I Like You. I Really DO.

I like you. I really do. I like the way you know me through and through, you’ve seen all my bad and my good and you’ve weighed it and decided it’s me you want. Oh, what a stubborn fool I can be. Sometimes I love you, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I feel you, other times I couldn’t care less. I know the things you love, and I want to do them to make you happy, but they’re so hard, and easier ignored. I know the things you hate, and I try to avoid them to make you happy, but they’re so much easier to do.

I try hard, and I like that you help me and you never let me feel like I can’t make it. I like the way that you’re always whispering in my ears that you believe in me, and that you like what you see in our future. Oh, I want to make you happy, that’s my greatest desire. And not for no reason – it’s because I’ve never met anyone like you. Who loves so unconditionally? Who cares so much about what I am becoming rather than what I am now? It’s amazing the things you’ve done for me, even knowing my capacity to turn my back on you.

I worry about my world a lot, and how everyone has so many problems they can’t solve. I worry also, how everyone has so many answers, and so many things that they think will make them happy or make their problems go away.

So of all the things you’ve done for me, I like how you fulfill me. How with you I feel safe, never uneasy, never wondering whether things will turn out OK. I just know that they will, because when you speak to me, it’s like gentle cool rivulets flowing down my face on a hot afternoon. I like how you answer my every concern with that stillness. I like the hope you give me, how I get a spring in my step every time I come from spending time with you. I like the way you show me love and make me want nothing else. Oh, bliss!

And yet, I fear that I do not talk about you enough. So this here is a reminder, to myself and to everyone that ever reads this, of what you mean to me. I live for you, I would die for you, and I like that I get to spend forever with you. I like your names. Jesus. Emmanuel. Wonderful Counselor. Prince of Peace. Savior. Hope of the World. You’ve been with me, you guide me, you give me peace in the midst of all these chaos, and my, o my, you’ve gone and saved me from despair and given me hope.

I wish, I wish that all your sons and daughters would see that you really are all that. And that when we have you, we really do need nothing else. I wish that they would see – yea, even those that have known you and turned their backs on you – that the road back has no conditions. You’re standing at the door looking out into the horizon and wishing that they would just appear – oh, how you will run toward them then and clothe them in that never ending embrace.

I like you. I really do.