An Open Letter to You

I have always loved today. Since I was little and towheaded and oblivious. The candy and the bunny and the basket and the green, green grass with a sky full of sunshine. But it's more than all of those—more than I've been able to explain. I just do. And I think it's because of You.

My parents taught me Your name and I sang happy little songs about trying to be like You and wondering when You'd come again. It was simple and sweet and oh, so innocent. Today has always been about You but back then, I just knew You woke up and sunlight fell like a halo round Your head and You were always stepping forward out of death. It was easy to celebrate and easy to understand. You came back—and the Easter Bunny gave us eggs.

Sometimes I really miss those days, you know? I miss the very certain truth that You are. I miss the easy rejoicing and a new dress and lyrics bursting free from my little heart without any shadows. I miss a mind absent from worry and doubt and fear. Little me just loved Wonderful You.

But none of us can stay little. I grew up. My parents still taught me Your name, I still sang songs about trying to be like You, and I began wondering when You'd come again. I began wondering, wondering, wondering. Things got complicated. My mind began waking to all of this more out there. And there was so much more than my eyes had room to see. Clouds crept into my sunny meadows and questions whispered in every errant breeze. I stood out in the open, looking for You without really knowing where to look.

It isn't easy anymore. You're harder to find in all the white noise, in all the shades of gray. People always tell me how it should be black and white, that I must become that little girl who just knew, to leap and leap and leap. But I'm scared. I'm scared of this desperate need to breathe—because that is what You are to me: a breath. The only breath. And if You aren't and I leap I may just suffocate without You.

There's so much I don't know, so much I can't know. You ask me to step onto the waves, which once sounded so possible, but life's a storm and I feel blinded by the gale. This isn't a paltry rain out here. It's slashing rain, heaving sea, and shrieking wind. Ships are sinking and visibility passed "poor" a while back. I'm already lost on the ocean. How will I ever find You to take Your hand?

In the midst of this, it's easy to trust the wind, to believe I'm alone in the water. But there's this thought that refuses to die. Before I slip under, before I let go, before I turn back for an empty harbor, I have this thought that in all my looking, I didn't look close enough. Close enough. So close I couldn't see that You are right here. With me. Through it all.

You know. You know. You know. And I can't let You go because You're my breath and I don't want to let You go. Even with a mind of worry and doubt and fear. Prone to wander Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, oh take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above. This is my heart, standing out in the open, looking for You.

I have always loved today and I think it's because of You. Today, You came back and You promised that You'd come back again. I think You never really left. I'm teaching myself Your name and trying to be like You and wondering when You'll come again. I don't have all the answers and I still have so many questions but many Easter's ago, I knew something easy and simple, and it's still true today.

Little me just loves Wonderful You.

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Photography from Mark Mabry's Reflections of Christ: Another Testament and Italicized lyrics from "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," by Robert Robinson, 1758