The Chasm Between

Anyone who knows me really well knows that deep at heart, I’m a hopeless romantic.

But not in the grand gestures kind of way. In the million tiny pieces, the hidden notes and whispers in a crowded room, and cheesy love letters on a regular Tuesday kind of way.

To me, love tastes better in bite size fragments when an ordinary day is infused with the extraordinary bliss of a spur of the moment notion of enchantment, often hidden, between two people.

I blame Disney and The Notebook in my formative years, but alas, I am who I am at 35, so I don’t fight it anymore.

2 years before dating Chad, I started a journal to my future husband, because I obviously have to write about my feelings constantly . I had no clue who it was going to be at that time, but the romantic in me thought it’d be so fun to log the journey as it played out in real life as I discovered who this mystery person was, our dates, the nauseating pining of love and all that jazz and I thought it’d be a cool relic for our kids or grandkids to have one day when we were old.

I wrote in this book a lot as a young, hopelessly-desperate-to-be-in-love, 20 something who was ill from watching so many of my friends get married. It’s mostly full of prayers about and for this man… and a bit of complaining about his seemingly tardy entry onto the grand stage of my life.

My plan was to give it to my husband on our 1st anniversary… but as some of you have heard us joke, mine and Chad’s first year of marriage wasn’t the wedding cake and butterflies we’d anticipated… for a lot of reasons that almost all come back to me… being stubborn and unyielding (he eventually broke this green horse… or more like the Lord did with three children ). Anyhow…

Sadly, I stopped writing in “our book” pretty shortly into our first year of marriage. It’s hard to write gooey things when you don’t “feel” gooey about it… and at that time, I wasn’t sure I wanted what I really felt permanently recorded anywhere.

As a writer and someone who loves truthful vulnerability, it pains me that I was too afraid to keep writing the real story of our love and our marriage, especially after our story was abruptly cut short so soon after it began.

I’ve often tried to fill in the gaps between then and now, to try to put to words the way he changed me, grew me, and made me a more lovable person, but it’s hard. It feels like I’m tampering with a time capsule before it’s supposed to be opened. Though incomplete, the book is sacred space.

About this time last year, I really started to feel my heart pulling me forward toward the possibility of the future more than I was being drawn to memories of the past, and while terrifying, I came to the conclusion that fear can only bridle hope in the dark for so long. Because once hope realizes it is actually the superior emotion, it must break free.

So on Valentine’s Day of 2020, ten years later, I started a new book… to a new person I don’t yet know, or if I do know, I am at the very least unaware of him in this regard.

I’ve been writing in it for a solid year now. It’s full of mostly prayers… and some complaining about how much I loathe being single (Not much has changed… I’d like to think Im less of a brat now though #thanksChad).

So today, I woke up feeling quite inspired… and well-rested… and decided I’d write two letters:

The first to Chad – a thank you for showing me what it meant to love someone selflessly and consistently, for being the fudge and sprinkles on top of my boring vanilla ice cream life, for giving me the three most beautiful children on the planet, for making me a wife, and for bearing with me while God was using him to temper me and teach me humility and grace and forgiveness and trust and teamwork.

The second was to a person I don’t know, and it’s full of hopes and dreams for a future that I can’t yet see, and quite honestly, am afraid to completely believe in, for fear of disappointment, rejection, or more heartache; a future I pray for but don’t yet understand when or how it could become reality.

I can see so much more clearly now, after losing Chad, that his reckless abandon in loving me so hard was motivated from his painful history of having loved deeply and lost before when his previous wife left him. He was terrified when he fell in love with me, (he told me multiple times ) because he didn’t think he’d survive loving someone that much again and losing them.

But like the true romantic and warrior that he was, he didn’t run in fear, he pressed in and loved me harder and held onto me tighter.

I can see now why so many things that would frustrate me didn’t matter to him – because his previous loss gave him the ability to understand what was actually a big deal and what was not; a perspective he’s taught me now, ironically, through his death.

I know now why he was so easy to get along with, why he would have climbed any mountain to get to me or gone to any length to please me…. because nothing mattered to him as long as we were together (and preferably in harmony haha).

When you know what you have is special, you’ll do whatever it takes to safeguard and cherish that relationship.

Embarrassingly, I now see that he knew how special we were long before I did, and he was willing to make sacrifices early on that I wasn’t because he loved deeper than I did… not because I was somehow vain and shallow, but because I couldn’t have even begun to understand the depth of his love for me not having been through what he’d been through.

He was more seasoned in the game of love than I was. I was a rookie, and it’s painfully obvious now in my memories.

And truthfully, the scariest part of thinking about loving someone again is picturing myself being on Chad’s side of the equation… loving someone more than they’re capable of loving me back, and the vulnerability that comes with putting myself out there coupled with the possibility of being hurt by someone or ambushed by life again, but like I said before, my hope for the future eventually silences my fear.

So while I’m stuck in this chasm between two love stories, I’ll keep dreaming… and writing… and praying… and trusting that God has a plan for my family.

Wherever you are today, I hope you are able to love and appreciate the special person in your life like they deserve to be loved and cherished. I pray you can look past each others’ offenses and keep moving forward to deeper love. I can promise you, 98% of the things you’re mad about wouldn’t matter tomorrow if your person suddenly disappeared.

If you’re single like me, I pray you have the faith to believe for the desires of your heart and the courage to reach out and grab them when the opportunities present themselves.

Until then, I pray you’re captivated by the greatest love story of all time – the love of the Savior who gave everything for your heart and soul, because it’s only through this love that we can truly appreciate the gift of love we find in one another.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my first love – My Dad – who never gave me an inch to question whether I was loved or valued by him, who cried on the phone with this 17 year old girl when her first boyfriend broke her heart, and who has been the most constant and guiding light of love and strength throughout my entire life.

Happy Valentine’s Day to my first husband, Chad Robinson, who loved me more than I understood, was the epitome of grace, forgiveness, and patience; who tried every day to be my best friend and show me Jesus; was just as sincere as he was silly; and left me a lifetime of sappy romantic memories to live on. I’m forever grateful for the ways you loved me that shaped the person I am today and the person I will become tomorrow.

And to the person I don’t yet know, Happy Valentine’s Day to you too, wherever you are in this big wide world.

Shannon