I've Loved These Hands Since I Was Thirteen…..

     I first remember hearing Ian play the piano when I was around thirteen and that is when he thinks he first remembers playing for me….His selection, "Crocodile Rock" by Elton John.  Played more to impress a little girl with his piano prowess than to persuade me to like him, it is a precious memory we share together.  

     I knew even as a young girl that he was a very special young man…because he took time to listen to me…and, while I was not exactly a babbling brook of conversation, I did feel free to share with him lots of silly nonsense which, to me, was not nonsense at all, but was important "stuff."

He was my first in so many things…first "real" boy's hand I ever held, first real "kiss", first real date, first real car date, first drag race down Dixie Highway…..first boy on whose shoulder I laid my head, first one to genuinely ask me to marry him….  

     First movie, "Jaws", first trip to college (Western), first boy to tell me he loved me and first boy I responded in kind.

 

     First boy to place his arm around my back as we sat in the pew at Radcliff Church of Christ and first to tell me the good, no…the precious, he saw in me even at the very young age of thirteen.

When we married, we started a little book of all of our "firsts" and stopped writing in it once we got to two hundred….I think we understood by then that in all things important, we were one another's first.

     And, as we travel this life together, the ups and downs of it…the ins and outs of it, I have an everlasting gratefulness that his are the hands I will hold the rest of the days of my, of our, lives.

He is the one constant I can count of this side of heaven….and, he points me to God.

I don't say that lightly because the journey we took to be together is not one of which we are proud….but it is one for which we are now grateful….. 

     Proof to us, to our children, that God can take all parts of our lives, even the broken hearted pieces and put them together in such a way that He can use on this earth, and in His way and in His timing….

     God wastes nothing of our lives if we will lay our all down, the beautiful and the ugly…

     There is a humble love Ian and I have for one another born from sorrow and gentleness, from a heavenly Father who loves us, forgives us, and lifts us up even when we are not so deserving….

     They say we are the hands and feet of Jesus….

     And, I believe

     For when I hold, when I see, when I feel the warm of the aging hand of my husband as he clasps   mine in prayer, I know God lives…

     And, I know He loves

     I love you husband,

     I thank you, God.

     Your grateful Wife,

      Lesa