annual Christmas love letter

It is a tradition for my husband and to write love letters to each other, place them in the decorated tree to read on Christmas eve.  This year the letters waited til morning as we were out visiting friends till much too late last night.  These are the words I penned to my beloved:

Dear Rick: 

It is our 13th holiday season together.

I sit lost in the beauty of our tree 

where you wove the glittering lights.

Snow fills the view outside the window

and I hear the moan of increasing winds.

Christmas is family and friends and frosty temperatures.

We wake together on Christmas morning,

snuggled in down and body heat.

This is familiar.  This is what we have come to know.

But we have given the lives we know to the God

we continue to learn about

and soon nothing will look familiar but the love He has for us

the love He has given us for each other

and the love He has developed in us for the red dirt of Africa

I have walked by your side through 13 winters

and by your side is where I shall remain

following a narrow road, but the best road

honoring you, respecting you, assisting you

and loving you always until the end of this life we live

and then forward into eternity

I am His, and I am yours,

in hope and joy,