The Secret of the Lord

"The things that make God dear to us are not so much His great big blessings as the tiny things, because they show His amazing intimacy with us; He knows every detail of our individual lives" -- Oswald.

My husband is an unusual man. He has never run from intimacy with me. Initially, when I told him I wanted to get inside his skin, not only to know what he was thinking but to understand why those thoughts were his thoughts, he tried to tell me he just wasn't that deep. "I think about food, sex and sports. That's about it," he said. But he didn't run or try to hide. He held still while I poked and prodded, and at some point, things shifted a bit. He became more the pursuer than the pursued.

When I found a book that read like a journal of my own craziness, he read it too, even though it wasn't at all his kind of book. If I felt like the author "got me," well then, they had something in common. He wanted to get me, too.

When we're apart for the day -- me at my job, he at his -- he calls me once or twice to check on me, to "take my temperature," as he says, and he can do that from the way I say "hello." He knows the cadence of my voice.

He knows my favorite pen, and he cares about whether or not I can find it.

He knows that I am hard on myself -- that my list of faults is never far from the tip of my brain -- and while that list must be readily apparent to him as well, he never uses it against me.

He has read nearly every word I have ever written, and he believes in me. Still.

The Free Dictionary suggests these definitions of intimate: "relating to or indicative of one's deepest nature; essential, innermost."

My husband gives me the clearest earthly picture of intimacy, of what is deepest and most essential in him relating to what is deepest and most essential in me.

It is often hard for me to believe that he loves me as he does.

It is even harder to grasp that my husband's love is just a dim reflection of God's more perfect love.