Everyone wants you to know they are there for you. They want you to see the love that courses so strongly beneath their words. They want letters and prayers and vulnerability to pierce you and wash over you and take root in the depths of a heart that they fear they are losing. But you are numb or scared or so confused you can't accept or believe that they could love you so much. You can't see that your pain is theirs, that their honesty is raw and real and aching for you to see yourself how they do. That this is love for a boy whose sweetness never left him as the years made him taller and smarter and older. Love for the young man whose dedication to things that mattered to him made everybody stop and take notice. Love for the eighteen year old who couldn't find the words to share his pain. Love for you because you simply are. Love because God called you into being and he made the only you the world will ever have.
I don't know your struggles intimately. You have shared glimpses into your dark places with me but I won't pretend to understand what it is like or where you are at right now. I do know that I love you. I know that lying to yourself doesn't work. That eventually you will have to face your truths, whatever they may be. I know that in your most broken moments God will be closest to you. I know that when it feels like it will never be OK again, when nothing makes sense and your body physically hurts from the pain of holding something in or finally letting it go, God will not leave your side. I know that the sun really does come up the next morning as cliche as that sounds. That the pain of baring your hurts, your doubts, your fears, your inadequacies, your failures and your faults to God is just a precursor of the peace to come. I know that God will wash your wounds with his mercy and bind them with his grace. I know, because although this is not my story, I have found the bottom where everything hurts and I have blindly trusted God when I didn't want to but knew I needed to. I have put my heart into the hands of the one who first let it beat and he has not failed me. Chet, He will not fail you. Trust in God and be brave enough to be the person he created you to be, whoever that is.
For some reason I imagine our mom holding you for the first time, the moment you were placed in her arms after nine long months of waiting and wondering and hoping. The moment she looked into your eyes and said a silent prayer of thank you. Thank you for my boy. Thank you. I love him. I love him unconditionally. Thank you for this gift of life.
That is what you are. A gift to anyone who has ever had the privilege to be around you for even ten minutes. You bless everyone with your humor, your thoughtfulness, your kindness, your intelligence, your patience, and your generosity. You bring so much to so many and you don't even realize it.
I love you.
Genna
