Sure

Well, what in the world does that mean? How can you be sure of the choices that any person complete with free will is going to make? How can you guarantee that he or she won't have a nervous breakdown, or a car accident or a stroke and change the person you loved forever? What if depression sinks and and the person you loved never comes back to the life-filled person you now know? Life is full of curves and hairpin turns without warning signs. We have to keep our eyes open and grasp onto goodness when we find it.

It is only fair that I answer the "are you sure" question, since I seem to be the one so focused on it these days. The answer is yes, I am sure. Which then begs the question how do I know. Scripture says you may know about the character of something or someone by the fruit it bears. One look at my home and the transformation that has taken place in all of our lives gives the confirmation I need. The branches are heavy with ripe fruits of joy and love and hope. My kids are laughing, playing and singing, freely, in the knowledge that they are loved. They accept discipline from a man who is not their father, because they were loved first. There is music and laughter and light in a place that was darkness, there is hope of a new beginning, where despair used to live. There is peace in a family that feared death and was afraid to sleep in their own home.

How many times have we heard how good we are for each other - that each of us was rescued from ourselves as a result of the other? How many days have we had with just overwhelming gladness - not just that lonliness is gone, but that the words "I love you" are totally insufficient to describe the intensity of emotion wrapped up in that moment. When I have been unable to trust in anything else, on the day I had to pull my kids out of school, pack up my house and leave, in fear for our lives, I trusted in us. That is how I know.