“I recollect that wondrous meeting,
that instant I encountered you,
when like an apparition fleeting,
like beauty’s spirit, past you flew.”
Pushkin

I met my dearest friend when we were both in love with the same man. She was overwhelmingly beautiful and I felt instantly that all was lost. He must love her, and I must love her – the whole world must love her, how could they not? It was a devastating realization and a thrilling one – I had never met anyone like her. I didn’t realize until later that she had felt the same on meeting me.

She is out west now and I am here, on the grey eastern ocean, married and trying to remember that I am a writer. I wish I could write her a life full of answered prayers and living dreams; I wish I could write lovely lives for all those I love: My dear brothers – one running recklessly from God and his whispering call to holiness; the other putting every gift of God away to molder while he waits for God to give him joy; my sister whom I love, and who I wish would listen just once to her heart. My lonely, lovelorn friends in the Midwest and the far West; my lost, soul-starved friends in the East and South – I long to write joy into the lives of everyone I know. How is it that I can be so joyful, despite my as yet unreceived blessings? I wish I could give them that joy.

In adoration today I thought about them and I realized that God, too, longs to write lives replete with blessings. He is held back only because He chose first of all to give them free will and in that freedom lies the opportunity to reject Him, His love, His gifts, the goodness of living for Him. Not all gifts are given when we want them, as I am learning – as we all learn at some time in life. Sometimes the gift given is the gift of learning to love God for Himself alone, not for His gifts and blessings; it is the gift of learning to wait, to hope, and to believe.