death of a salesman

After date night with Andrew last night I curled into a ball on my bed, fully clothed, and was halfway asleep when my roommate, peering into my room, woke me with a tentative, "Sarah, honey? Are you going to get under the covers?"

Verbal intimacy is the most wonderful, beautiful, fulfilling, glorious, heavenly thing I have experienced. It's also exhausting.

What I realized after last night was that I love and respect Andrew more the smaller he becomes in his own eyes. I know him to be a strong man, a brave man, a leader, a hero and a fighter but it's when he tells me that he's a weak man, a scared man, a follower and a draft-dodger that I know I'm in love with a human.

It takes more courage to admit weakness than it does to boast of strength.

God illuminated the word 'gentleness' for me once. Gentleness, he explained, is strength. What Jesus drew upon to submit to arrest and torture, to stay silent during interrogation, to carry his own cross to the place of execution, to make provisions for his mother, and to forgive us before he died was ultimate strength. Strength to recognize that something else was in control, strength to recognize that he didn't have to defend his case, strength to submit, strength to love until the end, strength to give up.

Strength like that leaves me speechless.

I have never seen Andrew as strong as he was last night.

In death there are hidden invisible keys
(Sleeping at Last)

"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise;
God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."
(1 Corinthians 1:27)

I need a hero 
I'm holding out for a hero 'till the end of the night 
He's gotta be strong 
And he's gotta be fast 
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
(Frou Frou)