Intimacy

How’s that for a title?!

Did I scare most of you off or gain a few newbies out of curiosity?

Welcome friends.

I sit next to a lovely window here at Panera where a little girl leaves more of her muffin on the carpet than in her mouth and where a sweet older woman has been nursing her coffee waiting for a friend to join her.

I love how she shifts her weight in her seat to look at the back entrance and then the front entrance hoping to catch sight of her expected guest.

She does this so often that it catches my peripheral making me stop and look at her and then look for her friend as well.

I wonder if this is a fun lunch with her daughter or a long-overdue date with a friend to catch-up on life.

The wait finally ends as her friend makes her appearance, shares a hug and then they sit and share new haircuts over sheepish grins and I love every minute of my ease dropping.

Life is rich because we sit and get to know one another.

I have a hand-full of friends that almost know me better than I know myself.

I have six children that I know in such a special way as to understand their own strengths and weaknesses because I brought them up, watching them grow into real-deal adults.

And I have one that I have in my most inner circle that I have promised my love and my obedience and even my “troth.”

I didn’t even know I had a troth, but hey, if he wants it, he can have it once I find it.

And all these years later I finally realize why I got married.

I mean besides blue-green eyes and blonde hair and all the cuteness that goes with those.

I got married because I wanted a witness to my life.

I got married for the sole purpose of enjoying intimacy.

Someone defined intimacy as “Into me you see,” and I love that.

With a couple billion people in this world one may wonder what one life really means?

But in marriage, you’re promising to care about everything.

The good things, the terrible things, the mundane things,

All of it, all the time, every day.

You’re saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.“

“Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness.”

I got married for one person to know me intimately.

And that’s exactly how God designed it.

And not only is that the reason to get married it’s the only way I want to continue to be married.

Not a business partner, not a best friend, not a mother to someone’s children only,

But a witness to everything that life throws at us and one who appreciates the bond that makes if we let it.

Is it work to sit at a diner and write hopes and dreams on a napkin?

To sort through a hurt because the pain keeps resurfacing even after a decade or two?

YES.

But the way I see it, troth or not, this is what I signed-up for.

NO WORK of love and prayer and patience will ever mean more outside of this coventant.

(Go back and read that again.)

No one’s touch on my hand means more to me,

No other encouragement gives me the ability to put one foot in front of the other,

No other look across the room gives me butterflies in my stomach,

No one else’s cologne makes me want to keep them at home until it wears off a bit,

No other’s inside joke sits with me all day, making me laugh in the grocery store,

No other kiss on the forehead makes me peace-filled,

No other voice at the doorway stirs my excitement,

And no other person draws me like a magnet to them.

Intimacy tells us that that comment hurt the other’s feelings,

That their heart racing when you sit close to them is telling you that they are worried and need your prayer.

It’s a silent cord that connects like no one else can imagine when panic attacks strike in the middle of the night,

When tears fall because change is too much,

Or when the phone call says things won’t be easy for a while.

Intimacy is precious.

Spiritual, emotional and physical intimacy is, after my salvation, the greatest gift God has given me and I never ever want to take it for granted.

The blessing of wanting to be fully known by my one and only.

(Pause for a hallelujah fit in Panera)

No plans or extended family drama, stressful ministry season or dilemmas with our kids should take away from the preciousness of closing the bedroom door at night, crawling into bed and remembering that it’s just the two of us against the world.

And one pair of REALLY cold feet.

Maybe my “troth” can help with that.

Or maybe I should’ve left the socks there on the floor…..