Napkin 2: To Sarah

"...things too wonderful for me..." - Job 42:3b (NIV)

37,000 feet. 1:23 AM.

I can't sleep. The pain has gotten worse, and the pills aren't working anymore. The flight attendant asked if I'm okay. I lied.

Like always.

Dear Sarah,

In three hours, we'll land in Zurich, and you don't even know I left. I told you it was a two-day conference. "Early Church Fathers in Contemporary Thought." Lie number 347 of our life together.

You packed my suitcase, humming that song you always hummed when we were young, and I was studying for exams. "Come back soon," you whispered, kissing me. "I'll be waiting."

And I got in the car knowing I might never come back.

Do you remember when we got married? The pastor asked if we promised to love each other "in sickness and in health." You said "yes" with that voice trembling with emotion. I said "yes," convinced that words meant what I wanted them to mean.

Now, at forty thousand feet, with cancer eating me from the inside and you sleeping in our empty bed, I discover I never understood what "in sickness" meant.

It's not just standing beside someone who suffers. It's allowing the one you love to see your suffering. It's letting the other enter your pain instead of protecting them from everything.

For thirty years, I protected you from my fragility. When I doubted what I preached on Sundays, I faked certainty at home. When I was afraid the Lord wasn't answering my prayers, I smiled and quoted Psalms. When I woke up at night in panic attacks because I "saw through a glass darkly" and that darkness terrified me, I'd get up quietly and read the Bible in the hallway so I wouldn't wake you.

I thought I was loving you.

In reality, I was depriving you of the chance to be my traveling companion. I was denying you the broken bread of searching together. I didn't want you to see that even the pastor had questions without answers.

I was denying you the possibility of loving me for who I really am: a frightened man who spent his life playing at being self-confident.

That February night last year, when you found the test results I had hidden in the drawer - the ones that said something was wrong - you looked at me with those eyes I'd known for twenty-five years and said just one word:

"Why?"

Not "why did you get sick?" But "why did you hide it from me?" Why did you choose to suffer alone instead of together with me?

I told you I didn't want to worry you. That it was my job to protect you. That I was the man of the house and had to be strong.

But that night, when you cried for hours with your face against my chest, I heard in your crying something that broke me:

You weren't crying about the illness.

You were crying because I had excluded you from the most important part of my life: the fear of dying.

"I love you even when you're afraid," you whispered to me. "I love you especially when you're afraid. But how can I love you if you won't let me in?"

On this napkin that's getting soaked with tears, I'm writing the hardest thing I've ever written:

Sarah, you're right.

You knew I was dying before I knew it. You knew I was afraid before I confessed it. You knew I doubted before I stopped pretending certainty.

And you loved me anyway.

But tonight, suspended between heaven and earth like my prayers that I didn't know if they reached anywhere, I discovered something that changed me forever:

You didn't love me despite my fragility. You loved me through my fragility. Not despite my unanswered questions. But inside my fears.

And in that way - without knowing it, without having studied it in theology books - you showed me exactly how God loves.

Not from outside our weaknesses, but from the center. Not despite who we are, but through who we are. Not when we're strong and have everything under control, but especially when we tremble and understand nothing.**

Sarah, if I don't come back from this trip - and things are getting worse faster than I told you - I want you to know this:

You taught me God's love more than all the doctoral dissertations I ever wrote. You showed me grace more than all the commentaries I studied.**

Every time you held me when I woke up terrified by doubts, you were God answering the prayers I didn't dare pray. Every time you forgave me for being cold and distant because I was afraid you'd see how fragile I was inside the pastor's mask, you were Christ showing me what mercy means.**

Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus who recognized Christ in the breaking of bread together, I recognized the Father's love in the breaking of daily life with you.

Now I understand what "things too wonderful for me" means. They're not the mysteries of God I can't explain.

It's you.

It's the love you've given me for thirty years without me ever understanding that I was loved not for what I knew but for who I was. It's the grace you showed me every time I pretended to be what I wasn't.

It's the miracle of being known - truly known, with all the fears and doubts - and loved right there. Loved not on condition that I become better, but loved so that I could become better.

Sarah, I learned something on this plane that will change everything if I have the grace to come home:

True love isn't earned. It's received. It's not won through performance. It's welcomed even when we tremble at not being enough. And when we truly receive it - when we stop trying to be worthy of it and simply start letting it be given - then we become capable of loving others the same way.

If I come back, Sarah, I won't lie to you anymore to protect you. I'll tell you the truth because only in truth can real love be received. I won't pretend to be strong anymore when I'm scared. I'll let you into my pain because I've learned that sharing pain doesn't double it. It breaks it and transforms it into intimacy.

I love you, Sarah.

And now I know this means: not trying to earn your love, but having the courage to receive it. Even when - especially when - I don't understand where so much grace comes from.

Your Jonathan, who is learning to be loved instead of trying to earn love

The napkin is completely soaked. A coffee stain has erased the word "wonderful." But maybe that's okay. Maybe the most wonderful things can't be written.