TumbleDweeeb

   50 Days and Forever
for the one Providence cast toward me…

Day One · The Water
   Before I knew you, I knew the river …
the hush of current, the patience of the line,
how a man learns to wait on something greater
than himself. Then you stood at the water’s edge
and I forgot I was waiting at all.

Days Two Through Ten · The Catching
   He who made the seas made your laughter,
and both are too wide for one man to hold.
     Still I tried.
   We traded casts and stories in the golden hour,
the rod bending like a question mark
     I finally had the courage to ask.
   Scripture says He makes all things new …
     I felt it, right there, beside you, in the reeds.

Days Eleven Through Twenty · The Pursuit
   I came back to that water every morning
the way a man returns to pray:
hoping, half-certain, wholly willing
to kneel before something he cannot explain.
     And you were there.
   Not by accident … Providence does not fumble.
     The same hand that stilled the Galilean sea
was placing you, gently, into my life.

Days Twenty-One Through Thirty · The Knowing
   Ruth said, “where you go, I will go” …
and I understood her then for the first time,
sitting across from you, plates between us,
the whole evening unfolding like a covenant.
     I am not a poet of great words,
but I know that grace wears a familiar face,
and yours is the one I was made to recognize.

Days Thirty-One Through Forty · The Falling
   Love is not a feeling only… it is a theology:
it asks you to lay your pride down like an offering,
to believe in something you cannot yet see whole.
     I believed.
   I fell the way the disciples fell to their knees …
not from weakness, but from the sudden weight
of encountering something holy in the ordinary world.
     You were my burning bush. My still, small voice.

Days Forty-One Through Forty-Nine · The Asking
   I rehearsed the words ten thousand times
and forgot them all when you looked at me.
     So I spoke plainly, the way a man speaks to God
when he has run out of eloquence and is left
with nothing but the truth of what he wants.
   You said yes.
     The river did not stop. The birds did not hush.
   But the world rearranged itself around that word
and has not gone back since.

Day Fifty · The Vow
   Fifty days from water to altar…
from a fishing line to a wedding ring,
from two strangers patient at the shore
to two people kneeling before the same God,
promising to keep kneeling, together, forever.
     What He joins, let nothing break.
   What He grew in fifty days, let eternity tend.
     I thought I caught a fish that morning …
it is you, beloved, who saved my life.

   From the water you came to me.
     Into forever I go with you.

Your Loving Husband