love is

 it's easy to recite the verse, the one that we hear at weddings and memorize in sing-song tones as children.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

it's easy to hear it, and know it, but to really sink into our bones is different. patience is still sinking in to mine, and nothing has pressed patience into me more than our marriage. because life with a brain injury is slow. and it's  unknown. and it's not clearcut.

which creates a greater void that needs to be filled with patience. which is exactly where i need to be stripped. which is why God gave me to ian.

i needed him to help me learn patience.

like when he doesn't answer me as quickly as i want him to. 

or when i just really want him to be able to walk on his own. (because even in the midst of the excitement of his progress, my heart still sins).

or when we don't yet have what we think we need.

i. i. i. that's what i make it about. the root of my inpatience is my selfishness.

and if someone had been watching, filming, observing my heart and outward acts for the last two days toward my husband, they would not see love that was kind, or un-resentful or patient.

i don't see that in myself.

but i do see my god, hanging on a tree for me, that my impatience might not separate me from him. i see his blood traveling down his body and onto his toes and drip on the ground so that i not be lost in my sin. 

i see his head slumped down by death so that i my face may be lifted up to gaze in His face on the ressurrection day.

this was done for me. and for our marriage.