snobby families too preoccupied to notice my presence… from the hoping. 

I never thought it would go. But it did. Somewhere in the exhaustion, in the sleepless nights on the floor of the apartment, in the long drive through traffic to work, in the buzz of mindless phone calls, in the vastness of the church, in the quiet of the nursing home, in the chill of the autumn night air… it did go. Where, I don’t know. Maybe to that quiet, still place where my Levi Box rests in waiting. Waiting for God, waiting for fate. And when I sat in my car and felt the tears trickle down, they were different tears. Tears of grit, of resignation, of survival. Tears without hope, without dreams, without a future. Just tears.

I know God could still change your heart. And I pray for that… that someday you’ll trip, and fall back in love with Noelle. But the odds have won the tug-of-war in my mind. I always wondered when the aching seizures would subside. Now I know. It’s when the hope goes away.

There’s just living now. Remembering, praying, but no hoping.

It’s autumn, and the one-year-days are about to come by. I scrolled through my phone web history the other day, and just two pages back was the research for a wedding at Moses Lake, Washington. It shocked me. Just two pages of Iphone history, and we were ridiculously in love. Now, it’s winter again and I’ve almost been longer without him than I ever was with him. It makes my mouth dry… it makes my blood cold, and my heart slow. 

Just autumn.

Your star,

Rigel