Love and Wonder

I don't remember exactly what my attitude was the morning of April 28, 2005. I do know that whatever little annoyance I was dealing with on that particular day, I was trying to suppress it quickly. So many days gust by us year after year, never to be revisited or recalled, and it is only a select few that remain with us, stored somewhere within for whatever reason. On that day, my mind was focused on one main thing, my scheduled interview for a position as an associate director of recruitment in the Truett Recruiting office. Nothing else was important; I wanted a job.

With only a few minutes before my interview, as I waited in the office at one of the computer desks, lazily making my normal rounds across the Internet, I came across something that indeed would, in hindsight, supersede any job interview, as well as any occupational event I might experience in my life. From the comment section under one of the posts in a blog I had only recently established, there sat, as innocent - and suspicious - as a dove, a short comment by someone identified only as "simchah."

"'...that whatever you love (writing, music, a certain someone, God) continue to fall, and may it never find a bottom.'"
wow that is good. did you write that?
fun to find a Texan on xanga! :)"

Now, a less pessimistic person would view this message, in which the last line of that post is quoted back to me, as a polite praise and a friendly greeting. I only saw the weird name, a tiny profile picture I could not make out, and read the comment as questioning whether I had written what I personally believed to be a great line ("That's gold! Gold, Jerry!"), or had plagiarized it from someone else. With seconds ticking away before my interview, I clicked on simchah's link, prepared to do cyber-battle, armed with my powerful, unplagiarized rhetoric ... and I looked upon a much larger display of her profile picture. Oh, I thought, she looks nice.

The next few months were as quickly moving and disorienting (once again in hindsight) as a whirlwind. Noticing that though she was presently located in New York, she had attended the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor and was from Houston, I commented back. She returned the sentiment. Then I, as innocent as a fox, e-mailed her. She replied again. Most endearing was how long her e-mails were. While they did not rival my epic-length e-mails (few can), they were quite large; she was not shy about professing and confessing her views. I do not mean to romanticize this to the point of syruppy sickness, but throughout May, June, and July, we had a bit of a You've Got Mail-thing going on.

The subsequent relationship that began (though it all seemed to happen in stages, the comments, the e-mails, the first phone call at the end of July, the first date at the end of August, the first kiss on the Brooklyn Bridge at the end of September ...) is made up of a host of golden days that rest somewhere deep within me. They continue to form me, changing me and reminding me of the very truth I was waking up to when I wrote that blog post over a year ago. Love ... and wonder. To be aware of these is to be in communion with the matchless grace of God.

Edit from my Xanga post of April 10, 2005 (two and a half weeks before the comment that changed my life):
Keep seeking those hidden depths - the chasm to which love and wonder can plummet just keeps opening. May my wish for me be for you as well, that whatever you love and whatever fills you with wonder (writing, music, a certain someone, God) continue to fall, and may it never find a bottom.



I love you forever, Leigh.